What’s “Mirin”? Seasoning? Produced how?

Mirin is a seasoning and alcoholic beverage in Japan, and a core of Washoku, Japanese cuisine.

That production process of Mirin is quite unique as a kind of alcohol drink. It is not used juice, nor water. In a word, steamed mochi rice and rice molded with koji are soaked into alcohol.

Thus, it is never normal wine. It could be classified as “Fortified alcohols”, like sherry wine and port wine. The character is similar because generally they are said sweetly since it is stopped generating alcohol and consuming sweet particles for fermentation. However, it has specific character any other fortified and sweet alcohols don’t have! You perhaps noticed…

THE INGREDIENTS ARE NOT SWEET BEFORE PROCESS!

See? Wine is made of sweeeeeeeet grape juice. Rum is made of sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet sugar cane. On the other hand… mirin is made of rice. Rice… Umm… Is that sweet so much compare with grape juice and sugar canes? No never, if steamed or molded only. But Mirin is so sweet. If you haven’t tasted real mirin, you cannot imagine how they are sweet. A Mirin from Takara-shuzou, one of the biggest manufacturers of mirin, contains 47% of sweet particles without any additive! It is clearly sweeter than wines and rum, also the rice before processed as mirin!