If you’re recently sober, figuring out how to have fun again can be difficult. Often, one of the largest barriers is that while everyone else is walking around with drinks and fun beverages, sober people are often relegated to a can of diet coke and that’s it.
The good news is that sober drinks don’t have to be boring. There are hundreds of options for sober summer parties. While most will require planning, you’ll have options to have as many fun drinks for everyone sober as for everyone who drinks alcohol. Those options range from mocktails and virgin cocktails to alcohol-free distilled beverages.
What Are Your Options?
There area three primary options for creating sober party drink.
Mocktails – Mocktails are cocktails built around not including alcohol, which means they take the flavor and experience of the drink into account to create a recipe that should not have alcohol in it. These may use an alternative for alcohol in a traditional cocktail or be entirely new drink recipes.
Virgin Cocktails – Virgin cocktails are original cocktail recipes that simply leave out the alcohol. These are less popular than mocktails because they can often feel like they are missing something. However, they can work for blended and complex drinks like pina colada and daquiri.
Alcohol-Free – Alcohol free or “0.0%” drinks are increasingly popular. However, it’s important to ensure that you check the 0.0%, because many areas allow the “alcohol free” label from “0.5%” alcohol. 0.0% gin, wine, and other non-alcoholic spirits are often important parts of recipes, such as for a gin and tonic.
10 Safe Summer Sober Party Drink Recipes
These 10 recipes focus on drinks that replace alcohol with something else, so you get a complete drink. Here, many also offer ways to decorate and enhance drinks, just because sober drinks should be fun too.
Virgin Margarita on the Rocks
This virgin margarita uses Ritual Zero Proof Tequila and ginger beer to create a margarita that replaces the burn and complexities of alcohol – but with other drinks. You can also easily scale it to one drink or a pitcher for your party.
Lemon Peach Fizz
This lemon cocktail is designed to be served as a drink without alcohol. However, it uses lemon zest, agave, and lemon sorbet to add tang and complexity, making it a great drink to have at parties for anyone who wants to feel like they’re having something fun without having alcohol. You can also add a non-alcoholic vodka or rum to the mix.
Virgin Mimosas
The classic mimosa is just orange juice and champagne. This virgin mimosa recipe uses non-alcoholic prosecco and orange juice. You can also add a splash of sparkling water or tonic in case your prosecco doesn’t add enough bubbles. The recipe recommends Buonafide 0.0 for the drink, but any 0.0 prosecco will do.
Shirley Temple
This non-alcoholic Shirley Temple recipe plays on sweet and fun flavors to offer something refreshing and fun. However, you’ll want to play around with it a bit to make sure it’s not too sweet. Otherwise, all you need is grenadine, lemon-lime soda, maraschino cherries, and a gummy candy of choice for garnish.
Non-Alcoholic Moscow Mule
If you’re looking for a refreshing summer drink, ginger sodas are a go-to. The traditional Moscow mule is vodka, ginger beer, and lime, garnished with mint and served in a copper mug. This alternative replaces the vodka with alcohol free vodka and uses lemon instead of lime to replace the sweetness of the vodka. It’s also best served chilled, and the copper mug is optional.
Elderflower Blueberry Cocktail
If you’re looking for a fun drink that you can make up on hand without buying much special, this elderflower blueberry cocktail is a great go-to. A bottle of elderflower syrup and a bag of frozen blueberries will cover you for a long time – or one long party. It requires elderflower syrup, lime juice, blueberries, and sparkling water.
Espresso Martini
This espresso Martini mixes coffee, skim milk, condensed milk, and non-alcoholic vodka to offer a sweet and creamy drink that doesn’t rely on alcohol for flavor. You will have to prepare by making and chilling coffee. The non-alcoholic vodka is also optional, as the recipe’s creator says you can just add extra coffee if you want more kick.
Sex on the Beach
If you’re looking for classic summer cocktails, this Florida classic is easy to make at home and without alcohol. The original uses vodka, peach schnaps, orange juice, and cranberry juice. The mocktail version uses peach nectar and grenadine instead, with a wedge of pineapple to add some acid back into the drink.
Old Fashioned
If you’re looking for a classic drink, an old fashioned is the go-to. This drink offers complexity to those who want something nice without being too sweet. The original uses whiskey and angostura bitters. The alcohol-free version replaces the flavor profile with honeybush tea, alcohol-free bitters, and maple syrup.
Sparkling Peach Breezer
This recipe is a quick and simple drink ideal for replacing the punch bowl at a party. It also uses 1-1 ratios of peach juice and lemon-lime soda, plus grenadine to taste, meaning you can easily make as much of it as you like without fiddling with measurements.
If you’re making non-alcoholic drinks for a party, there are a few things to keep in mind. The first are that you always want to replace the flavor profile of the alcohol you’re replacing, If you take a cocktail recipe you like and just “don’t add alcohol” it will feel like it’s missing something. Ginger and chilis are go-tos for replacing alcohol’s burn. You’ll also want to look at the flavors of the alcohol. Even things that are ‘tasteless” like vodka can have a lot of sweetness to them that impact the flavor profile of the drink. Drinks like whiskey can be difficult to replace without adding smoke or peat. However, it’s often a good idea to look for new complexities and flavors, rather than trying to recreate something else with different ingredients.
Have fun with your sober summer parties.
Stairway Recovery Homes has multiple sober living homes located in Los Angeles, CA. We provide quality recovery homes for both men’s sober living and women’s sober living.
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Jim Sugel is an SEO and Digital Marketing Expert in addition to having achieved the coveted Google Partner status for PPC expertise. Prior to focusing on Digital Marketing, Jim worked in Information Technology roles at a variety of national firms as a software engineer and consultant, resulting in many years of professional coding and consulting experience.
Jim holds a Bachelor of Science, cum laude in Computer Science and Psychology from Loyola University Chicago. After relocating to Southern California from his native Chicago, he became involved in the recovery industry here, discovering a natural niche in helping treatment centers with Digital Marketing and other technology projects. Jim is the Founder and CEO of Airtight Digital, a firm that specializes in digital marketing for the behavioral health industry.
His other interests include hiking, canyoneering, urban exploration, and screenwriting. Jim now lives in beautiful and sunny Orange County, California.
