[dekobon]

> The finest artisanal Japanese soy sauces are becoming known abroad as shoyu.

Good soy sauce is being called the Japanese word for soy sauce - shoyu (which includes good and bad soy sauce)? If this is true, let's not encourage this language to spread. This is too confusing.

[mikekchar]

There is exactly one way to determine good from bad shoyu - long term natural fermentation. Good shoyu is fermented for at least 1 year. Better shoyu is fermented for 2 years. Top class shoyu is fermented for 3 or more years. It is literally that easy.

This is also shared by miso (although there are styles of miso that have a short fermentation, so it's not universal). The difference between 1 year old miso and 2 year old miso is profound.

Finally, note that high quality shoyu and miso must be fermented for integer values of years because the temperature variations are extremely important to its maturation. I've often wondered if there would be an advantage to controlling this fermentation with temperature control, but it appears not. All of the top quality shoyu and miso that I know about is made in very "rustic" environments.

Anyway, so there is no need to attach strange labelling to these products. Just do exactly the same as the Japanese do - "naturally fermented for x years". If "naturally fermented" is missing, then be suspicious. If it says "fermented for x months" then be suspicious. If it says nothing at all, then be doubly suspicious.

[logfromblammo]

But you're okay with calling it "artisanal"?

I'd much rather have English steal yet another foreign word than to beat a word out of its existing vocabulary into meaningless advertising nulls.

[dekobon]

Well, it is kind of like using the word ketchup to refer to only premium ketchups in some other language. Whenever a person who speaks that language says they enjoy ketchup, you wonder - what are they talking about.

As for artisanal, if there isn't an apprentice program for producing the good, then it probably isn't artisanal. Interestingly, by this definition there are artisanal soy sauces.

[jacobolus]

Funny enough, the word ketchup comes from Southeast Asian/southern Chinese fermented fish sauce. After it became popular among European sailors after 1600, the word was coopted to refer to a wide variety of different sauces, because Europeans didn’t have any idea how to make the original sauce. The modern American ketchup is a descendent of a descendent of a cheap European knockoff of expensive imported Chinese fish sauce. :-)

This lecture is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYwUh1Hdho

[jnordwick]

OMG! He speaks the truth!

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24530/what-is-the...