The best drinks for Dry January

Mocktails, non alcoholic wine, non alcoholic beer – all the best options for a sober month

Whether you overdid it over the holidays, are sober-curious, or are just looking for some fun drinks, dry January can be a great time to try out some delicious mocktails and to experiment with alcohol free wine and beer. It’s not all bad! And to make it easy for you, I’ve curated my favorite picks from all three categories.

Table of Contents

• Mocktails, non alcoholic wine, non alcoholic beer – all the best options for a sober month
• Mocktails for Dry January
• My favorite mocktail ingredients
• Mocktail mixers
• Mocktail recipes
• The best alcohol free wines for Dry January and any time
• Non alcoholic beer
• Easy to find NA beer options
• Other options for Dry January
• How to be successful during dry January

Mocktails for Dry January

As a drinker myself, I like to take a break from alcohol from time to time for various reasons. Whenever I start an alcohol fast, I quickly realize that what I miss most about drinking is not the alcohol itself. It’s more the ritual of making a drink and experiencing it.

That’s why mocktails are so fun! Sure, you could just pour a glass of lemonade or cranberry juice, but mixing up a concoction in a nice glass makes it so much more special. And these days, there are so many great options for mixers and alcohol free liquor substitutions that you can duplicate pretty much any cocktail fairly accurately.

My favorite mocktail ingredients

There are a few companies out there who are doing a great job at making mocktail ingredients. If you’re looking to set up an entire mocktail bar for dry January, these are my favorites for making a wide range of cocktail-like mocktails.

Lyres Lyre’s makes some pretty cool NA mixers that you can use for mocktails or low alcohol cocktails. Their bottles are also so freaking cool. For this dry January, I stocked up on:

Agave blanco spirit (tequila substitute)

Orange sec (Triple sec substitute)

Pink London Spirit (I’m honestly not sure what this is supposed to be, but it’s good!)

Dark cane spirit (a dark rum substitute). They also have light and spiced.

Classico (Champagne substitute) – great for mixing

Better Rhodes is an online store dedicated to all things non-alcoholic. I like to order variety boxes that have beer, wine, and mocktail ingredients because I get bored with the same thing easily.

Ritual Zero Proof has what I think is the best NA tequila substitute out there. It has something spicy in it that mimics the burn of the tequila in the back of your throat. They also make rum, whiskey, and gin.

Seedlip. Seedlip makes beverages that are distilled from herbs and plant materials. It’s pretty pricy for fancy water, but I do like the “Garden” variety mixed with ginger beer.

Mocktail mixers

Just like you need good mixers for a cocktail, so you do with a mocktail. Be sure to have these on hand:

Good quality lime juice like Rose’s

Grenadine

Ginger ale or ginger beer

Tonic water, seltzer, or club soda (if anyone can tell me the difference, please do)

Cranberry juice

San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa (Italian blood orange soda). I love this stuff, and it almost tastes like a cocktail just on its own.

Strawberry syrup

Agave syrup

Coca cola

Mocktail recipes

I’ve scoured the world searching for the best mocktail recipes for you. Using many of the ingredients listed above, you’ll be all stocked up to make these:

Lyre’s Pink London Cosmopolitan

Lyre’s Pink London Spritz

Lyre’s Paloma

Lyre’s Classic Margarita

Lyre’s Cuba Libre

Ritual Margarita

Ritual Blood Orange Grog

Ritual Caipirinha

I also just like to mix things together and see how it tastes. I like Seedlip Garden with Ginger Beer, and also pretty much anything else with ginger beer or San Pellegrino.

A big part of enjoying a mocktail is to treat it like a ritual. Use a nice glass and ice, have some lemons and limes as garnishes. Make it special!

My favorite: Mock & Stormy. I love Dark & Stormies with a strong ginger beer and Gosling’s black rum. Both the Ritual rum and the Lyre’s dark cane syrup do the trick! Just 2 ounces of your mock liquor, a splash of lime juice, and then fill the rest of the glass up with ginger beer. Yum!

The best alcohol free wines for Dry January and any time

Wine is my drink of choice, and I’ve done a fair amount of experimenting, trying to find the holy grail of non-alcoholic wines. What I’ve found is that white and sparkling wines taste pretty close to the real thing. But red wine is a bit trickier. Here are my favorites:

Noughty Dealcoholized Sparkling Chardonnay. My mom and I drank this at Christmas and I swear we both got plastered (in our heads). Tastes very genuine.

Luminara. This is one of my favorite NA red wines, so far. It has a nice oaky flavor.

Geisen. Another favorite red.

Wander + Found Cuvée Blanc. I drank an entire bottle of this the other night. The great thing about NA wine is that it has very few calories. Like 100 in the whole bottle!

Wander + Found Rose.

Noughty, Geisen, and Wander + Found are all available at Better Rhodes, and everything I’ve tried from these three brands has been good.

Non alcoholic beer

I’m no beer expert, but I do enjoy beer from time to time. There are so many great options out there for non-alcoholic beer. Here are some of my favorites, but this is based on my own taste in beer (I don’t like IPAs or anything too bitter, and I love stouts and porters). I find that the NA beer options do a pretty good job of tasting like real beer.

Easy to find NA beer options

At my local grocery store, there are a number of decent non alcoholic beers, including:

Sam Adams Just the Haze IPA. Ok, I know I just said I don’t like IPAs, but this alcohol-free version is really good! It has a bit of a grapefruity taste and it’s pretty refreshing and mild.

Heineken Zero. I know not everyone is into a bottle of Heiney, but for the non-beer connoisseur I think this is a great option. It’s easy to find, tastes like beer… the end.

Athletic brewing also has a bunch of good options that are readily available, and more that you can order online. From IPAs to stouts to Corona-like or Bud Light like beers, plus specialty beers.

My personal favorite that may be hard to find, but I found it at my local liquor store is Woodland Farms Dark made in Kittery, Maine. This is the best stout-like beer I’ve found and tastes pretty much like the real thing!

Other options for Dry January

Not everything has to taste like liquor, wine or beer during the month. Now’s also an ideal time to experiment with all the other beverages! Tea, coffee, herbal tea, kombucha, flavored seltzers, juices, you name it. Tea and coffee are as loved as booze, and have as much history and variety. You could spend the whole month learning about it. You know, I love good cuppa! Cruise the beverage aisle and dig into something new.

How to be successful during dry January

If you’re used to drinking regularly, quitting can be hard, even for a month. Many of us (me included) use alcohol as a way to self-medicate and we start to rely on it. Plus, it just becomes a habit. The first few days are the hardest, though, and I’ve found that the routine of “drinking” is more important than the drink itself. At the end of the day, I like to unwind with a glass or two of wine. So, for the first few days, I like to replace the wine with an alcohol free wine and, honestly, just having the right glass and the right temperature beverage pretty much does the trick. Once you get past the first few days, that’s when it’s time to start having fun and exploring all the options out there. But at first, keep it simple and stick with your routine.

Caution: If you’ve been drinking heavily or regularly, be careful about alcohol withdrawal. Talk to your doctor before going cold turkey if you’re concerned. The worse I’ve ever felt was anxiety for a few days after I quit, but we’re all different, so be careful and seek medical attention if needed.

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