"Gerry" wrote in message
.. .
In article .net,
Are you implying that Shochu can, like So-Ju can also be made from
barley and sweet potato? The reason I ask is that it completely
divorces the process of fermenting rice with koji-kin mold. Neither
barley nor potatos can go through any of the process that rice must go
through in order to produce a spirit.

If I have this correct then; so-ju means "booze". And it can be made it
completely different methods with completely different ingredients.
Actually you could add wine and beer in there too since they too are
made in completely different ways of completely different ingredients.

Japanes shochu, the rice spirit, begins life with koji-kin in the same
way as does sake. It must because it can't, on it's own, produce the
sugars that yeast wants to eat to produce fermentation. Which is
apparently not true of potatos, barley, grapes and many other
foodstuffs.

Please correct any errant thinking in the above, all of you who are
wiser than me. I'm just learning this all myself.

--
A Dictionary of Japanese Food, Ingredients & Culture by Richard Hosking
(Tuttle, '97). All anybody needs to know about plumbing the depths of
Japanese
food; a cuisine far more vast than sushi.
So-ju means that it was made with fire (distilled), Makkoli and Chung-ju
like Sake are not distilled . I have bought So-ju here in Colorado where
the bottles have said they where made with rice-grain(probably mixed)-or
sweet potatoes. The bottles of Shochu I have bought have only listed rice as
an ingredient.
I don't know how fussy koji-kin mold is as to the source of the starch it is
eating and converting to sugar so that the yeasties can then make alcohol.
Sake is far better with sushi then so-ju or shochu IMHO.
John