Sikhye

Sikhye is a traditional Korean sweet rice punch, a clear pale-amber drink made by saccharifying cooked rice with barley malt and serving it ice-cold with a few grains of soft rice and pine nuts floating on top. It is non-alcoholic — the malt's enzymes convert the rice starch to sugar without any spirit or fermentation to alcohol — and tastes gently sweet and lightly malty, faintly like a thin liquid version of the rice itself. Long served to royalty and at family feasts as a dessert and digestive, it is a fixture of the holidays Chuseok and Seollal and is now sold canned in convenience stores across South Korea.