Healthy(er) Cocktail Recipes for New Year’s Resolutions

Start the new year off calm and collected with feel good music a.k.a Bob Marley and a nice, fat… salad. Sure, we’ll go with that. To celebrate the beginning of the new year, we’re keeping in line with those healthy new year’s goals and finding our inner yoga-Pilates-juice person. Hmm, or we'll just take a healthier cocktail instead.

Picture this: a toppled over Quest (our in-house mascot, we love him) who had a rough week partying for the holidays. We guess Zebras don’t have a great hangover recovery time. 

Summer Cocktails Had Me A Blast: Beach Season

Now that it’s January in the chilly Northeast, (don’t talk about those random 60 degree days) we are mentally on island time. The only cure? Beachy cocktails. Beach Season is a take on the traditional sour cocktail that generally combines a spirit with citrus and sweet vermouth. It’s more in line with making a margarita but with a lot more ingredients. 

To make it healthy, we use less sugar and add more citrus so there are less artificial flavors. If it’s still not sweet enough for your tastes, try using raw organic agave that has a low glycemic index compared to sugar or honey instead of simple syrups. Trust us, it makes all the difference. Plus, muddle strawberries into the syrup for more natural sweetness.

What’s the glycemic index? Glad you asked, we saw that lost look in your eye. It’s a scale of 0-100 assigned to food products that gives a value to how much blood glucose levels rise after eating it. Raw, organic agave comes in around 17 while regular sugar is around 68. TBH, agave tastes better, anyway. We said what we said.  

We’re adding kombucha to this for those healthy bubbles but !!DO NOT!! shake with the kombucha in it. It’s like shaking up a can of soda. Unless you’re pranking your friends, add the kombucha after you’ve shaken the other ingredients.

Pour out your drink and welcome yourself to Crush City, beaches.

Using Vegetables in Cocktails, like carrot cocktails: Tend The Rabbits

Ay, what’s up, Doc? To find his inspiration for this carrot cocktail, our bartender, Trevor, went down a little rabbit hole *badumtsk*. The base spirit of this cocktail is either cognac or brandy. Trev “tends” to lean away from brandy cocktails, but he went out of his comfort zone for this one. Adding the mezcal brings out the earthy notes in the carrot juice, but you can also use regular tequila if you don’t like smoky profiles. 

Coconut Cocktails Aren’t All Pina Coladas: Coconut Milk Punch

For our holiday classes and in-house menu, everyone loved Dodge’s Nog V2, so here’s the healthy version of that with no dairy for those with lactose intolerance (guilty). This cocktail is a take on a milk punch using coconut water and coconut milk to substitute out that dangerous cow’s milk. Okay, maybe that’s just our lactose intolerance bias showing… 

Spirit-wise, a dark rum or reposado tequila can shine through nicely with these ingredients. Traditional nogs are not shy when it comes to using rum, it adds to that sweet mix between the ingredients.

And, it’s not a nog without busting out the bitters for those notes of warming spices. It’ll taste like Christmas in a cup, but healthier. Christmas in January anyone?