I’ve been compulsively taking things apart for as long as I can remember. As a teenager, I took a screwdriver to my Nintendo 64 controller so I could spray paint it hunter green. I’d rip apart old clothes and turn them into patterns for new ones. I’ve even mildly electrocuted myself attempting to repair a glass washer in the middle of a bartending shift. Despite the risks, I’ve been well-served by my craving for understanding through deconstruction.
It took me about a year as a bartender before I even felt close to comfortable creating my own recipes. It wasn't until I’d exposed myself to hundreds of recipes before I could see the deeper structures that gave rise to delicious, balanced, and interesting drinks. I “took apart” hundreds of recipes by analyzing what exactly made them work: how to make them better—and how to make them worse. I learned the “Mr. Potato Head” method, described by legendary bartender Phil Ward, that showed how to swap out an ingredient with something structurally similar, such as replacing the Campari in a Negroni with Cynar, in order to create novel drinks. I learned that orange juice is not a suitable replacement for lemon juice in cocktails due to its significantly different levels of sweetness and acidity. I learned why temperature and dilution are critical elements of balance. Like any art form, there are structures and patterns that can at first glance seem arbitrary but are actually the useful result of generations of trial and error.
This was all well and good until I tried to apply these lessons to non-alcoholic cocktails. At first I was deeply frustrated, but then I realized that the challenge of crafting interesting cocktails without alcohol was an opportunity to deconstruct what I’d learned about cocktails and put it back together again.
Regardless of alcohol content, drinks succeed for largely the same reasons: are they balanced, are they interesting and appropriate given the situation? How that is achieved is radically different. A deeper level of de-and-reconstruction is needed. Consider the end experience first, and build your recipe from that. Based on my experience working with these drinks, here are three lessons I’ve learned about developing your own non-alcoholic cocktails.
Stop Chasing Mimicry and Focus on Innovation
I get very little joy from saying this, and I wish it weren’t true, but many of the nonalcoholic spirits on the market are pretty bad. Most of the unsatisfying entries in this category are ones that seek to mimic the experience of an existing spirit such as whiskey and tequila. They end up being an oddly spicy simulacrum that just reminds us of the better thing we’re not drinking. Given that 40% of most spirits are alcohol, it’s physically impossible to recreate that experience as an exclusively water-based version.
This same critique applies to recipes themselves. Of course there are examples of nonalcoholic cocktails that succeed in delivering a reasonable facsimile of a classic cocktail, but in most cases, they’re just not that good. The most successful nonalcoholic spirits are ones that do their own thing and deliver on a unique experience, and the same applies to cocktail recipes.
Think of nonalcoholic cocktails as a challenge that forces you to expand your understanding of cocktails instead of a task focused on mimicry. Let go of the tried-and-true recipe structures that have worked in the past and relish the chance to write new rules.
Think Expansively But Critically About Your Ingredients
It’s always been worthwhile for bartenders to look beyond ingredients that are specifically designed for cocktails, but with non-alcoholic cocktails it’s pretty much essential. Vinegars, teas, sodas, purees, even hot sauces and specialty syrups are all crucial elements towards making interesting non-alcoholic cocktails. Cocktail bitters are another high-impact way to add complexity to your non-alcoholic cocktails, as long as you keep in mind the almost-negligible amount of alcohol they might add to a finished drink.
While freshly-squeezed lemon and lime juice are staples for any decent cocktail program, in the case of other fruits, the benefits of working with fruit juices and purees are outweighed by the drawbacks. It’s difficult to achieve consistency using fruits with a narrow window of ripeness, and many fruits require specialized equipment. Not to mention the shelf life, which can be short.
This is where working with a high quality fruit puree can save the day — not only with taste, but with production at scale. For example, mangoes taste great, but they are tricky to source, laborious to prep, and vary in quality. While the difference in taste between fresh and a ready-made puree would likely be negligible, the difference in labor and consistency would be huge. Also, think about flexibility: Could the ingredient do double duty in multiple kinds of drinks? And what about product longevity? Fresh produce starts to decline in quality almost immediately, whereas a shelf stable or frozen puree is available at hand, night after night, season after season.
Discover Shelf Stable Pourable Fruit
When It Comes to Pricing, the Customer Isn’t Always Right
No matter what, people are going to complain about your prices. Most people understand that the costs that go into a drink are more than simply the physical ingredients, but there will always be that person who thinks that it’s highway robbery to charge $15 for a gimlet when they could buy an entire bottle of gin for $20. Don’t worry about those people, especially when it comes to nonalcoholic cocktails.
My opinion: charge what you need to charge for a drink so that your costs are covered. At the same time, recognize that the value proposition of a drink without alcohol means that you need to price them slightly lower.
Consider how your nonalcoholic cocktails impact overall sales of your business. Are you attracting more customers with your non-alcoholic cocktail menu? Are you increasing check averages due to the increased options? Unless your nonalcoholic cocktail program is making up a significant proportion of your sales volume, you should be able to afford lower margins as long as you’re seeing the upside in your overall business.
While I wouldn’t recommend taking an allen wrench to your wifi router, I am a strong advocate for the kind of intellectual curiosity that would drive someone to do that. Nonalcoholic cocktails force us to ask why drinks succeed or fail, and then come up with entirely new pathways for achieving that end result. And while you might not become a nonalcoholic cocktail impresario, I can confidently assert that the lessons you learn by challenging yourself in this way will make you a better bartender, regardless of what’s in your cocktail shaker.
