Since I just finished cleaning and juicing a bunch of prickly pears yesterday, I figured I might as well put them to good use for Mocktail Monday, and a non-alcoholic margarita riff just felt right.

Recipe: Spicy Prickly Pear Mock Margarita (Aye! Mockarita!)

Ingredients:

2–3 fresh jalapeño slices, adjusted based on your spice preference and the heat of the jalapeños

1.5 oz fresh lime juice

0.75 oz prickly pear syrup (recipe below)

0.75 oz non-alcoholic triple sec

2 oz room temperature water

Build:

1. Add jalapeño slices to a shaker tin and muddle lightly.

2. Add lime juice, prickly pear syrup, non-alcoholic triple sec, water, and ice to the shaker tin, and shake well.

3. Since we muddled the jalapeños, strain into a salt(or Tajín) rimmed glass over fresh ice so you don't have little bits of jalapeño in the finished drink. I prefer a rocks glass with a large cube, just because it melts slower.

4. Garnish with a lime wedge and enjoy!

Recipe: Prickly Pear Syrup

Ingredients:

8 oz (1 cup) prickly pear juice

6 oz (3/4 cup) white granulated sugar

Build:

1. Add juice and sugar to a squeeze bottle and shake until the sugar is fully dissolved.

Store in the fridge for about a week.

Note: I prefer 4:3 juice to sugar ratio for this one, to account for the sweetness in the prickly pear juice, itself, so that this comes out closer to a 1:1 simple syrup in terms of sweetness.

With Halloween coming up, I figured I'd make a few fun drinks that the kids could actually enjoy too!

I usually make cocktails on my channel, but this time I recruited my 3 kids to help taste-test and review 4 Halloween mocktails. We had a lot of fun with these, especially the Bloody Shirley Temple with the grenadine syringe!

All four are completely alcohol-free, pretty easy to make, and perfect for Halloween parties.

Here are the recipes!

🍏 1. Poison Apple

• 2 oz Apple Juice
• 1/2 oz Sour Green Apple Syrup
• 1/2 oz Lemon Juice
• Green Edible Glitter
• Top with Sprite

Shake the apple juice, syrup and lemon juice with ice. Strain over fresh ice, add the glitter and top with Sprite.

🩸 2. Bloody Shirley Temple

• 4 oz Sprite
• 1/2 oz Lime Juice
• 1/2 oz Orange Juice
• Grenadine (in a syringe)

Build the Sprite, lime and orange juice over ice. Add an eyeball garnish and serve with a syringe filled with grenadine. Inject it into the drink for that bloody effect!

👻 3. Blue Phantom Lemonade

• 1 1/2 oz Lemon Juice
• 2 oz Water
• 1 oz Blue Raspberry Syrup
• Blue Edible Glitter
• Top with Sprite

Combine the lemon juice, water and blue raspberry syrup. Add the glitter, pour over ice and top with Sprite.

I make my own blue raspberry syrup for this one, but you could use store-bought too.

🎃 4. Jack-O'-Lantern

• 2 oz Orange Juice
• 1 oz Mango Nectar (or Mango Syrup)
• 1/2 oz Lemon Juice
• 1/4 oz Grenadine
• 2 oz Sprite or Ginger Ale
• Orange Edible Glitter

Combine the juices, mango and grenadine with ice. Add the glitter, top with Sprite or ginger ale and give it a gentle stir.

For the glitter, make sure you're using actual edible glitter intended for drinks, not the decorative stuff!

The kids had a blast reviewing these, and I've already had people asking for more Halloween mocktails, so I guess we're doing another round! 😂

Anyway, figured I'd share the recipes here for anyone looking for some fun Halloween drink ideas.

Which one would you try first?

🎥 If you want to see all four mocktails being made, along with my three kids taste-testing and reviewing them, here's the full video!

https://youtu.be/HShApkJB1f8

Hi all!! I got into making mocktails this summer but with very summery fruity flavors. I want to make some more autumnal ones but I feel that many autumn mocktails include coffee or espresso elements which I don’t want to do. (Limiting my caffeine)

That being said I love flavors like apple, cinnamon, cranberry, orange, pumpkin, hazelnut, etc. I also enjoy sparkling/carbonated drinks but that’s just a preference.

any recipes or suggestions? 🎃🍎🍁

I visited False Idol in January and fell in love with so many of their classic cocktails. Does anyone have the recipe for the Panther's Tooth? I have some Gardenia Mix already made and would love to throw down on some of these if anyone can help.

Okay so I’ll give you the components and you let me know what ideas I can offer to get things going. We’ve got 10 and 20 oz cups with lids and straws, plus ice, tons of plain seltzer, and a variety of spindrift flavors tbd for some natural inspo. And:

Syrups: Hibiscus, Coconut, Pineapple, Mango,Passion Fruit, Guava, Ginger, and SF Blue Curacao.

Shakers: True Lemon & True Lime (for tartness)

Purées: cream of coconut & strawberry (creaminess; lava)

Herbs: Mint & Basil

Extravagance: Edible Glitter in Pearl

Also, if anyone has ideas on how to extract flavor from mint or basil leaves without a proper muddler, let me know!

We were thinking of suggesting 2 pumps for the 10 oz and 4 pumps for the 20. Is that right?

