Introduction
Of Me
I spent the summer of 2018 crisscrossing the country in my (somewhat) dependable 2006 Subaru Impreza. After a decade of writing about food and drinks in New York City and two years doing the same in Atlanta, I got a book deal—for this very book!—and I decided that the best way to do research was to put my foot on the gas and go.
I was in search of alcohol-free mixed drinks at a time when, serendipitously, they were starting to be taken more seriously. Bartenders were (and still are) pushing against the boundaries that had previously limited “mocktails” to syrup-laden juices or glorified Shirley Temples, and consumers—sober or not—were getting curious. I knew I wouldn’t be writing the first book on nonalcoholic drinks, but I also knew that my work could capitalize on this newfound acceptance and energy. And because I was finding the things I really wanted to drink in bars, restaurants, and cafés as opposed to in other books, I could tap the people whose job it is to make good, balanced beverages—no matter the alcohol content.
You could say I did a lot of drinking and driving that summer.
In between interviews and states, my car’s (painfully outdated) sound system stayed silent as I mulled over pieces of this book. How odd, my friend Tunde commented, that I could drive for hours with no music. But I needed the quiet to think, as I moved along: “Which of these beverages are still on my mind days after tasting them? Which recipes feel fresh? Which drinks warrant the effort they take to make? How much of this book is about the drinks and how much of it is about me?”
Somewhere in New Mexico, I decided that all you really need to know about my relationship to alcohol is that I’m trying not to drink it—at least not for a good while. More important: I like to eat delicious things, I like to drink delicious things, and I like to do both with the people I love. There are many others like me, and the reasons they don’t drink booze vary: religion, health issues, substance use disorders, pregnancy, mindful living. Maybe alcohol simply doesn’t fit into their lives anymore. Maybe they’re just not drinking this week. Or this night. Or this hour. (I know plenty of people who switch back and forth between alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks throughout the course of a Saturday night out.) Some statistics show that Americans are consuming less alcohol than they used to, and I hope that what I discovered on the road will get them into the kitchen. (Because it’s not about the bar; at home, good nonalcoholic drinks are made in the kitchen. More on that later.)
In Denver, Death & Co’s bartenders showed me how kefir whey gives body to nonalcoholic drinks (see this page), which can be lacking in that area. Jermaine Whitehead handed me his recipe for the Rockefeller (this page) from across the bar at Deep Dive in Seattle, and upon reading it, I realized I was going to have to dig through my spice cabinet, break out my 4-quart saucepan, and turn on the stove. (It ended up being worth it.) I sat in Gabriella Mlynarczyk’s living room in Los Angeles while she pressed watermelon juice with mint, rose water, and pickled plum vinegar. (Find a similar recipe of Gaby’s on this page.) The next day, I drove back east thinking about that sweet, tart, saline drink, my tongue watering. And yes, that trip was quiet, too.
“I think I understand the driving-in-silence thing,” Tunde told me, once the trip was over. “Been walking in silence recently. It’s amazing.”
Now, though, it’s time to make noise. These drinks deserve a party.
Of the Drinks
I saw all kinds of terms applied to this category of drinks on my trip across America: Alcohol-Free Cocktails, Virgin Cocktails (ick), Teetotalers, Soft Drinks (don’t hate it), Temperance Drinks (pretentious!), Zero-Proof Cocktails, Neutral Cocktails (hmm?), 0% ABV Drinks, the list goes on. The good thing is, people are trying to come up with something to replace Mocktail, which, while effective in its simplicity and ubiquity, feels juvenile to me. And as Chicago bar owner Julia Momose wrote in her manifesto against the word, there’s an air of disappointment to it. Mocktail implies that the drink is a lesser version of the “real” thing: a cocktail with alcohol in it.
Julia, whose recipe you can find on this page, proposes the term Spiritfree. “There’s something lighthearted and intentional about the name Spiritfree,” she wrote. “It’s not holding back, nor is it being held back.” My approach is to sidestep the debate and perhaps defiantly call them Drinks. Good Drinks. That wouldn’t be fair in a bar, of course, because patrons deserve clarity; but this is a book and its subject is unambiguous.
So! Let’s have a drink—a good one.
How This Book Is Structured
Could the recipes in this book have been organized by drink style: sour, fizz, highball, cobbler, and so on? Sort of. Those labels pertain to cocktails, and these drinks don’t fit squarely into the same families. What about a looser style categorization: long drinks, short drinks, et cetera? Maybe. Or grouped by base ingredient: tea, coffee, milk, juice? That wouldn’t be the sexiest approach, in my opinion, but one could take it.
