How to Make Somaek: The 3:7 Ratio, Glasses and Table Rules
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A good somaek is pale gold, cold enough to sweat through a paper napkin, and capped with a tight collar of foam that surged up a second after someone smacked a chopstick. It drinks like a crisper, rounder lager with a clean warmth at the back of the throat. Made at the classic 3:7 split with the 15.7% Chamisul Fresh sold since June 2026, it comes out close to 8% ABV. Learning how to make somaek takes about thirty seconds. Making it for a whole table, the way it happens over a grill at a barbecue joint or a company hoesik, takes a little more, and that’s the part most recipes leave out.
Quick answers
- The classic somaek ratio is 3 parts soju to 7 parts beer, which works out to about 7.9% ABV with 2026’s 15.7% Chamisul Fresh and 4.6% Terra.
- Pour the soju into a cold beer glass to just under the one-third mark, top it up with cold lager, then jolt the glass with a chopstick to raise the foam.
- At a Korean table, one person usually mixes a round for everyone, and each glass is passed and received with two hands.
How to Make Somaek: What You Need First
You need a green bottle of soju, a cold Korean lager and a beer glass small enough to finish before it warms up. That’s the whole shopping list, but the choices inside it change the drink more than you’d expect.
The soju. HiteJinro’s Chamisul Fresh is the default pick, and it got softer this year: the company cut it from 16% to 15.7% ABV in a renewal that reached stores from mid-June 2026. Jinro, the bottle with the toad mascot, is listed at the same 15.7% on HiteJinro’s 2026 product page, while Chamisul Original stays at a punchier 20.1% and makes a noticeably hotter mix. Lotte Chilsung makes the rival bottles, Chum Churum and Saero. For the story behind the green bottle itself, see how Chamisul ended up with BTS V as the face of JINRO.
The beer. You want something light and very fizzy, because the bubbles are what carry the soju. HiteJinro’s 2026 product pages list Terra at 4.6% and both Kelly and Hite at 4.5%, and OB’s Cass is the other big name in restaurant fridges. The brewers would love you to pair by company, too: in a 2020 promotion, HiteJinro named Terra plus Chamisul and Terra plus Jinro as the new somaek combinations.
The glasses. A regular soju shot glass and a small beer glass are all it takes. Ratio cups exist too. In 2011, Korea JoongAng Daily covered a ₩3,000 “somaek cup” printed with fill lines from 1:9, labeled gentle and smooth, up to 5:5, labeled blackout, with 3:7 marked as the golden ratio. HiteJinro has sold its own Terra home somaek glasses as well, as part of that same 2020 promotion.
Step 1: Chill Both Bottles and Pick Your Ratio
Get the soju and the beer properly fridge-cold, then decide how strong you want the round before anyone pours. Cold matters more than brand. Warm soju tastes sharp and solvent-like, and warm beer loses its fizz fast, so a lukewarm somaek is all burn and no sparkle.
Then pick the ratio. 3:7 is the split printed as the golden ratio, and it’s where the soju mostly vanishes into the beer’s crispness. Here’s what the common splits come out to, using simple volume math with HiteJinro’s 2026 figures. Treat the decimals as rough, since nobody pours to the milliliter.
| Soju : beer | Chamisul Fresh (15.7%) + Terra (4.6%) | Chamisul Original (20.1%) + Terra (4.6%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1:9 | about 5.7% ABV | about 6.2% ABV |
| 2:8 | about 6.8% ABV | about 7.7% ABV |
| 3:7 | about 7.9% ABV | about 9.3% ABV |
| 5:5 | about 10.2% ABV | about 12.4% ABV |
The arguing is part of the ritual. Whoever mixes is setting everyone’s strength for the round, so 2:8 versus 3:7 is a real negotiation, not trivia. That 2011 JoongAng Daily report already described drinkers lining up glasses and mixing with the focus of a lab scientist.
Scaling up is easy math. One 360 ml bottle of soju at 3:7 needs about 840 ml of beer, which is one 500 ml bottle plus roughly two-thirds of a second. Order two beers for every soju and you’ll come out about right.
Step 2: Pour the Soju to Just Under One-Third
Pour the soju into the empty beer glass first, stopping a little under a third of the way up for a 3:7. Soju goes in first so the beer does the mixing as it lands, and you won’t need a spoon to stir.