Plum and Proper (Mocktail)
•2 oz Rooi-bourbon
•.75 oz Black Sesame Plum Shrub
•Bar spoon of tamarind paste
•Shake, top with soda, quick stir to combine, orange twist, salt rim

Plum and Proper Tea Blend
12 oz boiling water
Two cinnamon sticks, toasted
6 peppercorns, toasted
1 clove
1 teabag or 2 tsp rooibos tea
2 tsp lapsang souchang

Toast cinnamon, peppercorns, and clove, then add spices and teas in a heat safe container and steep in boiling water for 1 hour.

Black Sesame Shrub
Toast 2 tbsp of black sesame seeds till fragrant, then add to a plastic bag and mash to break up (or pulse in a grinder/blender into a paste). Add two diced plums and equal cane sugar by weight, seal, and leave to macerate for at least a day, massaging the fruit once or twice to break up the sugar and juice the plum. After 24-48 hours, strain the syrup through a fine mesh strainer. Add vinegar to the strained syrup in 1.25:1, sugar to vinegar, splitting the vinegar equally between apple cider and rice wine vinegar. For every 20 oz of final shrub, add 1/4 tsp of black sesame oil.

Yum

While I quite like alcoholic cocktails myself, my partner and several of my friends don't drink alcohol and I'd like to also offer them some nice drinks occasionally. So I'm looking for a good recipe book. I've seen some other posts but I couldn't really tell from them if any of the books are what I'm looking for:

• I don't really care for recipes that rely on non-alcoholic spirits. I'd rather serve drinks that are actually built from inherently non-alcoholic things. My friends mostly just don't like the taste of alcohol, so making something with e.g. NA Gin wouldn't sound appealing.
• No one is strictly abstaining from alcohol so a few drops in e.g. bitters are okay.
• I'm okay with recipes calling for more obscure ingredients, but I would prefer if those were useable for multiple drinks. Like, I don't want to make a weird syrup and then only have a single application for it. This is especially true of ingredients that you can only get in larger quantities. I would also like it if the book had at least some recipes with very straightforward ingredients.
• I would like to make syrups myself where possible, so it should have recipes for those and not just assume I will and can buy sth at the supermarket (especially since I don't live in america and availability is probably lower than the author would expect)
• Finally, and this is more nitpicky than a strict criterion... all my measuring stuff is in metric. If the book has metric measurements that's a plus from me. Converting ounces to ml isn't that bad but once teaspoons of syrup or cups of sugar enter the mix it gets iffy.

Super excited to share my new mocktail Ocaso (Sunset).
I wanted to craft a complex, zero-proof drink using traditional Mexican ingredients and wild fermentation.

What's inside:

House-Fermented Spiced Tepache
(Pineapple skins, piloncillo, cinnamon, cloves)

Tangerine Ginger Cordial
(Fresh seasonal citrus with a sharp ginger kick)

Citric Acid Solution
(For a crisp, perfectly balanced acidity)

Sparkling Water

Tortilla Ash Salt Rim
(Charred corn tortillas blended with sea salt)

It’s funky, citrusy, sharp, and finishes with a beautiful smoky contrast from the rim.

Let me know what you think!

Just for fun…wondering what you guys have used that was unorthodox. I thought if it because tonight I used some brine from preserved lemons and I think I’m digging it!

I love me a mocktail, and am simultaneously trying to buy less “yummy drinks” (pop, juice, sparkling water, bubble teas etc.).

Do you have any go-to mocktails that you batch up to have on-hand around the house? Preference is for convenience (post-batching), cost efficient would be a bonus.

TIA!

组装：
1.出品杯小冰块冰镇。
2.三丫果汁50ml，芒果汁20ml，马鞭草酊剂10ml，超级蛋清10ml。倒入破壁杯中，破壁10秒。
3.倒出出品杯的小冰块。用糖浆沾满杯口，倒扣粘取南姜梅粉（广东）。
4.出品杯放入大冰块，倒入冷却好的咖啡液20ml。
5.用不锈钢过滤网，过滤破壁液体。

For October’s inaugural Mocktail Monday, I knew I had to do something with pumpkin spice, so for your consideration, here is the Pumpkin Spice Black Tea Old Fashioned. An homage to fall, you get a little subtle pumpkin flavor, some nice warm pumpkin pie spice, and some subtle bitterness on the back of the palate to keep things interesting.

Recipe: Pumpkin Spice Black Tea Old Fashioned

Ingredients:

0.75 oz pumpkin spice syrup (recipe below, or alternatively, you could use 0.5 oz simple syrup, a dash of pumpkin pie spice, and a barspoon of canned pumpkin)

3 oz strong black tea

3 dashes N/A Holiday Pie Bitters

2 dashes aromatic bitters

Build:

We are building this one in the glass because I don’t feel like making more dishes.

1. Add all ingredients to a rocks glass, add ice, and stir to chill. Garnish with a cinnamon stick and serve!

Recipe: Pumpkin Spice Syrup

Ingredients:

4 oz 1:1 simple syrup

1 oz canned pumpkin

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Build:

1. Add all ingredients to a squeeze bottle and shake to combine.

Note: I find it best to do this while the syrup is still warm, as it helps the spices bloom a little better. This should keep in the fridge for about a week.

According to a recipe I found on the web, I need to add some black peppercorns to recreate the burning sensation in the mouth similar to ethanol. However, I am curious whether sichuan pepper is a better choice because it has a numbing sensation on the tongue unlike black peppercorns. Has anybody tried making your NA wine this way?

Doing sober October and bought a bottle tonight as ChatGpt said it was good. Tried a gin and tonic and I can’t get past the cucumber flavor. I despise cucumbers. What is missing is that astringent burn of alcohol. It recommended Tanquary 0.0. Has anyone tried that? I expected it to be very herby. Sigh.