Japan’s indie craft cola canned cocktails just might upend the sour/chu-hi world【Taste test】

We crack open the brand-new Iyoshi Sour.

You’ve really got to hand it to Iyoshi Cola. An indie success story in an industry that’s been dominated by gigantic international brands for decades, the Tokyo-based Iyoshi Cola has carved out a niche with its craft beverage-style approach to soft drinks, with founder Takahide Kobayashi applying the same care to his cola that his grandfather did to his herbal remedies.

Iyoshi Cola recently began writing the next chapter of its success story with the launch of Iyoshi Sour. “Sour” here is referring to a class of fizzy cocktails popular in Japan, which are generally a mix of shochu and fruit flavors (sours are also referred to as chu-his). On occasion, though, you can also find cola-based sours, and that’s what Iyoshi Sour is: a canned cocktail with an Iyoshi Cola base.

Iyoshi Sour went on sale on August 27 at Lawson and Natural Lawson convenience stores in Tokyo and Saitama, Kanagawa, Chiba, Tochigi, Gunma, and Ibaraki prefectures. For taste-testing duties, we dispatched our Japanese-language reporter Tasuku Egawa to pick up a can, which he was able to find at his local Lawson in Saitama. Tasuku is a big fan of the regular, non-alcoholic Iyoshi Cola, which he loves for its complex mix of flavors (he also likes Dr. Pepper and root beer, to give you an idea of his baseline tastes), so we figured he was our team member best positioned to evaluate how well it’s made the transition to canned cocktail.

A quick check of the can shows that Iyoshi Sour has an alcohol content of 3.5 percent. This is lower than the 4 to 5 percent typical for mass-market sours, and even farther still from the recently expanding class of high-alcohol sours that are 7, 8, or even 9 percent. However, the expressly stated goal for Iyoshi Sour is to be “something to give you a little happiness in your daily life,” not something to get you drop-dead drunk, so it makes sense they’d go with a milder kick for a more refreshing, relaxing experience.

Taking a look at the ingredient list, there’s a veritable spice bazaar in each can, with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, kola nuts, nutmeg, coriander, and ginseng all part of the recipe, and lemon juice, lime juice, and reishi mushrooms too. Intrigued and eager as Tasuku was to take a sip, though, it wasn’t time to start drinking just yet, because…

…written on the can are instructions to turn it upside down and let it sit that way for 10 seconds before you open it.

We’re guessing this is to mix up all the spices once more so that they’re evenly distributed throughout the can for a consistent flavor between sips.

Once the 10 seconds were up, Tasuku flipped the can right-side-up again and cracked it open. Immediately a tantalizingly complex aroma rose up accompanied by the gentle fizz of the carbonated bubbles popping inside the can. What Tasuku didn’t smell, though, was any of the harsh alcohol olfactory notes that sometimes accompany canned cocktails, especially more cheaply made ones.

Pouring it into a cup, Tasuku could see that Iyoshi Sour is the same bright golden color as Iyoshi Cola.

And now it was time to take a sip, so we’ll turn things over to Tasuku for his impressions.

Usually cola sours have a strong sweetness and sharp alcoholic taste to them that covers up a lot of the cola flavor. In the worst ones, the drink feels sticky and cheap.

But in Iyoshi Sour, the cola flavor is still alive! It might even have a more cohesive cola flavor than the regular Iyoshi Cola. How should I put it… In Iyoshi Cola, there’s a complex mix of spice and herbal flavors. It’s a cola, but so different from other colas that it’s hard to describe. But with the Iyoshi Sour, maybe some of that gets smoothed out by the alcohol, but the alcohol isn’t so strong that it becomes overpowering, so it ends up having a little stronger cola feel. It gives the flavor a really fresh quality, almost like it’s a “freshly-squeezed cola” kind of thing.

Because of the low alcohol content, you don’t have to worry about pacing yourself, and neither the taste nor smell have any harshness. So it’ll probably disappoint people who just want to get hammered, but it’ll also appeal to a wider range of people than all the other heavier cola sours do. But if you slam one or two back, there’s still enough alcohol to get you tipsy pretty quickly, if that’s what you’re after.

Overall, it’s got the potential to be a revolutionary drink in the sour/chu-hi world, one that totally disrupts the existing power balance of the big brands, and I’m honestly amazed at how good it is.

Iyoshi Cola is available in limited quantities, and for a limited time, but if it turns out to be a big seller we might see it expanded to the rest of Japan in the future.

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