Try And Dry January at Dutch Courage Cocktailbar
Cocktails as taste, not vehicle
Someone once told me “A great cocktail is able to hide inferior, or even nasty, spirits.”
I am here to tell you nothing is further from the truth.
A well-crafted cocktail celebrates all ingredients used, including the garnish, the glass ware, and the smallest dash of bitters.
This holds particularly true in regards to a cocktail without alcohol. If one is to assume a cocktail is nothing more than a soft landing for hard-tasting alcohol, such as drink would not be able to exist.
And indeed, making cocktails without alcohol is quite a challenge. However, it is quite the fun one!
Way back when
All the way back in the very early 2000s I was approached to write a cocktail book.
Refusing to simply translate a cocktail book, or worse even, copying it, something all too common in cocktail book history, I wanted to write a book on something hardly anything was written on: alcohol free cocktails.
After some deliberation I decided to aim the book at children, as they have the freedom of mind to experiment with the wildest ingredients, and I could show how much fun bringing together flavours is.
This led to me organising some of the very first alcohol free cocktail competitions as well. One of the things that surprised me was that although many of my bartender peers were dismissive of making anything without alcohol, it quickly became clear this was due to fear, not disrespect.
In fact, I would argue this once again goes to what is at the core of what is actually making a cocktail all about. It is not simply throwing booze together and hoping the mix gets someone tipsy fast enough so they will swallow whatever you put in front of them. Instead, it is about bringing together something to actually enjoy.
Flavour, not alcohol.
Trickier times
Of course, at those times your tools behind an average bar were limited. If you take away the entire backbar filled with your precious boozy bottles, what’s left?
First of all, it meant listening to the clientele asking.
Is it a person simply not drinking for a while, but aware of the typical cocktails?
Is it someone who has never had any alcohol due to health or religion?
Is it someone under legal age?
All of these play a role in what drink is desired and why.
Then ingredient-wise you were left with fruits, and my personal favourite: spices. To achieve bitterness I would muddle up lots of dried spices hoping to satisfy an adult palate.
Luckily nowadays we have the choice of many alcohol free spirits. Name them how you like, but I have always been a proponent for adding these faux-spirits on the backbar, as it widens the possibilities for a bartender to make people happy.
I even had the pleasure of judging alcohol free spirits for a spirit award a few times. Lots of fun!
At DC
For the past few years we had the pleasure of working alongside Mesamis (formerly Ginamis and Rumamis) to create exciting drinks for “Dry” January.
This led to a January 2026 menu with three cocktails. I wanted to make every one of them available on Low-ABV as well for the same price.
Proving once again that this is about taste, not alcohol.
Low-ABV is a personal favourite style of mine, one that I believe will grow over the years as people continue to drink less, not nothing mind you, so moderate consumption, not abstinence, becomes the norm.
For the Low-ABV version:
use 30 ml of excellent Cubay rum Reserva Especial rum, and still 15 ml of Mesamis Caribbean Cane.
Cocktail: Flamingo
Glass
Rocks over ice cubes
Ingredients
45 ml Mesamis Caribbean Cane
30 ml Willem’s Wermoed alcohol free Raspberry & Passion pepper
20 ml fresh lime juice
15 ml pomegranate syrup
Egg white
1 dash Fee Plum bitters
Method
Shake with ice cubes and dry shake.
Garnish
Edible flowers (2)
For the Low-abv version: use 30 ml of excellent Cubay rum Reserva Especial rum, and still 15 ml
of Mesamis Caribbean Cane.
The end result should look like this:
In action
Credit to our very own Yung for creating the Flamingo.
Shaking over ice, then dry shaking ensures for the firmest of foams.
On the ingredients
Plum bitters
We make it our point to never use bitters that contain alcohol in alcohol free cocktails. This is not because it is not allowed, the end results are trace amounts of alcohol, therefore negligible, but because for religious abstinence even a dash would be too much, even if it would not impact from a biological standpoint.
Willem’s Wermoed alcohol free Raspberry & Passion fruit pepper
This was so new at time of writing that we had the pleasure of receiving the first bottles. Using recycled wine bottles, this sustainable product uses all-fresh ingredients with excellent result.
Mesamis
The star of our show. Mesamis Caribbean Cane is one of very few alcohol free products in the dark spirit category. Similar to my spice usage explained above, bitterness is achieved by a proprietary mixture of dry spices.
Egg white
We pride ourselves on using fresh egg whites exclusively. Why it is used less is probably due to rising egg costs. But there is no cheating in the world of excellent taste. For those that are vegan or pregnant, another important subset of alcohol free drinkers, we have a range of foamers at our disposal as well.
Pomegranate
All of our syrups are homemade from fresh fruits. Same goes for our pomegranate. Quite some work, but the result makes a big impact.
We use:
2 parts sugar
½ part freshly juiced pomegranate seeds
½ part water
Mix like a pro
Now go out there and mix your own!
Or alternatively: come by Dutch Courage Cocktailbar and have one.
But hurry: only available until the end of January.
We have two more to try as well, equally as delicious, created by Olha and Mark.
Proost.
