Soju is a traditional Korean distilled spirit, and there are a variety of brands out there. There’s a common stereotype in Korea that soju is bad for you (especially the cheapest brands), but the truth is that soju contains much less alcohol than you might think. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there are fewer calories in soju than you might have thought as well.
As you may know, there are four main things that affect the calories in any type of alcohol:
- Alcohol content: As a general rule, the higher the alcohol content, the higher the calorie count. The standard unit for measuring alcohol content is ‘alcohol by volume’, often abbreviated to abv. To calculate this, we measure the number of milileters (ml) of pure ethanol in 100 ml of water.
Many of the most popular soju brands contain not more than 24 percent alcohol. When it comes to flavored soju, the alcohol content tends to come in even lower at between 12 percent and 16 percent.
- Brewing method: As soju is a distilled spirit, this means it comes in at the lower end of the calorie spectrum when it comes to alcoholic drinks. For example, it’s lower than beer, which is fermented, helping to increase the calorie count.
- Ingredients: Again, using our beer example, that’s brewed using sugars, yeast and starch, which makes it carb-heavy. As soju is typically made with rice, this means this is also carbohydrate based, though the water content serves to reduce this.
- Flavorings: Because flavored soju tends to have fruit flavorings, this increases the sugar content; and in short, more sugar = more calories.
But let’s cut to the chase. How many calories are there in a bottle of soju?
How many calories are in a bottle of soju?
A bottle of fruit flavored soju contains around 400 calories. With the average bottle size being 350 ml, that means that each standard sized 50 ml shot of fruit flavored soju from your favorite soju-jan contains just under 60 calories.
By contrast, a bottle of Original soju, which has an abv of just over 20 percent, is reported to have a calorie count of 540 per bottle. Assuming a standard serving size of 50 ml again, that’s about 77 calories per shot.
How have you worked out the number of calories?
The higher calorific content of Original soju is because of the higher alcohol content. Every gram of ethanol alcohol included in the soju adds seven calories. A 350 ml bottle of soju with an abv of 20 percent has an ethanol content of around 55 grams.
So multiplying 55 by 7 gives us just under 390 calories from the alcohol alone. But where do the rest of the calories come from?
We need to not forget to add the carbohydrates from the rice or other grains used to distil the soju. Each bottle of soju contains around twenty grams of carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates have a lower calorific density, with four calories per gram of carbs. Again, a bit of simple multiplication tells us that we can add 80 calories to the count for these carbohydrates.
What about other soju drinks?
Though there are quite a lot of calories in soju, we’ve only considered drinking it neat. But if you add other contents to your drink, like if you’re drinking it with a mixer or in a cocktail, this will only increase the calorie count.
Here’s the calorie count in some other popular soju-based drinks:
Somaek: On top of the shot of soju (39 calories if you use a 25 ml shot glass, or 77 calories if you use a standard size 50 ml Korean bar shot glass), add between 130 – 150 calories for a 330 ml bottle of beer to make this popular drink.
Cojinganmek (soju, Coke and beer): As well as the above, and assuming we’re using a standard soju-jan 50 ml shot glass, you can add a further 21 calories per drink based on Coca-Cola’s own nutritional information.
Soju and Yakult: For our favorite recipe, you’ll need a measure of soju (77 calories), a standard bottle of Yakult (50 calories), and a dash of Sprite to your own personal taste (say, 10 calories, but this will vary depending on whether you want more or less). Total: 137 calories per drink.
In summary – calories in soju
We’ve established that a bottle of soju has between 400 and 540 calories. If you make soju cocktails, like somaek, soju and Yakult, or a soju bomb, the calories in your drink can increase even further.
Given it would be easy to consume an entire bottle in one session – a bottle is only seven servings in a standard sized soju glass – it would be quite easy to add a lot of calories to your diet just through drinking alcohol alone.
The average woman is recommended to consume 2000 calories a day, and the average man 2500 calories per day, as per UK National Health Service guidelines.
So as you can see, it’s very easy to put on weight, or not lose it as you’re expecting, through not tracking your calorie intake from drinking. Calorific intake through liquid can quickly add empty calories that don’t fuel your body, or stop you being hungry.
So while we love soju here at DrinkPirate.com, please do drink in moderation!