Letting the drink itself drive structure isn’t a bad idea, but I’m more inspired by occasion. My cravings usually start with a situation, a mood, a vibe, an atmosphere. So, my goal is to give you ideas for what to drink during your leisure time: over brunch, on lazy weekend afternoons, at happy hour, with leisurely dinners, and after dinner, when you’re capping the night with friends or reflecting on the day in solitude. As a bonne vivante who wants to be vivante without alcohol, this is the most useful organizing principle to me, and I hope it works for you, too.
Often these occasions are social gatherings, so, when possible, I’ve included instructions for how to batch the drinks in order to serve a group. And because I want to give you both easy-to-execute ideas as well as more involved ones, the recipes range in terms of difficulty, which I’ve indicated with a Commitment Level rating. (More on that on this page.) Peppered throughout the book are long quotes from food and drinks writers, bartenders, and restaurateurs who frankly couldn’t shut up (!) about their favorite drinks. I decided to get them on the record, to capture their excitement and give you another handful of ideas.
Something else I’ll note here because I can’t figure out where else to slot it: For those of you who might be cutting back on alcohol for fitness reasons, know that some of these recipes happen to be low on sugar and calories, but many are not. These drinks aren’t for cleansing, they’re for pleasure—which comes, in this case, not from an altered state of mind, but from flavor (and perhaps the charm of holding an elegant glass). Many of those flavors are mature; others would feel at home at an old-fashioned soda fountain. I like it all.
Finally, as much as I’ve endeavored to give you variety here, this book is not exhaustive. These fifty-some recipes don’t reflect each and every corner of today’s alcohol-free beverage landscape, but they are the best drinks I tasted during my research. In other words, there’s a lot more drinking to be done! So please use the following pages not only as a guide for what to drink, but also as a literal guidebook: Visit these bars and restaurants during your travels and see what they’re offering. Then ask their bartenders who else in town makes great nonalcoholic drinks, because I’m sure that since this book went to print, many places either have opened or have decided to dedicate more of their beverage menu real estate to serving you. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll taste something completely new. You just have to promise to tell me about it. (I’m @juliabainbridge on Twitter and Instagram.)
On Making Good Drinks
It can be difficult to snap a backbone onto a mixed drink without wine or spirits. Alcohol provides structure and complexity, and it’s often pleasantly bitter and bracing. Remove it from a cocktail, and you’re left with sugar, acid, and some cold water.
I found different approaches to building nonalcoholic drinks when I was on the road. Some bartenders make alcohol-free versions of classic cocktails. At first I bristled at this: “Why do we have to call it a NOgroni? Why can’t it be a fully formed drink of its own?” I came around, in some cases. It makes sense to step back from a Negroni and, instead of trying to re-create it exactly (a recipe for failure), consider the Negroni experience. It’s sweet up front, then bitter and dry at the back. It tastes of stewed plums and rhubarb and vanilla and bitter orange. That can be delivered without alcohol. Plus, classic cocktail making is mainly about balancing flavors. The tension between sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami is what the palate wants in a drink, whether it contains alcohol or not.
Then there are those for whom classic drink templates do not apply. For them, alcohol isn’t the crux of the drink, squash is. Or jasmine tea is. Or rosemary is. “It’s not about making a drink minus booze,” says Ryan Chetiyawardana, who owns restaurants in London, Amsterdam, and Washington, D.C., and is one of the world’s most influential bartenders. “It’s about taking the care to make a balanced drink, and it happens not to have booze.”
Both schools of thought are reflected here, and while some recipes are easily accessible, for others, you’re going to have to order gentian root and raspberry vinegar. Then, you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and hone your chef’s knife. Hopefully, as more sophisticated products come onto the market, you’ll be able to do more opening and pouring and less sourcing, slicing, steeping, and juicing; but I, for one, like the tinkering. Until recently, nonalcoholic mixed drinks have been treated as afterthoughts. A higher level of effort and care anoints them as proper drinks. Good Drinks.
And, hey: If you put in the work, you might even enjoy your drink more. “The IKEA Effect,” a 2011 study published by researchers from Harvard Business School, Tulane University, and Duke University showed that when participants in the study assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami, or built sets of Legos themselves, they valued the end product more highly than when others did the work for them. What’s more, the study shows that effort without completion does not increase valuation. So stick with it!
