Dry January 2024 – Bitter Water
I find it liberating to write about non-alcoholic cocktails. Mainly because, I do not need to write tasting notes on a spirit. At the same time, no-ABV drinks are hard. You have to replace the taste and mouthfeel of booze by something else while at the same time keeping the drink balanced.
Bitter orange lemonade
For this drink, I wanted to mix something with Chinotto, an Italian bitter orange lemonade which looks like Coke. So, I combined it with two homemade syrups, burnt honey on the one, cistus tea syrup on the other hand. Expect to see a lot of tea flavoured NA-cocktails this Dry January. – To balance the sweetness from the syrups and the lemonade, I added lime juice.
1,5 cl Homemade Burnt Honey Syrup**
3 cl Lime Juice
Stir – strain – Highball glass over ice cubes – top off;
Garnish: Lime Twist (no drop);
Song: The Oh Hellos – Bitter Water;
*Cook a strong cistus tea – add the double amount of sugar – cook in pan until sugar is dissolved – bottle in clean bottle.
**Add honey to a pan – let the honey get dark before you carefully adding water – bottle in clean bottle.
I do not know if it is the looks of the non-alcoholic cocktail, but it reminds me a bit of the Cuba Libre. Yet, on the other hand the taste of the Chinotto still shines through, but the bitterness is a bit reduced. I cannot really explain why, but the drink somehow tastes of coconuts. All in all, the drink is quite tasty and goes down especially well.
