Jinro Soju

Soju!  I'm gonna say right here that I like this stuff.  I like this stuff!

It might be the world's most popular 'Spirit' which I'm sure has a formal meaning.  I bought the 1.75 l version that looks like this:

But I'm three days in and about halfway through.  It's not a small thing, Soju.  I like the flavor.

I've had a better Soju before but then I had two 375ml bottles and I forgot the name.  Is a problem when one goes a-drinking away from their computer.  The safe computer, in my basement, at night when everyone's too asleep to hurt you.  There, there - we'll be cozy here, lit only by the glow of my monitors.

Feels like that got away from me there.

Anyway, most Soju I've had isn't as good as Jinro.  But I live in Portland so I kinda have to take what I can get at the liquor store (Soju has too much alcohol to sell at our grocery stores.  Laws are weird.)

It - I mean, it's Soju.  You have it with your Korean food.  If you are a man, or playing that role, you are expected to drink too much and get silly.  For reals.  I think Korea is amazing in that sense.

How does it taste?  It's alcoholic enough to have a little sting, but only a little.  It's sweet, like a sweet vodka.  Actually - take a decent cheap vodka and add water, and that's Soju.  Hang on a minute while I test that.

Okay.  Ten minutes for me, dunno how long for you.  Maybe you took a bathroom break to time-equivalency the narrative flow?  With the way I whip these off, if you're a slow reader we might be on the same time-stamp here.

Right.  I put a shot-ish in my water glass, and then added a shot-ish water.  Shit was in the freezer so we'll give it a few minutes, the Soju is room temperature and we want to control for variables.

As far as you know, anyway.  Not gonna get this peer-reviewed or anything, and I might only submit it to one of the trashier journals.

Right.  Okay.  Well, my vodka is Monopolya, which is one of my favorites because it's cheap and has almost no flavor.  I'll write it up some other time maybe but - whoo boy, vodka nights are a whole Big Thing now on my system and I'm too tired for that shit.

But yeah, similar mouth feel, similar burn.  Soju's sweeter and has more flavor, but I'm struggling to pin that flavor down.  Distilled Alcohol flavor, if that makes sense.  Like there's a common boozy grainy sweet flavor to most spirits I know, and Soju is the perfect embodiment of that flavor.  Or at least Jinro soju is.

Well it's getting me drunk right now, for sure, because I'm making a lot more mispellings and using words like 'embodiment'.

It's 48 proof so you can leave it out.  I like it better cold, but only a little.  Serve it with barbecue, but not the kind you eat with your hands because you're gonna wanna be able to grab the bottle and pour it into those little cups.  Or hell, serve it with Mac and Cheese because it's so flavor-neutral.

You know what to serve this with?  Anything that you might want to do shots for, but you want to be able to do more shots than usual.  Oysters, maybe?  Or a 20-course meal where each course is like 3 bites tops so you could do a shot in-between courses.

I like it.  It's good.  The 375 ml bottle is about 13 little shot-cups of Soju, which is a prime number of shots, which is intentional so that you always have to buy several bottles for your group.  Unless you're drinking with 13 people in which case you, friend, do not need to be told about Soju, I'm sure.  I don't know if that's true but I heard it from the Koreans I used to drink with, for what that's worth.

I give it a "drinking at the computer at 2am" out of "supposed to be writing my syllabi".   It's just that good.