All of that said, if you don’t want to remove the zest from eight oranges, eight lemons, and four grapefruits and steep them in water with nutmeg and cloves for forty-five minutes, I understand. I love seltzer water with a dash of bitters, too. But I’m guessing that if you picked up this book, you’re game to play around in the kitchen if it means ultimately enjoying a balanced beverage—and, in some cases, a real culinary experience.
It’s fun. Remember that? That’s what I’m after.
“Alcohol-Free,” Explained
Very few of us consume zero alcohol. One 1990 USDA study tested a variety of orange juices and found them to contain anywhere between 0.008% and 0.09% alcohol by volume (ABV). “Nonalcoholic is a little bit of an abstract concept,” says Sandor Katz, author of The Art of Fermentation. “In the world of carbohydrates, it barely exists.”
That said, the U.S. Congress considers beverages that measure 0.5% ABV and above to be alcoholic. Beer and wine labeled nonalcoholic, as well as kombucha available for purchase by minors at grocery stores, must all come in at below 0.5% ABV—so this is the number many nondrinkers use as their cutoff, too.
The funny thing is, that number has nothing to do with how alcohol affects the human body or mind, and everything to do with federal revenue. With the help of Jarrett Dieterle and Kevin Kosar at the public policy research organization R Street Institute in Washington, D.C. (hi, guys!), I dug around in the legislative history. We read the Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act (1988), which led us to the Volstead Act (1919), which implemented Prohibition, sure that we would find a satisfactory explanation of the number. Most everywhere, the figure “one-half of one per cent” appears next to a discussion of taxation, without any real reasoning.
Eventually, we found an article published in the Harvard Crimson in May 1920. Titled “Why 1-2 of One Percent,” it was written by William E. Johnson, one of the foremost advocates of Prohibition. Johnson was supposedly the one who came up with the 0.5% ABV level, and though clearly biased, even he admits toward the end of the paper: “It is not a question as to whether one-half of one per cent is intoxicating or whether even two per cent is intoxicating, it is only a question of the adequate enforcement of any law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors.” He claimed that the threshold had previously been set at 2% ABV, but that “defiant brewers” marketed their products as below 2% ABV when they were, in fact, much higher. Former New Jersey governor Walter E. Edge thought that 3% ABV would have been a more reasonable number. (He wrote about that as well as the failure of the Volstead Act in a 1923 article called “The Non-Effectiveness of the Volstead Act.” I appreciate a straightforward title!)
There’s no clear scientific basis for 0.5% ABV to be the line of demarcation, as far as I can tell.
Hannah Crum, president and cofounder of Kombucha Brewers International (KBI), thinks it’s painfully outdated, anyway. According to her, the alcohol present in raw kombucha is not only a preservative but also helps deliver a matrix of vital nutrients to its consumer. “But, being a country of extremes, we’ve never really landed anywhere in the middle,” she says. Crum and other KBI members have initiated the Keeping Our Manufacturers from Being Unfairly Taxed While Championing Health Act (KOMBUCHA), a bill that would raise the taxation point for kombucha from 0.5% to 1.25% ABV. “Since compliance is the name of the game, we’ve gone straight to the Internal Revenue Code to make a commonsense update. We believe the law never intended to tax traditionally fermented, low-alcohol beverages like they do beer.” As of this book’s printing, KOMBUCHA is sitting with Congress.
If it were possible to settle on a “nonintoxicating” demarcation, that would, in my opinion, make a lot more sense than “nonalcoholic.” But as long as 0.5% ABV is the law, that’s what will govern this book.
Fermented Drinks
Fermentation, an ancient form of food alchemy that bestowed wine on the world, has become trendy today. More and more people are getting turned on to the pungent aromas and tangy flavors that microorganisms, when left to do their things, pull out of carbohydrates, and recipes for kimchi, kefir, miso, and sauerkraut can all be found on the pages of in-vogue culinary magazines.
The most popular of the more lightly fermented beverages is kombucha, which is made with tea, sugar, a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), and a little bit of time. You’ll notice, though, that there are no recipes for kombucha in this book. I love the funk that fermentation brings, but you know what else comes along with the process? Alcohol. And while the alcohol in kombucha is generally self-limiting—the yeast feeds on sugar and produces ethanol, while bacteria simultaneously consume that ethanol and convert it to organic acids—it does have the potential to get above 1% ABV in a home environment. (Remember, I’m going with the 0.5% ABV rule.)
I tested some simpler yeast fermentations such as tepache, a pineapple drink from Mexico, and I considered running those recipes with a disclaimer to consume on the shorter end of the fermentation process, before the drinks reached above 0.5% ABV. But, again, conditions are hard to control outside of a laboratory-like production facility. The sugar content of the fruit and the temperature of your home, among other factors, affect the rate of fermentation and, thus, the production of alcohol. In other words, I can’t guarantee that what happened in my kitchen would happen in yours. It likely wouldn’t.
