If you are wondering what is shochu, then a good place to start are its ingredients.
All quality (honkaku) shochu contains koji, yeast, and water. From there, over 50 different ingredients are used to make different types.
The most common shochu ingredients are sweet potato, rice, and barley. Sake kasu, buckwheat, and sugar cane (only Amami-jochu) are also common for honkaku shochu.
Other ingredients you may encounter include carrot, red bean, acorn, shiitake, wakame, peanut, green tea, shiso, bamboo leaf, chestnut, pumpkin, date, and water chestnut.
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