As every year passes, the options for Dry January get greater and greater. Think back to the early 2010s, if you chose not to drink on a night out or a Party at home, you had to stick to the obligatory Coke, or maybe J20. Kaliber, RIP. Or, of course, Water.
However, in the early 2020s, we are blessed with many options from Non-Alcohol Beer and Cider. Non-Acoholic Wine and Bubbly. Adult Soft Drinks. And now many Non-Alcoholic Spirit brands. Even the big Syrup Brands are mimicking the flavours of your favourite Spirits and Liqueurs...and cutting back the Sugar in the process.
In short, Not Drinking has become massively exciting!
Now, the Beers, Ciders and Wines speak for themselves. Even the Non-Alcoholic Gins and Rums need no explaining. They're just a simple "Replace the Booze" product. Where the knowledge is slightly lacking is with the Syrup Brands and what they can bring to the party. So below in this Blog are 5 ways you can use our Syrup Brands to elevate your Non-Alcoholic Drinks offering, whether you're a Pub or Bar or simply fancy something different at Home.
The Adult Soft Drink market is Huge. Think Fever Tree, Belvoir, London Essence, Schweppes, Fentimans and Luscombe, which are available at most UK supermarkets. But in reality, they are all Soda Waters, flavoured with a "Natural Flavour" and a touch of Sugar to make them palatable. You can easily recreate these at home, or even better, come up with your own flavour combinations, especially if you have a Soda Stream, or a Soda Syphon like we have here.
In a glass, simply add your required amount of Syrup or concentrate to a glass, add a touch of Citrus to balance, then top up with Soda Water.
There are quite a few brands of Non-Alcoholic "Spritz" on the Market. Some replicating Campari. Some replicating the more delicate and slightly sweeter Aperol. Why? Well they are huge Cocktails. So, a Non-Alcoholic version is an obvious seller. But you can easily recreate these with Monin.
Monin have 2 products that are VERY different;
First up, Monin Bitter. Now, at face value, most people associate Monin with sweet Syrups. However, the Monin Bitter is a Concentrate, not a Syrup. There is little to no Sweetness, which makes it perfect for those Campari and Spritz based Drinks that you want to make Mocktail versions of.
The second product is the Monin Orange Spritz. Created as a Syrup to mimic Aperol. But this is Sweeter. While it still does have a bitter bite to it, it's not a direct Bitter replacement. That said, it tastes great and can be easily used to make sweeter non-alcoholic spritz Mocktails, but if you want to make flavoured Spritz's, the Bitter Concentrate is ideal.
Here, we're going to showcase 3 different Strawberry Spritz Mocktails.
To make an authentic Spiritz Mocktail, you will need some Non-Alcoholic Bubbly, which can be purchased from most major supermarkets.
Non-Alcoholic Gins are plentiful in the market. All the bigger brands have a couple in their range. Gordons & Tanqueray from Diageo have both Classic and Pink Gin covered, while Whitley Neill opted for Raspberry and Rhubarb & Ginger. In fairness, it's hard to argue with these products. If you want to fit in and have a Gin and Tonic, without actually having an Alcoholic Gin, these are fantastic options. Even when you look at the bottles, you have to look twice to realise they're Alcohol-Free.
But there is another option...
William Fox does a fantastic Juniper syrup. And yes, while it's a syrup, we'd argue that it isn't actually that much sweeter than the 2 major brands we've just mentioned. And just to make it clear, Juniper is the base flavour of Gin. And for the completely uninitiated, all's Gin actually is Juniper Flavoured Vodka, with other botanicals thrown in, like Citrus and herbs. But the big flavour for it to be Gin, has to be Juniper. So this William Fox Juniper Syrup allows you to get super creative with a Gin & Tonic, or even a Tom Collins!
Try 15-25ml William Fox Juniper Syrup with your favourite Tonic Water. You can go crazy with Fruit if you want to make it look pretty. Or you can combine the Juniper Syrup with flavours like Strawberry or ODK Rhubarb Syrup & ODK Ginger Syrup. Try 15ml Juniper Syrup, 15ml Rhubarb and 10ml Ginger. Once combined with Tonic, the balance of sweetness should be perfect.
Also, as mentioned, you can try a Collins. Often described as the Gin & Tonic for Tonic Haters. Combine 15ml William Fox Juniper with 25ml Lemon Juice and top up with Soda water. Simple, refreshing and lovely!
Like Gin, Rum also has some Non-Alcoholic Brands. Albeit not as easy to come by as Gin. Rum is still in its infancy in the UK, despite growing to just over £1.3 Billion in sales over the last 12 months. (Gin peaked at just over £2 Billion pre-covid). But rest assured, more Non-Alcoholic Rums will appear during 2024 and 2025. However, the likes of Monin did preempt this circa 2016 with the launch of their Caribbean Rhum Syrup. This has all the flavour of a Rum, just in Syrup form. However, it's not really talked about but we have a little hack to really amplify this to create some of your favourite Rum Cocktails without the booze. Step forward Monin Muscovado. A simple 20ml of Monin Caribbean Rhum with 5ml of Monin Muscovado gives you that amazing depth of flavour that comes from Rums from Guyana for example. Obviously it's not the same thing, nor really the same flavour. But it does work really well.
Below are famous Rum Cocktails adapted for Mocktails
As with Rum and Gin, there are also some incredible brands of Non-Alcoholic Tequila out there. But we feel there is another option, the Agave Syrup from Monin, simply because we know a lot of Bars and people at home will have Agave already. Take the Tommy's Margarita, one of the most popular Margarita Serves in the UK calls for Agave Syrup alongside Tequila. Agave and Tequila are a match made in heaven simply because Tequila is distilled from the Juice of the Pina of the Agave Plant! So with a few tweaks, you can use the Agave Syrup to mimic your favourite Tequila Cocktails.
The easiest one to balance and adjust is the Paloma;
Another Tequila Cocktail that's easy to play with is a Margarita. So how about a Spicy Mango Margarita?