At the end of the day, why do you reach for a drink? Penn and I have started asking ourselves some serious questions about our alcohol consumption. We needed to get curious about some of the habits we were adopting.
When it comes to alcohol, we never drank every day but we were drinking more than we wanted to. We borrowed the term “Sober Curious” to dig in and find out why.
It’s important to note, we began this journey for two reasons:
Our Health. Penn has a family history with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and recent studies say that alcohol can sometimes accelerate both.
Recovery. I don’t always feel awesome the night/day after I drink. Wine messes with my sleep and more than two drinks gives me a bit of a headache the next morning. (Oh, if 20-something-Kim could see me now…)
Penn and I may still have 1-2 drinks per week for now. But in the meantime, we are actively looking for some alternatives.
Enter mocktails.
Which Mocktails Should I Buy?
We decided to try this at a very opportune moment since it seems there is a trend to cut down on booze. I get marketed by tons of Instagram and TikTok ads daily for non-alcoholic options. So we hit add to cart on a bunch of them to try and give you our ratings.
You can watch the video of our review (we also tried 16 non-alcoholic beers in another video!) or keep scrolling to see how each drink measured up. We rate the drinks on a scale from 1-10, but to be honest, I have a really hard time giving anything lower than a 5. We also measured them on how much they tasted like the real thing. So keep that in mind.
Let’s pop a cork and get into it!
Find Out Our Favorite Mocktail
Curious Elixirs 7/10
Curious Elixirs was one that I was getting tons of ads for. There were 4 Curious Elixirs that we tried in this taste test. Our favorite was No.2 because it had tons of layers and actually tasted like a cocktail. No.1 was also a good option because it was bitter and not too sweet. (We don’t like things that are too sweet.) No.4 and No.6 were not our favorites, they tasted like a delicious juice, but not a cocktail. I would get these again with the ones we liked.
I love a good margarita, but this was not my favorite of the bunch. It tasted fine except not enough like the real thing to me. While we were drinking, I thought it was hard to fake tequila, until… (see the next drink!)
This drink was our absolute favorite from the taste test session. It smelled like tequila. It tasted like tequila with a little kick. (Pepper maybe? It’s a slow sipper on its own.) Add margarita mix and it tastes just like the real thing. You can’t even tell. Incredible.
Fauxmosa Mimosa Orange 8/10
If you normally don’t add a ton of champagne to your mimosa, this may be a good alternative for you. I like my mimosa balanced, so I really liked the orange juice mixed with some bitter bubbles. (Did Penn think it tasted like Orangina? Yes, but this is my review and not his… haha!)
Hiyo Watermelon Lime 5/10
This mocktail tastes like a flavored seltzer water. It’s a little sweet (but has functional ingredients to help you unwind) but it didn’t taste like a cocktail to me. If you drink a couple of them you will “feel the float.” We didn’t have enough to see if that was true.
Beckett’s Flying Mule 6/10
We both really wanted to like this one (especially after Curious Elixirs No.2 had some ginger notes to it and was so good) but it just tasted like ginger beer. Maybe over ice and a little melted down with a lime, it would taste like a cocktail.
Having this by itself over ice was an interesting taste, and I wasn’t sure we were on-board. However, paired with a Spindrift Nojito or a good mixer, this was great. It could take the place of gin in a cocktail. You definitely want to slow sip it.
This was another one that was more of a flavored water, rather than a cocktail. Like Hiyo, this one has adaptogens. It was a little sweet for Penn, but I enjoyed that it didn’t have the artificial sweetener taste some have. This is a good alternative!
Tasting this one put me on a JOURNEY. I was the most excited to try it, but at first it made me sad. I was so expecting the first sip to be just like a Sauvvy B. However, after a couple sips, my brain was able to reprogram and to me, it tasted like wine. I would definitely try this one again and any other ones they had.
Hear us out, we have this mocktail almost every night and it’s our favorite. Take your favorite Spindrift seltzer and then give it a splash of apple cider vinegar. The vinegar gives it some tartness and it has great health benefits. (Make sure you wash your mouth out afterwards, vinegar can be bad for your teeth!)
We hope you found something you can try if you are ‘sober curious’ too! Check out our non-alcoholic beer reviews and let me know what we missed for mocktails!