Glass shape is where people go wrong. On a straight-sided glass, 30% of the height really is 30% of the volume. If your glass flares out toward the rim, the bottom third of its height holds less than a third of the liquid, so aim a touch above that line. A brewery logo printed on the glass is decoration, not a measuring mark.
The shot-glass method is the other way to keep rounds even: one full soju glass into each beer glass, then beer to the top. Whether that lands on 3:7 depends on how big the beer glass is, which is exactly the problem those lined somaek cups were made for.
Step 3: Top Up with Beer, Then Jolt It
Pour the cold beer straight down the middle until the glass is about nine-tenths full, then give it a sharp jolt to bring up the foam. That jolt is the showy part, and here are two ways to do it.
The chopstick tap. Stand a metal chopstick, or the handle of a spoon, upright in the glass. Hold the glass steady and smack the top end with your palm. The shock runs down through the liquid, and within a second a column of fine foam climbs toward the rim, so leave a little headroom.
The chopstick drop. This is the same trick as poktanju, the “bomb drink.” Fill the beer glass about 70% of the way, lay two chopsticks side by side across the rim, and balance a full soju glass on top of them. Then thump the table so the chopsticks part and the soju glass drops into the beer. You drink it with the little glass still inside, so tip slowly.
Whichever way you go, drink it while the foam still stands. Somaek goes flat quickly, and a flat glass tastes mostly of soju.
Step 4: Hand It Over and Run the Round
Pass each glass with two hands, wait until everyone has one, then raise them together for a “geonbae” (건배, cheers). At a Korean table somaek runs in rounds rather than as personal drinks: one person mixes, lines the glasses up and hands them out, and the next round starts when the glasses are empty.
Rank shapes the details. Pouring your own glass is traditionally frowned upon. You pour and receive with two hands, and juniors turn slightly away from elders when they sip, the same logic behind why Koreans bow to elders. At a hoesik, the after-work team dinner, the person mixing is effectively setting the pace for the whole night, so ask the table what ratio they want before you pour.
Somaek’s natural habitat is a grill table. Its fizz cuts straight through pork fat, which makes it the obvious partner for a sizzling tray of samgyeopsal.
Common Somaek Mistakes to Avoid
The biggest mistake is forgetting how strong it is. A 3:7 glass tastes like beer with an edge, but at about 7.9% it carries roughly 1.7 times the alcohol of the same glass of Terra, and the rounds come fast.
The rest are small and easy to fix:
- Floating soju on top of beer. Pouring it second leaves a hot first sip. Soju first, beer second.
- Overfilling before the tap. A glass poured to the brim foams over the moment you hit the chopstick.
- Drifting toward 5:5. A tapered glass and a generous hand turn a 3:7 into something far stronger without anyone noticing.
- Pouring your own. Fill the glasses around you, and let someone else fill yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is soju and beer called in Korean?
It’s somaek (소맥), a contraction of soju and maekju, the Korean word for beer. The National Institute of Korean Language’s Urimalsaem dictionary defines it as soju and beer mixed at a set ratio, and it’s a cousin of poktanju, which the Standard Korean Language Dictionary describes as a glass of Western liquor dropped into a glass of beer.
Q: How old do you have to be to drink somaek in Korea?
As of 2026, Korea’s Youth Protection Act bans selling alcohol to anyone under 19, but it counts from January 1 of the year you turn 19, so the cutoff is your birth year rather than your birthday. Sellers are required to check age and identity, so carry ID.
Q: Can you make somaek with non-alcoholic beer?
Yes. HiteJinro lists Terra Zero at 0.000% ABV, so a 3:7 mix with Chamisul Fresh lands near 4.7%, roughly the strength of a regular Terra on its own. It’s a handy way to keep up with rounds at about 60% of the alcohol.
Q: Does flavored soju work in somaek?
It works, but it pushes the drink sweet, closer to a fruity shandy than a lager. HiteJinro’s own range includes grapefruit and green-grape soju drinks; mix them a little lighter than 3:7 if you still want to taste the beer.
Get the beer cold, pour the soju to just under a third, give it one confident tap, and pass the first glass with both hands.
Part of Korean Drinking Culture
