The Definitive Ranking of Soy Milk Flavors

I’ve enjoyed soy milk ever since I was a child. Part of the reason is that whenever I was in Taiwan, regular milk disagreed with my insides so I just got used to drinking soy milk instead. The milk in Japan is similar, so I’ve just continued drinking soy milk. What I discovered early on one day at the supermarket was that here, Kikkoman sells little juice-box-sized soy milks in various flavors. Of course I decided to make a point to try and rank them all.

When I try a flavor, I give it a score of some number between 1 and 10 inclusive (so like [1, 10]). The ranking system is somewhat arbitrary, and somewhat relative to other flavors. In general, 3-5 means I wouldn’t choose to drink them again save for life-threatening circumstances while 6 and above means yeah I’d buy it again. The 9’s contain some of my favorite flavors while a 1 or 2 means I hope to God I’ll never have to drink this again. I saved the elusive 10 for flavor(s) that really just took the cake and went above and beyond anything I could ever hope for.

Additionally, flavors are also ranked a bit by how they varied from my expectations. Things around 3-5 tend to be flavors I thought would be good but ended up tasting kind of bad, things around 6-7 contain flavors I thought would be bad but were ok, and things around 8-10 are flavors that were better or just as good as I expected. But again, this is super arbitrary and not necessarily a set rule.

Here’s what I have so far. I’ll keep updating this as I find more flavors to try.

普通 (Plain)
- Score: 9 - A solid choice all around. It’s not as sweet as American soy milk and not as tofu-y as Chinese soy milk.

バナナ (Banana)
- Score: 7 - It was good, but if I thought too hard it started to taste like melon, which is a terrible thing.

ごまはち (Sesame)
- Score: 4 - I thought this was going to be good, but then it wasn’t, which surprised me since black sesame usually tastes pretty good. However, I did drink it at lunch when it had warmed up after being in my backpack for 3 hours, so I’m debating giving it another shot.

あづき (Red Bean)
- Score: 6 - Red bean has always been sorta hit or miss for me. It was kind of a miss this time, but wasn’t terrible.

チーズケーキ (Cheesecake)
- Score: 2 - I knew this was going to be a weird flavor going in. It had a lot of potential since they could make it creamy and whatnot, but it just ended up being super sour. I drank a few sips then dumped the rest.

アボカド (Avocado)
- Score: 9 - Now this flavor was quite the dark horse. I thought it would be awful going in, but it’s surprisingly delicious. The avocado flavor is very light and the drink is just sweet and creamy. I buy this pretty much every time I see it at the store.

ココア (Cocoa)
- Score: 8 - Pretty similar to chocolate soy milk in the states.

麦芽 (Malt)
- Score: 8 - Kinda coffee-ish.

抹茶 (Matcha)
- Score: 9 - Delicious as expected.

紅茶 (Koucha)
- Score: 9 - Basically tastes like milk tea.

焼き芋 (Sweet Potato)
- Score: 7 - Wasn’t sure how this was going to go, but Japan has a lot of sweet potato sweets (unlike America) which I like, and it was good.

無調整 (Sugar Free)
- Score: 1 - Yeah I thought you couldn’t really go wrong with plain, but this was God awful. Even worse than cheesecake, which is hard to believe. This doesn’t even taste like tofu, I really have no idea how I got through the big carton of this.

マロン (Chestnut)
- Score: 9 - There’s also a bunch of chestnut flavored stuff here including mont blanc desserts. When I was younger I didn’t really care for chestnut, but lately I’ve grown quite fond of it.

フルーツミックス (Fruits Mix)
- Score: 4 - I thought this was going to be sweet and fruity, but it was mostly just sour. Would not recommend.

梅 (Plum)
- Score: 6 - On the other hand, I thought this was going to be sour and gross but it was actually decent.

いちご (Strawberry)
- Score: 5 - I figured you coudln’t go wrong with strawberry but nope. This wasn’t your generic strawberry milk flavor, but rather that plus a bunch of sourness.

ジンジャーエール (Ginger Ale)
- Score: 6 - Thought it was going to be terrible, but it wasn’t. It was more sour than I’d prefer, but not so much that I regretted everything upon consumption.

麦芽コーヒー (Malt + Coffee)
- Score: 9 - I didn’t realize there was a difference between this and malt at first, and I still think they’re quite similar.

白桃 (Peach)
- Score: 10 - Peach. I finally found a 10. I wouldn’t say peach is my favorite flavor, but it really was amazing. It had the perfect balance of fruitiness, creaminess, and tartness. When I took a sip, it seemed like it should’ve been sour, but right before it reached that point it wasn’t. It doesn’t even make sense to explain, but that’s probably part of the mystery that made it a 10.