Here we go — another Dry January. Another month of making up for a holiday season of bubbles, bourbon, and Beaujolais by pretending I like hop water and plain soda. Still, I’m convinced that it’s a valuable exercise. It’s important to reflect on my drinking habits every so often, whether that’s for Sober October, Dry January, or Sobruary.
And I’m not alone: According to an August 2025 Gallup poll, a record-low 54% of Americans reported drinking alcohol, a number that has declined most sharply among younger people. That doesn’t mean we have to hole up and turn into curmudgeonly teetotalers, though.
A skilled bartender can work with a variety of botanicals, liquid infusions, and a few surprising ingredients to craft sophisticated non-alcoholic cocktails for a range of tastes. That means that even if we’re cutting down on the booze, a night out at the bar can still chase those winter blues away. I stopped into Candy Bar to chat with James Hodge, The Siren Hotel’s beverage director, about how to liven up Dry January. (The recipe for Candy Bar’s Guava Glow is below.)
At its heart, any cocktail is made up of just a few ingredients. Booze, bitters, citrus, sweetener, and a few more bits and pieces can make a million and more combinations of cocktails. Remove the alcohol, and there’s still plenty to work with, says Hodge. “It’s all about perceived flavor. Alcohol coats the tongue in a very sharp kind of way.”
Products like Lyre’s, Seedlip, and other alcohol substitutes can be swapped in one for one in cocktail recipes that call for gin or whiskey, for example. Detroit’s own Casamara Club has a line of botanical sodas that take inspiration from (but don’t try to directly imitate) global cocktails.
For the more adventurous mixologists, Hodge recommends playing around with tea and botanical extracts. In what he calls “my love letter to Castalia” (the pioneering Midtown cocktail bar that crafted NA and alcoholic versions of each of its drinks), Hodge uses Lapsang souchong tea with grains of paradise in Candy Bar’s Smoke Show NA cocktail. “The grains of paradise add that kind of bite you expect from an alcoholic substance, regardless of it being actually spicy or not,” he says.
One of his “secret ingredients” when creating new drinks is gentian, for its “perceived acidity.” Hodge also takes plenty of inspiration from a trip to the market. “I’m very grateful that here in the city of Detroit, we do have Germack and Twinn [Spice and Nut] in Eastern Market,” he says. He recommends playing around with a single botanical like orris root, gentian, or chamomile. Next, he says, make an infusion and use that as a base for a variety of new drinks, adding and subtracting citrus or other elements each time for a new flavor.
As more people explore the world of non-alcoholic cocktails, says Hodge, “we’re watching the definition [of social drinking] shift to botanicals and the element or the essence of the flavor profile. The Zoomers have really helped us change the definition of what drinking culture is.”
Candy Bar’s Guava Glow
Ingredients:
2 oz Seedlip Notas de Agave
½ oz guava nectar
¼ oz agave
½ oz lime juice
¼ oz vegan foamer* (Fee Foam works well here, or this can be left out)
¾ oz cranberry juice (for floating)
Instructions:
Shake and double strain the Seedlip, guava nectar, agave, lime juice, and vegan foamer into a rocks glass over a large ice cube.
Float the cranberry juice over the top.
Garnish with a dehydrated lime wheel.
This story originally appeared in the January 2026 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
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