This coming Wednesday, July 4th is the United State’s Independence Day. It’s a day of celebration, with great barbecue food and drinks, and watching fireworks. Since I don’t like the taste of beer, I’ve decided to share one of my favorite Japanese alcoholic beverage called chuhai for other non-beer drinkers to celebrate this holiday. I enjoy all kinds of fruity chuhai and this particular chuhai has Japanese citrus fruit yuzu juice in it and it’s very refreshing!
Chuhai (チューハイ, 酎ハイ) is a cocktail containing the Japanese alcohol called shochu (焼酎), soda, and any kind of fruit juice. In the Tokyo area, we sometimes call it Sour (サワー) instead of chuhai. This cocktail is very popular in Japan, commonly served in izakaya-style restaurants and restaurants that cater to Japanese salary workers. Have you tried shochu or chuhai/sour before?
If you are curious about this chuhai recipe or want to know more about this Japanese cocktail, please find my full post about it on Ang Sarap today. You might remember Ang Sarap because the blogger Raymund shared his delicious Kare Kare (the popular Filipino dish) recipe on my blog while I was in Japan last April. He has numerous recipes in various cuisines on his blog and I’m sure you will find some recipes you want to try for this week’s meals! Please click HERE to see the post. I hope you enjoy the drink and Happy July 4th!
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Japanese Yuzu Cocktail (Yuzu Chuhai)
Ingredients
- ½ cup club soda (soda water)
- ¼ cup shochu (any brand or type)
- 1 Tbsp Homemade Simple Syrup (recipe follows)
- 1 tsp yuzu juice (extract)
- ice cubes
- 1–2 tsp Korean citron tea (yuja cha) (optional)
- lime (optional; can use lemon)
For the Simple Syrup
- ¼ cup water
- ½ cup sugar
Instructions
- Gather all the ingredients. Combine ½ cup club soda, ¼ cup shochu, 1 Tbsp Homemade Simple Syrup, and 1 tsp yuzu juice (extract) in a glass and mix well.
- Add ice cubes and 1–2 tsp Korean citron tea (yuja cha) (optional) and mix well.
- Garnish with a slice of lime, and serve immediately.
To Make the Simple Syrup
- Bring ¼ cup water to a boil in a small saucepan. Dissolve ½ cup sugar into the boiling water, stirring constantly. Once the sugar is dissolved completely, remove it from heat and let cool completely and thicken.
I never knew that 酎ハイ and サワー were one and the same! This is a game changer, thank you so much for the information. I am definitely going to try this recipe and some of my own variations! 乾杯!
Hello, Rosie! We’re happy to hear you learned something new from Nami’s post!
We hope you have fun creating different kinds of Chuhai! Enjoy!
I will be making this recipe for my gourmet cooking club in a couple weeks and have a question about the Korean Citron Tea. 1-2 tablespoons seems like a lot per cocktail. I’m assuming that you dilute it first, but can you tell me how much water you would use to dilute the tea before adding it to the recipe? Thank you in advance!
Could I use sake instead of shochu for this recipe? Have sake I’m trying to use up. Thanks!
Hi Ally,
We normally make this kind of cocktail with Shochu and unsure what type of Sake you have.
You may want to make a small amount first and sample the taste to see if you like the mix or not.😉
Thank you for this yuzu cocktail recipe. I needed to use up some leftover shochu after making Umeshu and this was perfect! Very delicious cocktail! I am not sure if I had the correct product for the yuja cha tea optional ingredient but it tastes so good I don’t really care!
Hi Jeanine! I’m so glad you enjoyed this recipe! Thank you! I added this recipe to my Umeshu recipe so others can enjoy it as well (I forgot about this recipe!). Thank you for trying it and for your kind feedback. xo
[…] drink: Yuzu Chuhai (the internet tells me it’s popular in […]
[…] If you can’t find it stateside, pick up a weak vodka—shochu is normally around 25 percent ABV. Yuzu juice is lemon juice, the kind of 100 percent juice that you use for cooking, not for sipping. Here’s a recipe from Just One Cookbook: […]
[…] If you can’t find it stateside, pick up a weak vodka—shochu is normally around 25 percent ABV. Yuzu juice is lemon juice, the kind of 100 percent juice that you use for cooking, not for sipping. Here’s a recipe from Just One Cookbook: […]
[…] If you can’t find it stateside, pick up a weak vodka—shochu is normally around 25 percent ABV. Yuzu juice is lemon juice, the kind of 100 percent juice that you use for cooking, not for sipping. Here’s a recipe from Just One Cookbook: […]
[…] If you can’t find it stateside, pick up a weak vodka—shochu is normally around 25 percent ABV. Yuzu juice is lemon juice, the kind of 100 percent juice that you use for cooking, not for sipping. Here’s a recipe from Just One Cookbook: […]