Shochu instead of
Every cocktail recipe is written for six or seven spirits, and none of them is shochu. Here's what actually happens when you swap one out. Where it holds up, where it turns into a different drink, and where the strength catches you out.
Start with the arithmetic
A spirit a recipe calls for is usually 40 percent. Most shochu is 25. Pour the same measure and you have put 37 percent less alcohol in the glass while the ice and the mixer stay exactly where they were, which is not a substitution, it is a weaker drink wearing the same name. Every entry here says what to do about that, and a route that needs real strength will only ever list bottles that have it.
What are you replacing?
- White rumClose34 bottles here can do itKokuto shochu is the closest thing here, and not by analogy: it is made from sugarcane, the same plant rum is made from.
- Aged and Jamaican rumWorkable68 bottles here can do itNothing here reproduces the funk of a high ester Jamaican rum, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not tasted them side by side. What does work is aged kokuto or a kusu, where the recipe wants an aromatic pot still spirit with time in it.
- VodkaClose210 bottles here can do itThis is the easy one, and the swap arguably improves the drink. A clean kome or a vacuum distilled mugi does vodka's job. It also brings something with it.
- Blanco tequilaA different drink59 bottles here can do itThere is no agave here and there is no substitute for agave. What an atmospheric imo shares with a blanco is the register: vegetal, earthy, a little sulphurous, a base that refuses to sit quietly.
- WhiskyWorkable120 bottles here can do itCask aged mugi is barley, distilled, and put in wood, and Japan has been drinking it as a highball for decades. In that one drink it is not a substitution at all, it is the other thing people already order.
- CachaçaWorkable27 bottles here can do itCane to cane again, with one real difference. Cachaça is distilled from fresh pressed juice. Kokuto shochu comes from the sugar after it's been boiled down.
- GinA different drink34 bottles here can do itGin is juniper, and nothing here is juniper, so a shochu martini will not taste like a martini. What survives the swap is the drink's shape, and that is worth having: the producers build gin-shaped cocktails on their own bottles.
We're making a call here, not stating a fact. So the reasoning sits under every one, and you're welcome to throw it out. What's cited is the part that is a fact, and most of that comes from the National Tax Agency. They answer this more plainly than any drinks writer.