Professional's Guide to Drinking Soju in Seoul

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Specialist's Guide to Drinking Soju in Seoul:

Soju is Korea's most popular alcohol. You'll discover it everywhere from convenience stores
to expensive dining establishments. However "soju bars" are rare. Here's your guide to
Korean drinking culture, and where you can discover soju in Seoul. Julia Mellor has made it
her objective to bring traditional Korean alcohols into the international spotlight. She has
actually studied standard fermentation methods at some of the country's best-known
institutes, worked with artisanal breweries, and got a fly-on-the-wall viewpoint of the nation's
sool (the Korean word for "alcohol") market. She's also a co-founder of The Sool Company,
an organisation promoting conventional Korean alcohols, consisting of soju.

"The green bottle [mass-produced, commercial soju] is extremely iconic to Korea. Everybody
believes that it's the most conventional representation of Korean alcohol, however it's
actually not," she states. "The green bottle was just presented to Korea in the 1960s when
there was a rice famine throughout the Korean War." If you return to more standard
distillation designs, and there's a whole world of sojus out there-- if you understand where to
find them.
In Seoul, soju is all over. But finding more "standard" styles isn't frequently as simple as
going to a bar; in fact, the principle of a "soju bar" is fairly alien to most Koreans. You 'd be
hard-pressed to find one in the South Korean capital, Mellor describes. There are 2 important
reasons that.

To start with, Koreans typically drink in an extremely different method to Westerners. Soju is
intoxicated throughout the night and is usually paired with food in a dining establishment.
Mellor describes. "It's not actually selected for its quality ... It's essentially the avenue to get
to know somebody." Second of all, it's not all about soju. Korea is home to a host of other
alcohols-- in particular, makgeolli and cheongju, the latter of which was when the chosen
drink of the royal court. These drinks are less widely known abroad; they are harder to
export, as they're intoxicated fresh and have a much shorter service life.

For a good quality soju experience, you'll wish to hit the conventional alcohol bars. They're all
over Seoul, and they'll generally serve the complete range of Korean alcohols, consisting of
soju, makgeolli, takju and cheongju. Mellor notes that "the obstacle is not where to go. The
challenge is what to order". Soju is not strictly defined, meaning that it has plenty of
variations. Typically it's made through rice fermentation. But mass-produced sojus normally
utilize another starch such as sweet potato-- a hangover from the Korean War, when
shortages caused the government to ban making use of rice in liquor production. If you're
simply aiming to get drunk, then you can't fail with mass-produced, green-bottle soju; blend it
with beer (a mix called so-maek) if you need to alleviate.