"Stolen off the intertubes, I have not tried this yet, but I will shortly. Also seeking recipes for Japanese Soju.
[HR][/HR]
Well, first you have to make normal yakju/takju (korean rice wine). Then you have to distill it to make soju.
As for the first part, go to a Korean food store, and ask for Nuruk enzyme. It is the fungus compound they use that converts the rice to sugar so the yeast can ferment it. Also, buy a big bag of fine rice.
The recipe I'll use will use one kilogram of rice, and anything more than that, you just have to multiply to scale up.
Take 1 kg of rice, rinse it with cool/room temp water until the rinse water runs clear. Then soak it with cool water for an hour. The rice should be brittle then. Then take the rice, and steam cook it in a rice steamer for an hour. This will further soften the rice and help convert the starches.
Cool the steamed rice off, and put it in a clean/sanitized container. Add 1.5 liters of water per kilogram of rice. Cold water is good here because it cools off the rice. Then add 20-40grams of Nuruk enzyme, that has been dissolved and mixed in a cup of cooled, boiled water. Stir the rice well, and then add a packet of wine or beer yeast. Champagne yeast works really well. Stir it all up, and let it sit, stirring it occasionally for the first 5 days. Then let it sit with an air lock for a couple of weeks, until the air lock stops bubbling.
Once it is done fermenting, strain the liquor from the rice, using a strainer, a cheese cloth bag, nylon stocking...
The strained liquid should be fairly high in alcohol, usually over 12-17% alcohol. Take it, and then distill it to 20-40% alcohol so that you have soju. If you don't distill it, you can drink it as is, or add some sugar to make it less bitter and more palatable. This will be called Takju.
The rice left after straining, you can mix with 1 to 1.5 liters of water, and then strain it again. This will give you a weaker alcoholic beverage, that is really cloudy. This is called makgeoli. You can add sugar to it to make it less bitter tasting, and it has an alcohol percentage around 5-8%.
This is the basic way to make Korean rice wine, and soju is just distilled Korean rice wine. It can be complicated, but fun to make. It is also a very acquired taste. Good luck!"
