In the 14th episode of the Japan Distilled podcast, your hosts Christopher Pellegrini and Stephen Lyman take a deep dive into sweet potato shochu. This continues a multi-part series breaking down the various subcategories of honkaku shochu, which are classified by ingredient type in the main fermentation.

In the 13th episode of the Japan Distilled podcast, your hosts Christopher Pellegrini and Stephen Lyman take a deeper dive into barley shochu. This continues a multi-part series breaking down the various subcategories of honkaku shochu, which are classified by ingredient type in the main fermentation.

In the 12th episode of the Japan Distilled podcast, your hosts Christopher Pellegrini and Stephen Lyman take a deeper dive into rice shochu. This begins a multi-part series breaking down the various subcategories of honkaku shochu, which are classified by ingredient type in the main fermentation.

In the 11th episode of the Japan Distilled podcast, your hosts Christopher Pellegrini and Stephen Lyman tackle their most controversial topic yet: shochu vs. soju. One made in Japan (shochu) and one made in Korea (soju). A previous post on kanpai.us ended up garnering the most visits and more comments than usual, many defending soju. Well, we are here to set the record straight.

In this episode we explain the differences between Japanese sake and shochu (and awamori). They are uniquely Japanese due to some key similarities, but their key differences make them very different in how we enjoy them.

In this episode we explain the differences between honkaku, otsurui, korui, konwa, single distilled, multiply distilled, and white liquor categories of shochu in Japan.

In the 8th episode of the Japan Distilled podcast, your hosts Christopher Pellegrini and Stephen Lyman reflect on what defines authentic whisky in Japan and abroad. In this fourth and final part of our series on Japanese whiskies, we ask a few questions that sent us down a rabbit hole of ideas and suggestions that the Japanese whisky industry may never consider, but we enjoyed discussing.

In the 7th episode of the Japan Distilled podcast, your hosts Christopher Pellegrini and Stephen Lyman introduce the newly announced Japanese whisky standards. In this third of a planned four-part series on Japanese whiskies, we dive into the production quality standards, labeling rules, and other arcane parts of the new guidance issued by the Japanese Spirits and Liqueur Makers Association (JSLMA). These voluntary standards go into effect April 1, 2021 and JSLMA members are expected to be fully compliant by March 31, 2024.

NOTE: This episode is being released between 2 regularly scheduled podcast episodes due to the "breaking news" nature of these announcements.

In this episode we explore how Japan's best whiskies rose from obscurity to beat the best Scotch whiskies in the world in their own backyard.

In this first of a 3 part series, we tackle the origins of Japanese whisky from the samurai's first taste to the collapse of the Japanese whisky industry in the wake of the bubble burst.