This Non-Alcoholic Mixology Book Proves That Good Drinks Are for Everyone

I don’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions. I’m a huge proponent of constantly improving your life and striving towards being better, but—call me cynical—with resolutions it just feels like you’re setting yourself up for inevitable disappointment. It’s like in Walk Hard, when Dewey Cox tells his wife she doesn’t believe in him, and she replies, “I do believe in you; I just know you’re gonna fail!” That’s how I feel when someone asks me what my New Year’s resolutions are—and then I say the same banal shit that everyone else says.

All of that said, I have generally been drinking a lot less lately (although not fully Dry January, since I went to a wine bar on January 2); and I’ve also made it a goal to be a better recipe-follower. With these “not resolutions” in mind, I admittedly did feel the (N/A) spirit (pun intended, sorry) this month and decided to finally delve into my copy of Good Drinks by Julia Bainbridge, which came out in 2020.

Bainbridge is a food and drink journalist who has been published far and wide, and Good Drinks is her breezy, unpretentious journey into the world of N/A drinks. Unlike some cocktail books that are highly technical and include ingredients and spirits that can make it feel prohibitive to non-pros, Good Drinks is super approachable, and makes you feel like you could execute any drink in it. Ambivalent about my drinking these days, I immediately felt empowered by Bainbridge’s introduction, where she writes, “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.” She continues, “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.” For some reason, this passage (and what followed) hooked me, and made me want to commit to really mixing some good drinks.

The book is set up by the requisite opening sections (tools, glassware, ice, et cetera) and then breaks up recipes by when you’d want to drink them: midday, afternoon, happy hour, evening, and nighttime. I found this to be awesome, because while one might associate a Bloody Mary with brunch, beer with the afternoon, and a Negroni with anytime after… uh… let’s go with 5 p.m., an N/A drink removes the need to “drink responsibly” and “not go too hard too early in the day.” Want to make a 2 p.m. cocktail on a weekday without guilt? There are zero reasons not to, and Good Drinks will suggest something that might tickle your fancy at that hour.

My favorite part of the composition of the recipes is that they each include a “Commitment Level,” indicated by one, two, three, or four circles; as Bainbridge points out, they range from “You’re either cooking a syrup or using your juicer or marinating or infusing something” to “This is a weekend project, for which you have to source a number of ingredients and spend some serious time in the kitchen.” As a recipe fiend, I really appreciated that, since one of the banes of my cooking existence is finding a great recipe that seems manageable but realizing too late that it requires other completely different and more cumbersome recipes to be made first. When you take up a Good Drinks recipe, you have a sense of exactly what it will entail and how long it should take.

I decided to begin with the “Don’t Touch My Car Keys,” a recipe submitted by Shelby Allison of Chicago’s Lost Lake, a beloved Tiki institution that sadly closed at the beginning of 2022. I have great memories of going to Lost Lake (which, nepo-alert, was in my neighborhood), so this drink felt necessary to close that loop. First, I had to make coconut syrup, which required a can of unsweetened coconut milk and 2 cups of turbinado sugar. My first mistake (!) was thinking I had turbinado sugar, but when I set out to begin, I realized it was actually Demerara sugar; I read that they’re common substitutes, so I went forth, keenly aware of violating my resolution not to fuck with recipes on the first step of the first recipe. After making the syrup (which is absolutely delicious), I looked for a glass—I didn’t have the requisite and ideal Pearl Diver glass, but a Collins glass was also recommended, so I went with a Collins-style trout fishing glass I inherited from my grandfather.

The drink’s other components were lime juice, soda water, aromatic bitters, and a sprig of mint for garnish. I did my best to be faithful going forward, and found the drink to be balanced and incredibly tasty—it totally embodied the sweet and funky, citrus-y flavors I love in a good Tiki drink. Also faithful to the book’s “afternoon” designation, I relished the drink while working after lunch. All in all, it was a fantastic cocktail-making experience.

Since I wanted to use my very nice juicer (excessively praised here), I also tried the “Get Well Soon,” which was contributed by cocktail royalty Jim Meehan. This one required me to create a syrup by mixing honey with freshly juiced turmeric and ginger; once that was done, I simply added the syrup to a mix of lemon, apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, and hot water, and garnished it with a lemon. It tasted like a powerful, more cosmic version of a hot toddy, with a hint of the popular lemon/ACV/cayenne/turmeric combo everyone loves (some call it the “Master Cleanse”; I call it “God’s lemonade”). 

Beyond those, I can’t wait to try the “Dollar Slice” (a Bloody Mary alt) and the “Change of Address,” which combines citrus, Coca-Cola, soy sauce, and fresh cinnamon, which sounds unreal; I’m also highly interested in Yu the Great (basil-matcha syrup, lime, coconut milk, soda), and if having coffee after noon didn’t make me an insane person, I’d take Bainbridge’s rec to have a late-night Cold-Fashioned (simple syrup, orange, cherry, bitters, cold brew concentrate). 

There are so many drinks I want to make from this book; luckily, I’ll probably still not be drinking much in February and beyond, so I’ll have a lot of time to explore. Good Drinks is incredibly accessible for the amateur home mixologist, and full of cool ideas for the pro looking for N/A inspiration. I surprised myself by making two pretty delicious alcohol-free cocktails using homemade syrups, which has given me the confidence to go further into more complicated N/A cocktails. If you’re interested in exploring good great drinks, look no further than this book; or if you just want to enjoy one, just come thru—I still have an unbelievable amount of coconut syrup in my fridge.

Good Drinks is available on Amazon.

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