Skip to content

EveryDayTM nanoparticles: soju & saké

At Spectradyne, we are always curious about the nanoparticle content of any material! For this reason, we created our “Everyday Nanoparticles” series, so we could share some of the data from objects that piqued our curiosity.

Soju and saké are both liquors made from rice as a base. However, soju is from Korea (sometimes confused with shochu, which is Japanese), and may also contain other starches such as sweet potato. While the main ingredients are similar, the primary difference between soju and saké is how they are made: Soju is distilled, while saké is fermented.

Many will argue over their taste preferences, but we wanted to find out if we can tell the two apart by their nanoparticle content. We purchased three bottles each of popular soju and saké products, and put them to the test with the nCS1. Each sample was diluted to 0.8x stock with PBST (phosphate buffered saline with Tween-20).

aggregation

While measurements were made across an overall range of 60-400 nm for each sample, the differences between soju and saké were only significant in the 150-400 nm size range, where it was found overall that the soju beverages contained more particles than the saké beverages. The plot on the right shows the results in this range graphically and numerically (the “J” samples are saké, and the “K” samples are soju.

We will leave the “taste-testing” to you!

If you have any ideas for other Everyday Nanoparticles you would like us to test, please let us know.

For more information, please send an email to info@spectradynellc.com.