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Salty & Clever

Salty & Clever
Drinks & Zero-Proof
The One Drink and the No-Drink

214 published pieces

The One Drink and the No-Drink

One drink and one credible no-drink, built around balance, batchability, ice, garnish burden, and how the beverage behaves with food.

Part of Drinks & Zero-Proof

Balance
Batch
Ice and glass
The no-drink

Page 6

Everything in this group.

Tea Brewed for a Drink Is Not Tea Brewed for a Cup, and the Cloudy Glass Is Telling You Why

Strong tea is the most useful ingredient in a kitchen for building drinks with no alcohol in them, and almost nobody uses it well, because they brew it the way they brew a cup and then wonder why the drink tastes like weak tea with lemon in it.It is doing three jobs that nothing else in the cupboard does at once.

A Punch Bowl Is the Only Drink Format Where the Host Gets to Stop Working

Everything else you can serve at a party is a job with your name on it.

Non-Alcoholic Wine and Beer Are Mostly Made by Removal, and Removal Leaves a Hole You Can Taste

The category has improved enormously in five years and the reviews still read as apologetic, which is confusing until you understand that most of these products are made by taking something out of a finished drink rather than by making a different drink.

Salt Belongs in the Glass, Four Drops Is the Whole Dose, and You Will Not Taste It

Nobody salts a drink. Salt is for food, the reasoning goes, and a salty drink is a mistake you make once.

A Twist, a Wheel and a Wedge Are Three Different Instructions, Not Three Ways to Decorate

Recipes list the garnish last, in the same tone they use for the glassware, as though it were a preference.

A Shrub Is a Preservation Technology That Happens to Taste Like Something

Fruit, sugar, vinegar. That is the entire recipe, it predates refrigeration by a long way, and the reason it exists is not that somebody wanted a nice drink.

Tasting a Drink You Are Making Is a Different Skill From Tasting One Somebody Hands You

A drink gets tasted at the wrong temperature, in the wrong dilution state, by a palate that has already tasted it twice, and then adjusted on the basis of that.

Everyone Says Use Fresh Citrus and Nobody Says How Long Fresh Lasts

Use fresh juice is the most repeated instruction in drinks writing and one of the least useful, because it stops exactly where the question starts.

Hot Drinks for a Party Fail in a Completely Different Way Than Cold Ones

A cold drink at a party fails by going warm and flat, which is slow and visible and forgiving.

A Syrup Is a Preservation Decision Before It Is a Sweetener

Everybody's first syrup is equal parts sugar and water, and it is the wrong default for almost everything a home kitchen does with syrup.