Soy sauces usually contain around 2% alcohol. Alcohol is often a byproduct of fermentation.

Andreas witnessed the end of the world today‭ in my experience and research not all do.

pureferret ‭ Ethanol is a byproduct of the fermentation process that’s used to produce soy sauce. Kikkoman once even marketed their soy sauce with claiming that the 2% ethanol add «a special taste» to it. (Sadly, I am unable to find the source for that at this moment)

But, there’s another way to produce it, by hydrolysis. Ethanol seems not to be any byproduct of this process, however, I am unsure if ethanol is usually added afterwards.

Kikkoman is pretty much the only soy sauce sold in the grocery stores in my country. Only beverages are required to be marked with its alcohol content, so cooking ingredients with even as much as 10% don’t get marked as including alcohol, here. That makes it hard to avoid accidentally buying products containing ethanol, which has made me generally avoid products that could contain it. For instance, various vinegars. From my experience, «Asian» stores (as they’re called around here), are usually not good at filtering by ethanol either. I’ve tried researching online, but there are so many different sources that claim the complete opposite. For instance, it’s a common misconception that products like Kikkoman’s soy sauce is alcohol free, or that it only contains 0.5% alcohol, which then evaporates during cooking. That’s yet another misconception; most of the ethanol does not evaporate.

pureferret ‭ How do you ensure that products are ethanol-free?