Shochu instead of
Every cocktail recipe is written for six or seven spirits and none of them is shochu. This is what happens when you swap, why it works where it works, and the two places it does not.
Start with the arithmetic
A spirit a recipe calls for is usually 40 percent. Most shochu is 25. Pour the same measure and the drink comes out about a third weaker carrying exactly the same water, 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 rumClose35 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 rumWorkable70 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.
- VodkaClose213 bottles here can do itThis is the easy one, and the one where the swap arguably improves the drink: a clean kome or a vacuum distilled mugi does vodka's job and brings something with it.
- Blanco tequilaA different drink60 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.
- WhiskyWorkable121 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.
- CachaçaWorkable28 bottles here can do itCane to cane again, with one real difference: cachaça is distilled from fresh pressed juice and kokuto shochu from the sugar after it has been boiled down.
- GinNoNo honest answerThere is no honest answer to this one. Gin is a spirit flavoured with juniper, nothing in this catalogue is flavoured with juniper, and no shochu is going to make a martini taste like a martini.
These are judgements, not facts, and they are published as judgements. The reasoning is printed with every one so you can disagree with it. What is cited underneath is the part that is a fact, and most of it comes from the National Tax Agency, which turns out to answer this question more directly than any drinks writer does.