Shochu that goes with goya (bitter melon)
Melon, cucumber and garden
Two slices from any Asian grocery, seeds out. The bitterness is water soluble, so at 25 percent it steeps in minutes and stops there, where a 40 percent spirit pulls it medicinal within the hour.
Best bottles for goya (bitter melon)
The strongest matches in the catalogue, across every style. Everything below is the same ranking opened out by what the shochu is made from.
Cucumber and a clean barley highball is the most refreshing thing you can build out of this category.
Bitterness that answers earth without adding any sweetness to it
barley, earthy, mineral, pepper
barley, rice, chocolate, earthy
barley, citrus, melon, white peach
barley, roasted barley, sesame, grassy
barley, rice, banana, white peach
barley, rice, melon, banana
barley, grassy, smooth, light-bodied
barley, buckwheat, banana, berry
caramel, smoky, rich, earthy
Melon and cucumber sit in the same aroma family as a ginjo-scented rice spirit.
Grouped by what the shochu is made from, because that is the level the reasoning works at: what this does to an imo shochu is a fact about imo shochu rather than about one bottle. Within each style, the strongest matches and anything poured at our bar come first. The ranking is the same engine that recommends a mixer from a bottle, run the other way round.
Mugi shochu
Cucumber and a clean barley highball is the most refreshing thing you can build out of this category.
62 more, all of them in Mugi shochu
Kome shochu
Melon and cucumber sit in the same aroma family as a ginjo-scented rice spirit.
37 more, all of them in Kome shochu
Imo shochu
6 more, all of them in Imo shochu
Awamori
1 more, all of them in Awamori
Shiso, sesame, tea and other single-botanical shochu
2 more, all of them in Shiso, sesame, tea and other single-botanical shochu