About

Hello, Welcome to Optimal Mocktail. I’m Mike, and I’ll be your host.

I started this journey when I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. The initial treatments for this included a “light” chemotherapy that wreaked havoc on my taste buds and made most sweet items taste bad. Although I could theoretically drink moderately during treatment, this was a bad idea with all the meds I was on. Additionally, alcohol also tasted terrible.

I wanted to drink things other than water and iced tea so I started experimenting with mocktail recipes. And with some old bartending experience, I was able to come up with some really unique drinks, and this website is here to share them with you.

With the recent popularity of the sober-curious movement, you can now find all kinds of NA spirits. I’m sure there are good ones, but in my exploring the options their ingredients mostly seemed to be “chemicals”. I don’t consider myself a health nut, but if you were looking to quit alcohol to improve your health, it would be hard to say that these were much better than their alcoholic counterparts.

In searching for existing mocktail recipes, most of them use either these NA spirits or are a combination of fruit juices and soda. It’s from here where I came up with “Mixology Mocktails”. What are mixology mocktails? Well, it’s something I kind of made up for my own use. You can find some cocktails in a NA version, for instance a Virgin Mary. Ever try to order a Virgin White Russian? Good luck.

I thought it might be fun to create NA cocktail substitutes that I could enjoy while I wasn’t drinking. The basis for most of these is tea. As someone who can be quite hyperactive I don’t drink coffee, instead I drink tea. When I did a search for tea-based mocktails, there were some, but it was sparse. Not all of what I share here will have a tea base, but many will. In some cases, there may actually be some health benefits from these mocktails.

For mixology mocktails I’ll start with the cocktail recipe and provide some NA alternatives. Many of these will use a variety of iced teas, preparation of which can be found here.

Presentation is another underrated aspect of the cocktail / mocktail. Choosing the right glassware as well as garnish add to the experience. Recommendations for these are with each recipe. A chef I once worked with used to say “You eat first with your eyes”. In many instances these mocktails canl be interspersed with those drinking cocktails. Part of the charm is not having the mocktail be the oddball in this setting.