Final Purchases and Alcohol Removed Wines

Well yesterday I finally ordered the last pieces we needed for our Halloween/Mocktail party. I ordered some liquor pourers (pictured above). They are pretty much oil pourers, but geared more toward the pouring of liquor. While we won't be using them for liquor (obviously), but it is nice to have those when pouring mixes and juices because it doesn't come out as fast and is easier to measure correctly. I also thought it would be a good idea to get a quart-sized bottle to put our bar syrup in since it is currently in a WSU water bottle haha. But we are finally done with all our purchasing for our home bar. (For now hehe) Along with Mocktails we also have tried a couple alcohol removed wines. The two we have tried are White Zinfandel and Chardonnay. Whitney liked the white zinfandel, but not the chardonnay. I did not like either of them. I am not a big fan of the fermented taste. My brother and sister were visiting when we opened the zinfandel and I think they liked it. I think I will just stick with the sparkling cider and grape juice when I want to feel fancy. If you ever feel the urge to try some, we got ours at Harmons by the rest of the mixers.

We're Ready

We have been preparing for our first Halloween/Mocktail party and we are pretty much set. Whitney was in charge of the decorations and I was in charge of the drinks. We both collaborated on the food. We were able to get the decorations pretty quick, but I thought it was weird that most stores had more Christmas decorations available than Halloween! Our first step in getting the drinks was deciding what drinks we wanted to have. Since we have never done this before we just searched a few databases for drinks that sounded good to us. We then made a list of ingredients and headed off to a few stores. We were able to get most of the ingredients at Wal-Mart and Target. This time we went more for a 'from scratch' approach for our mocktails and got a lot of juices, ginger ale, and club soda. We also got a few mixes that we hadn't tried before to see if they were any good. I am really excited to try the different recipes and get other people's opinions on what they like.

Starting Out Slow

Our experience with mocktails has been a gradual one. We started by just buying the frozen concentrates of pina coladas and daiquiris. We also would order those same kind of drinks at restaurants. We then progressed into buying drink mixes at the grocery store. These mixes are very convenient because the only thing you usually need to add is either ice for a frozen drink or club soda for an 'on the rocks' drink. We have experimented with various flavored mojito mixes and have enjoyed them a lot. We have also recently found a great cheesecake mixer at Target. It is very rich and more of a dessert drink. We also add a little bit of grenadine to this mix to give it a cherry cheesecake flavor.

We have slowly added things to our bar collection. One of the most important pieces to have when mixing drinks is a cocktail shaker. This allows you to mix all of your ingredients with ice and then strain the mixture into a glass without the ice. You can pretty much use any glass for a mocktail, but of course a fancier glass enhances the experience. So far we have lowball glasses and wine glasses. I would eventually like to add martini glasses and margarita or pina colada glasses for frozen drinks.

We are now getting to the confidence level where we can start to make drinks from scratch. The first thing I suggest is to go online and do a search for non-alcoholic cocktails. I found a ton of different recipes. Look through the ingredients of each drink and find some that sound appealing. We found that a lot of drinks use the same basic ingredients with variations here and there.

We found a lot of drinks that appealed to us and then bought all the ingredients in each. We tried to get a lot of drinks that took a lot of the same ingredients so we could make a variety of drinks without a whole lot of extra ingredients. Our next plan is to throw a cocktail party. We are going to incorporate this into a Halloween party at the end of the month. This will serve as an experiment for us in order to find out which drinks most people like and what ingredients go well with one another. After the party I will post the most popular drinks and their ingredients.

Mocktails: An Introduction

Mocktails are mixed drinks without alcohol. Most mocktails that we are familiar with are smoothies and virgin frozen drinks such as piña coladas, margaritas, and daiquiris. However, there are more options than these when it comes to non-alcoholic drinks. The most famous mocktail might be the Shirley Temple, named after the child actor. Most mocktails can be made by just removing the liquor from the cocktail, but original mocktails can be made as well. There are a lot of mocktail recipes already available, but you can also try to make your own by experimenting with different ingredients. Mocktail ingredients include fruit juices, fruit slices, sodas such as ginger ale and club soda, tonic water, and grenadine. The objectives of this blog are to experiment with non-alcholic alternatives to cocktails and to share recipes.