Lighten Up Your Liquor: Low-Alcohol Cocktails and Mocktails

Since I started my "accountability" weight loss program on a Sunday, one of my first changes was to cut down my Sunday evening cocktail by swapping out my usual vodka martini for a spritzer-type drink made with just a small splash of vodka and 3 or 4 dashes each of cocoa and orange bitters, topped off with orange vanilla seltzer, garnished with a pretty lemon twist, and served in a frosty, funky martini glass. 

As I discovered during my pregnancies and the occasional Lent when I gave up alcohol, making a mocktail look festive is nearly as important as making it taste delicious. (Check out some of my past blogs on mocktail recipes here and here!) So here are some of my best tips for making low- and non-alcoholic cocktails that will satisfy you every time.

Use Fancy (or Fun) Glassware and Accessories

Imagine drinking champagne out of a plastic tumbler. That's not very satisfying, right? Now imagine drinking seltzer out of a champagne flute. Instant elegance! Glassware matters. So do accessories.   

This gorgeous set of 4 etched Mikasa martini glasses is only about $32 from Amazon. 

These funky-shaped coupe glasses from Hlukana are $17 on Amazon for a set of 4. 

These fun zigzag martini glasses from Libbey are what I use in my own home bar; $25 from Amazon for the set of 4. 

We first discovered the excitement of light-up ice cubes on a Disney cruise a few years back, and now we always have a few on hand to (literally) brighten up our drinks when the mood strikes. At around $12 a dozen from Amazon, they're cheaper than going on a cruise (if slightly - only slightly - less fun).  

Swizzle sticks can definitely brighten up any drink, especially these whimsical mini cocktail-topped stirrers, 10 for $10 from Amazon. 

Use Great Garnishes

Garnishes add flavor and color to your drink, so choose fresh, colorful fruits and herbs to perk up your beverage!

This Oxo Good Grips zester ($12 from Amazon) gets plenty of use in my kitchen. There are always fresh lemons and limes in my crisper drawer waiting to be used for garnishes. With a little practice, it's easy to peel off a long strip. I like to experiment with different ways to arrange the peels; my favorites include a loose knot and twisting the peel around itself to form a double ring. 

Another favorite way to make a fancy citrus garnish it to make frozen coils. Take a lemon or lime, cut off the ends, then use a paring knife to remove the whole peel as a single piece. Roll the resulting rectangle of peel as tightly as you can and secure it with an elastic or a few toothpicks. Put it in a ziploc bag in the freezer overnight, then use a sharp, serrated knife to slice it into thin coils and put it back in the bag in the freezer until ready to use. When you put a coil in your drink, it will both chill the drink (without diluting it, like an ice cube would) and slowly add flavor as it thaws - plus the coil will gradually open up, which is a very eye-catching effect. 

Fresh herbs make great cocktail or mocktail garnishes. Lemon-based drinks are especially delicious with the addition of muddled basil, mint, thyme, or lavender, plus a sprig or two as garnish to continue adding flavor to the drink. Lemongrass is especially good with ginger beer-based drinks. If you have a garden, add a few herb plants to have fresh herbs all summer and fall. If you don't, keep a few pots of herbs inside and you can have your own fresh herbs almost all year around. Don't forget that herbs love to be pruned so if you don't use a particular plant for a while, pinch it back to keep it happy. 

 

Fresh berries make a cheery and flavorful garnish. Float three or four cranberries in your drink or skewer them on a long toothpick or swizzle stick. Mix together a few kinds of berries or weave in a citrus peel. Almost any kind of fruit can be sliced partway and hung on the edge of the glass: pear, melon, pineapple, apple, strawberry, kiwi. If you're artistic, cut or twist them into pretty shapes. If you're not, google a video and try it anyway!

Another fun way to make a fruit garnish is to freeze small pieces in ice cube trays, using water or diluted fruit juice. You can also add sprigs of fresh herbs. Be sure to match the flavors to the drinks you put them in!


Intensify Your Flavors

Sometimes the most flavorful elements of a cocktail are non-alcoholic, so take advantage of those strong flavors in your mocktails. 

I love using flavored bitters to bump up the flavors in my cocktails without adding too much sweetness, and you can use them to bump up the flavors of mocktails without adding significant alcohol or calories (bitters add about 1.5 calories per dash, and their alcohol content is about the same as vanilla extract). The set above is $47 from Amazon, but  you can pick up single bottles at your local liquor store in flavors like orange, cocoa, black walnut, grapefruit, rhubarb, and more, most for about $10-$12 per bottle (which lasts a very long time). 

Speaking of vanilla extract, you can use a drop of any of your baking extracts to punch up your cocktail as well. You may already have vanilla, almond, mint, rum, and/or brandy, but you might want to add some more esoteric flavors like green apple, watermelon, and coconut, all of which are included in this 12-pack from Walmart for $37.

Bubly, La Croix, or good old Polar (my personal favorite) seltzers all come in a wide variety of flavors from grapefruit to peach-pear to cranberry-lime to pink apple and lemon. Use them instead of plain tonic water or club soda to add some flavor to your drink without adding calories. I'm especially fond of Polar orange vanilla and black cherry, both of which pair nicely with some of my more unusual bitters. I find that replacing some (or all) of the alcohol in my drink with seltzer changes the taste minimally but adds a sense of festivity due to the carbonation. 

Ginger beer is a marvelous base for mocktails. The ginger flavor pairs well with citrus (especially lemon), cranberry, and herbs. Ginger beer isn't low calorie (it's similar to other sodas), but its flavor is more intense so a little splash adds a lot of flavor. It is also available in diet. 

Experiment, experiment, experiment

The most important thing is to keep trying different options until you find what works for you. Maybe your magic combination is a pseudo Arnold Palmer made with unsweetened tea and lemon seltzer made with muddled mint sprigs. Perhaps you'll discover you love a Moscow Mule mocktail made with half ginger beer and half lime seltzer with a splash of cranberry juice and a garnish of fresh cranberries and a twist of lime. Maybe you don't want to completely give up on your gin but you enjoy a G&T with just a hint of G and very heavy on the T as long as there's plenty of lime juice. 

But whatever you find works, I'll happily raise my glass of sparkling water with lemon and mint to you!