Mixers/Non-Alcoholic
By definition, a cocktail is a mixed drink, and while there are plenty of cocktails composed entirely from alcoholic beverages, many of the best involve a mixer — a nonalcoholic juice, syrup, carbonated drink, or some other addition. A mixer’s job may be to twist the flavor of the cocktail in a different direction or to reduce the overall amount of alcohol in the cocktail — or both. While many mixers (like lime juice or simple syrup) can be easily made at home, there’s a cottage industry dedicated to ready-to-use mixers, ranging from artisan ginger ale to exotic, spiced syrups.
Top Mixers Posts:
Cocktail Artist Cocktail Mixers
The Murph’s Famous Bloody Mary Mix – Original and Hot & Spicy
Cascade Ice Zero-Calorie Mixers
What’s that hot kick in your typical ginger beer from? If you said ginger, you’re probably wrong: Many brands put cheap chili pepper oils in their brews to give them that kick, which is why so many come off as hot, but not particularly spicy in the way that real ginger is. That’s just one…

The call it the Best Stuff on Earth. Hyperbole, perhaps, but at least that now means it’s not loaded with corn syrup. That’s right: Snapple has the “natural” bug, undergoing what the company calls the most significant makeover in its 37-year history, replacing corn syrup with natural cane sugar. (Previous “natural” claims got Snapple into…

Take water. Add caffeine. You have just made Avitae, “energy water,” and officially written as “ávitãe” (but with a long dash over the second “a” instead of a tilde, can’t make ’em with HTML). Avitae’s promise is simple: You get purified water with 45mg of natural caffeine added (putting it in the same ballpark as…

The canonical recipe for the Dark & Stormy cocktail calls for Gosling’s Black Seal Rum and Barritts Ginger Beer. The folks at Gosling’s are no fools though — they figure they can horn in on the other half of the D&S equation by making the ginger beer as well. To wit, they’ve spent the last…

There are bad diet ideas, and then there’s this one: A woman lost 99 pounds over the course of eight months by consuming a diet consisting solely of up to 14 cans of Red Bull a day, “often accompanying them with nothing more than a handful of dry Honey Puffs.” From Stuff.co.nz: “I just continued…

“Nature’s sports drink,” they call it: Spiked with natural electrolytes, tons of potassium, no fat or added sugar, it’s the water of the coconut, familiar to most of us only as it regards the consumption of the occasional beachside piña colada. Zico aims to get thirsty athletes and yoga enthusiasts drinking more of the stuff,…

With little fanfare, Pepsi Natural seems to have abruptly arrived on store shelves: I found a small stack of the new, all-natural version of Pepsi in my local Safeway, on sale for $2.99 for a four-pack of 12-oz. glass bottles. (Regular price: $3.99.) Of course I had to buy it so I could review the…

The ever-innovating soda engineers at Jones have just put out a new line of four new beverages: Combinations of brewed tea and juice, not carbonated, and sweetened with cane sugar and natural flavors. The sell: All of the varieties include GABA, or Gamma Amino Butyric Acid, a “smart drug” neurotransmitter said to “improve mental focus,…

Billed as “the world’s first complete recovery drink,” Code Blue launched earlier this year with the goal of pre-de-hangover-izing the youth of America. (As with most modern hangover remedies, the idea is to drink this stuff after drinking alcohol — or during, or even before — and you’ll feel fine the next day.) And I…

Been checking out the three offerings from new organic coffee outfit Good Earth. Again, this isn’t a coffee-centric blog, but I drink enough of it to know a good cup from a bad one. The Good Earth brand dates back to 1972, dedicated to healthy and delicious food and drink. Now delving into coffee, the…