Harold McGee, one of our country’s top food science writers, ultimately put it to me this way: “The transformations that make these drinks what they are, are predicated on alcohol being produced. I would rule them out, just on that very basic ground.” And so I did.
Bitters
Bitters are an aromatic and, yes, often bitter liquid seasoning. Historically, this infusion of roots, barks, spices, herbs, and other botanicals was consumed for its medicinal properties; then sometime in the eighteenth century, Americans took to mixing it into cocktails. Brad Thomas Parsons’s comprehensive Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All gets into the details, but for our purposes, all you need to know is that the United States had a bitters boom in the early aughts and now there are a zillion flavors and brands from which to choose.
Most of them are made with alcohol, since it’s such an effective extractor of flavor, but because the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) considers bitters to be a food item, they’re not subject to the labeling requirements that TTB enforces. (It’s a different story for potable bitters such as Campari and Aperol, which are regulated as distilled spirits products.) In other words, makers aren’t required to disclose the ABV of their bitters on the bottle. Some do, though, in the name of transparency.
Even Fee Brothers bitters, which many believe are alcohol-free because their base is glycerin, not high-proof vodka or some other neutral grain spirit, actually do contain alcohol. This is because, instead of working with raw ingredients, the company purchases extracts from four flavor houses, and those extracts are made with alcohol. Joe Fee, who along with his sister Ellen was a fourth-generation operator of the family business, told me that their bitters can contain anywhere from around 2% to 36% ABV, depending on the recipe.
Here’s why I bring all of this up: Some recipes in this book call for bitters. Ultimately, because you’re using only a couple dashes in a drink, the amount of alcohol you’re ingesting is statistically insignificant.
Let’s use Angostura bitters as an example: The bottle I’m looking at right now measures 44.7% ABV. If one standard dash equals ⅛ teaspoon, and 1 ounce equals 6 teaspoons, then a 5-ounce glass of, say, iced tea topped with three dashes of Angostura bitters is about 0.56% alcohol. Yes, that is technically what the law considers to be alcoholic, but (1) only by a hair and (2) as we discussed earlier, this number has little if nothing to do with intoxication. To put this into perspective, the National Institutes of Health considers a standard glass of wine to be 12% alcohol. It’s also worth knowing that most alcohol-based bitters ring in at somewhere between 35% and 45% ABV, so Angostura is on the high end.
Having said all of this, I know some nondrinkers for whom this is a problem. If you’re in their camp, please either choose a bitter labeled with a lower percentage of ABV than Angostura’s, reduce the number of dashes in your drink, sub in a nonalcoholic bitter, or skip those recipes entirely.
Which brings me to the two commercial brands of bitters I know of that are completely devoid of alcohol. One is Dram, based in Salida, Colorado. Co-owner Shae Whitney says she uses glycerin and raw ingredients, a process that limits her. “Fruits are pretty impossible to penetrate, so we don’t make peach or cherry bitters, for example,” she says. “It’s hard to get delicate flavors into glycerin.” Currently, she sells bitters flavored with palo santo; citrus; lavender–lemon balm; sage; one she calls “black,” which is a combination of black cardamom, black tea, black currants, and black walnuts; and an aromatic bitter made with ginger, fennel, cinnamon, and herbs. Find them—I bought them all!—at dramapothecary.com.
Unlike Dram, El Guapo, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, does use ethanol to extract flavor from certain ingredients, but owner Christa Cotton evaporates the alcohol before mixing the flavors with vegetable-based glycerin and bottling the bitters. “All of our SKUs are 0% ABV when they hit store shelves,” she says. You can buy her Good Food Award–winning chicory pecan bitters, among others, at elguapobitters.com.
For DIY nonalcoholic bitters, find Washington, D.C.–based bartender Hunter Douglas’s recipe on this page.
You’re either cooking a syrup or using your juicer or marinating or infusing something. The rest of the prep is pretty easy stuff like juicing citrus.
There’s more time involved, but it’s not complicated. You’re either cooking a syrup, brewing a tea, or blending and straining something. In addition to that, the recipe might call for an ingredient that you have to order online or find at a specialty grocer or it might call for a piece of special equipment.
There are two subrecipes, plus you might have to source a special ingredient.
This is a weekend project, for which you have to source a number of ingredients and spend some serious time in the kitchen.