Non-Alcoholic Cocktails
10 recipes
This Field Manual holds 10 recipes built without alcohol. Removing the spirit removes three things at once: bitterness, viscosity and the burn that tells your mouth a drink has arrived. A good one replaces all three rather than leaving juice in a nice glass.
Bitterness is the one most often missed. Non-alcoholic bitters, strong tea, grapefruit pith or a bitter soda give the drink somewhere to end, and without it a mix of juices tastes flat however good the fruit is. Acid does the lifting a spirit’s heat would otherwise do, so these recipes lean harder on citrus and vinegar than their alcoholic equivalents. Texture is the hardest to replace: a syrup, an egg white or a shrub gives the drink weight, and a Seedlip-style distillate brings aroma without body.
Difficulty Level
Arnold Palmer
The Arnold Palmer is a drink invented by its own customer. The golf legend mixed iced tea with lemonade at home through the 1960s, ordered it at a Palm Springs bar in 1960 by
Chocolate Orange Mocktail
The Chocolate Orange Mocktail is dessert by other means: fresh orange juice shaken with chocolate syrup and single cream until it turns silky and cold, then strained into a coupe.
Rose Lemonade Fizz
The Rose Lemonade Fizz is a soft drink dressed for the occasion: rose syrup and fresh lemon in a champagne flute, topped with sparkling water until it looks like something poured
Shirley Temple
The Shirley Temple is the original mocktail, and it came with the original celebrity endorsement problem. Hollywood in the 1930s built it so the child star could toast alongside
Sparkling Elderflower Lemonade
Sparkling Elderflower Lemonade is what happens when a soft drink is built to bar standards: real cordial, fresh lemon squeezed to order, and proper fizz over plenty of ice. Three
Vietnamese Iced Coffee (Non-Alcoholic)
Vietnam's most beloved drink and one of the great coffee experiences in the world. The name translates simply as "iced milk coffee," but the reality is considerably more than
Virgin Colada
The Virgin Colada is the Piña Colada with the rum excused, and remarkably little is lost in the transaction. Pineapple and cream of coconut were always the body and the soul of
Virgin Mojito
The Virgin Mojito is the strongest argument in the alcohol-free canon because it barely loses anything in translation: the Mojito's pleasure was always mint, lime, sugar and cold
Virgin Passion Fruit Martini
The Virgin Passion Fruit Martini keeps everything people actually order a Pornstar Martini for and quietly removes the vodka. The appeal of the original was never really the
Watermelon Cooler
The Watermelon Cooler asks very little of the person making it: blend ripe watermelon, strain it, sharpen it with lime and lengthen it with soda. The fruit does the heavy lifting.