The Non-Alcoholic Drinker – by James Ellison

A mere few decades ago, it was often considered antisocial not to smoke. These days, it’s antisocial if you do. The same social change is starting to happen now with alcohol—Millennials are drinking much less than they did in decades past, and Gen Z are hardly drinking at all.

The author, himself a Baby Boomer, champions the cause of mindful, and/but joyful, abstemiousness. Which latter two words don’t often go together, but in this case, he really has put in a lot of work to make non-alcoholic drinking as exciting, fun, and sophisticated as alcoholic drinking always marketed itself to be.

The mocktail recipes in this book are an order of magnitude better than any others this reviewer has encountered before, and did you know they have non-alcoholic bitters now? As in, the cocktail ingredient. Nor is it the only non-alcoholic botanical used, and the ingredients in general are as varied and flavorful, if not sometimes more so, than many that get used in alcoholic mixes.

This book is a very far cry from “rum and coke without the rum”, and instead will have you excited to go ingredient-shopping, and even more excited when you find out how great non-alcoholic things can taste if given the right attention.

As a convenient extra touch, all the ingredients he mentions are available from Amazon, which takes away the fear of “ok, but where do I get…” when it comes to getting things in.

The book does cover things besides just the recipes themselves though, and also talks the reader through navigating non-alcoholism when friends of your own age (unless you’re one of our younger readers) are probably mostly still partying with alcohol.

Really, the biggest value of this book is the recipes, though.

Bottom line: if you’d like to entertain with sophistication and grace and/but not with alcohol, or even just take up a fun new healthy hobby, this book is by far the best book on non-alcoholic mixology that this reviewer has seen to date.

Click here to check out The Non-Alcoholic Drinker, and get mixing non-alcoholically!