A good friend of mine is in Laos for the next couple of weeks, and I wanted to ask the assembled liquor experts here if there is anything he should bring back for me. All he has seen so far are 'many different sizes and shapes of bottles of lao kao rice whiskey with scorpions and or cobras pickled inside. Many have a cobra chewing on the scorpion or some other small snake.' I think I'd prefer a bottle without any bugs or snakes in it.

Has anybody had Lao-lao, a rice whisky brewed in Laos? Is it any good? Or does anyone know of a spirit worth bringing back from Laos or Thailand? I s'pose there always the duty-free store.

Aside from some of the nicer examples of Shochu, Soju, and Awamori most Asian liquor is, uh, an acquired taste.

It is almost always fermented with something like the Koji mold used to ferment sake, instead of the yeast used in Western traditions.

In my Chinese Civilization class, and I apologize if I offend anyone, my professor explained the dilemma of drinking liquor in China thus, "Thousands of flavors of tea and one flavor of liquor:  Old Gym Socks."

If you have an Asian grocery in town, they should have some examples of Chinese spirits.  They're usually not that expensive.  Give them a try and see what you think.

Most likely they will be much nicer than the Laotian rice spirit you're looking at...

Oh right.

Oops!  Sorry about that.  Forgot grocery stores can't carry liquor in Oregon.

So, instead, make TraderTiki tote them back to Oregon the next time he travels to California!

fermented with something like the Koji mold used to ferment sake, instead of the yeast

Koji is used to saccharify the starches in the rice grain prior to fermentation, which is done with a yeast.

When making alcohol from barley, one uses malted grain (the near-sprouting of the grain causes enzymes to be produced that would saccharify the starches in the grain) and mashing (to put those enzymes to work).

Rice isn't malted because it lacks the necessary enzymes. Barley is unique, really, as the only grain that can be malted and then mashed without any other grain or enzyme added; it's as if Nature designed it specifically for fermentation. Beer and whiskey can be made mostly with corn or rye, but barley malt is always included.

The rice isn't really rotted, it's just that critical enzymes are needed to break the starches down to sugar and those enzymes are provided by aspergillus. The culture includes yeast, which ferments the sugars once they've been created.

A couple of possibilities in regard to chicha crop up. The chewing obviously adds enzymes but it looks like these merely "speed up" the process. The other methods appear to break the starches down with a very slow heating process. I clearly generalized too much about barley; comes from being steeped in beer culture.

they rot it with a mold?

Koji is filamentous, it grows on the rice (polished to remove the husk, steamed to introduce water and heat) like a mushroom. The process (and mold) is similar to that of tempeh.

Specifically, I'm looking for soju.

Thanks for the recommendation.

I frequent a very large Japanese (actually Hawaiian-Japanese) supermarket in Los Angeles that has a very large shochu collection. Basically they carry sake, shochu, Japanese beer and a few bottles of Zen green tea liqueur. Here's a pic I took of the sake section on my phone:

The shochu section is just about as large. Also, a lot of the smaller Korean markets around me carry a wide variety of sojus. I've got a couple of bottles at home that my buddy Sang gave me. Most of the Korean places I've been to do not serve them with juice, but there is a restaurant nearby, with a great happy hour, that serves soju with a variety of juices (including "yogurt," which is really quite good).

My failing is that I really have no idea what's good and what's slop in this arena. Besides price.

In any case, Lance, if you can't find anything - I could ship you up something.

Speaking of the Prince, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DtF1ZAkpDQ

I almost wanted to mention that I have a couple of bottles of Bek Se Ju (" ‘Ju’ means wine, and ‘Bek Se’ simply means 100years old."), basically a ginseng flavored rice wine, that you might find interesting - the website claims it contains "12 Oriental Herbs".

Here's the herb list:

Licorice(Glycyrrhizal); Ginseng(Ginseng Radix Palva); Schizandra Fructus; Lycii Fructus(Lycium Fruit); Hoelen; Astragalus root(Astragali Radix);Lycii folium; Polygoni Miliflori Radix; Cinnamon(Cinnamomi Cortex Spissus); Ginger(Zingiberis Rhizomal); CORNUS FRUIT; CURCURNA ROOT

I suppose technically one would refer to Bek Se Ju as an herbal-infused sake.  But really the rice provides alcohol content (a whopping 14%) - most of the rice-imparted subtleties of a good sake (or what the Koreans would call cheong-ju) are overpowered by the herbal ingredients.  There's a touch of sweetness, and a lot of earthiness and spicy zing. I really noticed the ginger and the ginseng.  The closest thing I think I can even compare it to in the Western repertoire, and this really doesn't do it justice, would be some sort of cinnamon liqueur, but much, much lighter, airy and delicate, and with about 1000 times less sugary candy qualities. For some, truly an acquired taste - but I like it.  But you really should try it out, especially to compare to the bitters.  The only thing really missing is that meaty dried seahorse goodness.

Here's how their website suggests serving it:

The miracle of 8?C A good temperature is a prerequisite to fine taste of BEK SE JU.
The most highly recommended temperature is below 8?C or
45?F. While drinking, you can put the bottle into an ice bucket to preserve its low temperature.

A couple of other interesting things of note, from the Wikipedia soju article:

For younger Koreans (especially women) who consider regular soju too strong, there is "cocktail soju", which is diluted with fruit juice or soft drinks (usually Sprite), sometimes additionally flavored with drink-mix powder or bingsu syrup. The most popular version, "lemon soju", tastes like lemonade and is made by mixing one part soju with two parts Sprite and adding lemonade powder; other variations include apple soju, melon soju, yogurt soju, mango soju, and grape soju.

And

The liquor licensing laws in the states of California and New York classify soju in the same category as beer and wine, allowing businesses with a beer/wine license to sell it without requiring the more expensive license required for other distilled spirits. The only codicil is that the soju must be clearly labelled as such and contain less than 25% alcohol.

This has led to the appearance in the United States of many soju-based equivalents of traditional Western mixed drinks normally based on vodka or similar spirits, such as the soju martini and the soju cosmopolitan. Another consequence is that the manufacturers of similar distilled spirits from other parts of Asia, such as Japanese shochu, have begun to relabel their products as soju for sale in those regions.

Many of the sojus/shochus I have tried were reminiscent of mediocre vodkas.  But some are better than others. I remember the first time I tried a barley shochu.  I was at a sushi restaurant in Torrance, and this old guy who was in town on business with Toyota, sitting next to me, offered me a glass from his bottle.  It was pretty decent - a lot more like a whiskey - and I'm guessing rather pricey.

BTW, you can find Lance's blog post here.

I'll go see if I can scrounge any decent soju on SE 82nd in a couple of weeks (we've got the event tomorrow and I'm going to the Grand Marnier thing the week after). If I can't find anything, I'll let you know.

Interestingly enough there are quite a few very good Asian wines. The problem which generally occurs is that people assume the stuff you can buy in supermarkets in the states, and generally even in normal supermarkets within China (where I'm currently living) is par for the course. Thats a bit far from truth. The high class stuff is pretty darn good, unfortunately it also costs a bundle. Your looking at around 150 USD to just get into the good stuff. I've tried a few of the drinks however I don't speak much Chinese and there likely isn't a good western translation.

The cheap stuff though tastes and smells similar to diesel fuel..

I've got a request in for some Thai Whiskey. I should have it in the next month or so.