Amazake substitute

Best substitute

Rice milk plus honey or maple syrup

1 cup rice milk plus 2 tablespoons honey for 1 cup amazake

Best for drinks

Different texture

The fastest option and the best if amazake is being used as a sweet drink base, in a smoothie or as the liquid in a batter. Rice milk gives the same mild, faintly grainy rice character, and the honey supplies the sweetness the koji would have made.

Other amazake substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Brown rice syrup thinned with water
Close match
⅓ cup brown rice syrup plus ⅔ cup water for 1 cup amazake
Brown rice syrup is made by the same basic process, enzymes breaking rice starch into sugar, then concentrated.
What changes
That shared origin means it tastes malty and mildly sweet rather than sharply sugary, which is unusually close to amazake and makes it the best choice wherever amazake is a sweetener.
Best for
glazes, salad dressings, marinades, baking, sweetening sauces
Sweeter and considerably less complex, with none of the fresh, yogurt-adjacent tang. It is also stickier, so a glaze made with it browns faster under a broiler and can catch. Barley malt syrup works the same way but is darker and much more assertively malty.
3Blended cooked rice with water and honey
Different taste
½ cup cooked short-grain rice, 1 cup water and 2 tablespoons honey, blended, for 1 cup amazake
This is the closest you get on texture without any fermenting.
What changes
Blend warm cooked rice with water until it is a smooth loose puree, then sweeten. You end up with the right cloudiness, the right thickness and the right rice flavour.
Best for
drinks served warm, amazake-style desserts, porridge, smoothie bases
It tastes like sweetened rice, which is fair enough, because that is exactly what it is. The missing element is the koji, which is what gives real amazake its faint melon-and-yogurt fragrance. Short-grain or sushi rice blends smoother than long grain. Strain it if you want it silky.
4Plain yogurt or kefir thinned with water and sweetened
Different taste
½ cup yogurt plus ½ cup water plus 2 tablespoons honey for 1 cup amazake
An unexpected but effective choice for smoothies and cold drinks, because it delivers two things the syrup routes cannot: real thickness and the gentle sour edge that stops amazake from tasting flatly sweet.
What changes
Best for
smoothies, cold drinks, chilled desserts, marinades for chicken
Obviously dairy, so it is out for a vegan recipe, and the tang is more lactic and dairy-forward than amazake's softer fermented note. In a smoothie it is arguably better than the original. In a hot drink it can split, so keep it cold or barely warm.
5Shio koji or plain koji rice, sweetened
Taste and texture differ
1 tablespoon shio koji plus 2 tablespoons honey plus ¾ cup water for 1 cup amazake
If your reason for using amazake is the koji character, particularly in a marinade where the enzymes tenderise, then starting from koji itself is the logical move.
What changes
Shio koji brings genuine koji aroma and enzyme activity, and the honey covers the sweetness.
Best for
marinades for fish, chicken and pork, savoury glazes, dressings
Shio koji is salty, which amazake is not, so this only works in savoury applications and will ruin a dessert. It is also thin. If you can find plain dried rice koji, a quarter cup steeped in a cup of warm water for a couple of hours with a spoonful of honey is much closer, and left warm for six hours it simply becomes amazake.
6The honest answer: some recipes are about the amazake
Taste and texture differ
If the recipe is amazake ice cream, amazake pudding or a glass of hot amazake, then amazake's flavour is the dish and there is nothing on a supermarket shelf that tastes like it.
What changes
The least-bad version is the blended cooked rice route with a spoonful of yogurt stirred in for tang.
Best for
deciding to make a different dessert instead
Worth knowing: amazake is genuinely easy to make if you can get dried rice koji, which keeps for months. Warm cooked rice and water with koji held at around 55 to 60 Celsius for six to eight hours in a rice cooker on keep-warm with the lid propped, and you have real amazake. That is often a better answer than a substitute.

What is Amazake?

Amazake is Amazake, sometimes spelled amasake, is a thick, cloudy, naturally sweet Japanese rice drink made by holding koji-inoculated rice warm for several hours so the koji enzymes convert the rice starch into sugar, producing a porridge-like sweetness with no sugar added and, in the koji version, no alcohol.

Cooking tips

There are two different products both called amazake. The common one is made from rice and koji only and contains no alcohol. The other is made from sake kasu, the lees left over from brewing sake, and does contain a small amount of alcohol. If a recipe expects the boozy, yeasty kasu type, a sweetened rice-milk swap will taste noticeably plainer and you want a spoonful of sake or white miso in there instead.
Amazake is often thinned before drinking. If a recipe says one cup of amazake and yours is thick enough to stand a spoon in, it is probably concentrated, so check the label; the drinking-strength stuff is roughly the thickness of a thin milkshake.
In baking, amazake supplies sweetness and liquid at the same time. Whatever you swap in, keep the total liquid the same or the batter goes wrong, which is why the syrup-plus-water and rice-milk-plus-honey ratios above are written to land at the same volume.
Amazake is not as sweet as sugar syrup, so if you are going the honey or maple route, start at two tablespoons per cup and taste rather than assuming more is better. Overshooting is the most common mistake and gives you something cloying that has lost the point of amazake entirely.
Heat kills the koji enzymes, so if you are using a koji-based substitute to tenderise meat, mix it into the marinade cold and give it time in the fridge rather than adding it to something already simmering.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave the amazake out?

Only if something else is carrying the liquid and the sweetness. In a smoothie, yes, leave it out and add a little honey and a splash of any milk. In a batter, a marinade or a glaze it is doing measurable work as both liquid and sweetener, so removing it without replacing the volume will give you a dry batter or a glaze that will not coat. Substitute at equal volume and adjust sweetness to taste.

Is amazake alcoholic?

The koji type, which is the kind most commonly sold and the kind most recipes mean, is made without any brewing step and contains no alcohol. The sake kasu type is made from pressed sake lees and does contain a small amount, typically under one percent. Read the label if that matters to you, and note that some kasu-based amazake is sold simply as amazake without making the distinction obvious.

What can I use instead of amazake as a sugar substitute?

Brown rice syrup is the closest in both origin and flavour, then honey, then maple syrup. All three are sweeter than amazake by volume, so use roughly a third to a half as much syrup as the amazake called for and make up the rest with water. Date syrup also works and is pleasantly caramel-like, though it is much darker and will colour a pale batter.

Does amazake taste like sake?

No. They share an ingredient and a starting process, and the names look related, but sake is brewed and fermented to alcohol while koji amazake is stopped at the sweet stage. Amazake tastes mildly sweet, milky and faintly of melon and yogurt, with none of sake's dryness or alcohol bite. If a recipe wants sake's flavour, use sake or dry sherry, not amazake.

Where do I find amazake, and how long does it keep?

Japanese grocers and larger health food shops carry it, usually chilled in bottles or shelf-stable in cartons, sometimes labelled amasake or koji sweet drink. Once opened it is a live sweet liquid and it will keep fermenting slowly, so use it within about a week in the fridge. It also freezes well, which is useful because bottles are often larger than a single recipe needs.

Related substitutes

More beverages substitutes

Amazake substitute

Other amazake substitutes

2Brown rice syrup thinned with water

3Blended cooked rice with water and honey

4Plain yogurt or kefir thinned with water and sweetened

5Shio koji or plain koji rice, sweetened

6The honest answer: some recipes are about the amazake