50 Non-Boozy Beverages For Sober Celebrations

If you go out to eat at any establishment other than a fast food chain or one that bills itself as family-style (Denny's, IHOP, etc), you are likely to be asked what you want to drink as soon as you sit down – and if you're over 21, then generally expect and intend for you to ask for a boozy beverage. It never fails to disappoint when you ask for non-alcoholic options and all you get in return is an eyeball roll and the answer "Pepsi products" (or Coke ones, for that matter – an equal letdown).

If you're enjoying an alcohol-free happy hour at home, though, you're not limited to the same old so-so soda. Instead, you have a wide range of different drinks to choose from, depending on the season, the time of day, or what you happen to be in the mood for. The best part about any and all of these drinks, though, is that you can have one, or two, or as many as you like, and you'll still be perfectly safe to drive. As a bonus, you can also look forward to a hangover-free tomorrow!

Matcha is popular for a number of reasons. It's got plenty of caffeine to wake you up, but it also offers a number of health benefits to help keep you going. The best reason for drinking the stuff, though, is its sharp yet earthy flavor. While this may be an acquired taste, it's one that grows on you pretty quickly. If you've grown to know and love matcha lattes at a coffee shop, you may be ready to take the next step: actually buying some matcha powder and making your own matcha drinks at home.

Recipe: Easy Matcha Latte

Russian tea is no more Russian than French fries are French or English muffins are English. While this recipe is traditional to an extent, the tradition it comes from, as Southern Living points out, is that of church cookbooks with recipes contributed by everybody and their Great Aunt Beulah. In fact, the recipe here actually veers away from the tradition a little bit as it is made with frozen orange juice concentrate as opposed to Tang. Just as well, really, since the astronauts' not-so-favorite beverage is somewhat less popular now than in decades past. The juices, tea, and spices used in our updated Russian tea, however, are all widely available in 21st-century supermarkets.

Recipe: Traditional Russian Tea

Gingerbread is a flavor typically associated with the winter holidays, while hot chocolate may well be the season's favorite beverage. Why not, then, combine the two flavors? This particular recipe is actually a vegan one as it calls for coconut milk, but you can swap that stuff out for dairy milk if you prefer. You may also wish to use light or dark molasses in place of the blackstrap used here as that ingredient, while very nutritious, has a flavor that most people find to be too bitter for cooking purposes.

Recipe: Gingerbread Hot Chocolate Recipe

Peanut butter and coffee might not sound like a natural pairing, but this recipe falls under the heading of "try it, you might like it." Even though the recipe calls for starting with whole coffee beans and grinding them yourself, there's no need to go to such lengths if you don't want to spend the time playing barista. Instead, just brew a strong cup of coffee, then mix it with milk flavored with peanut butter, vanilla, and honey (or sugar). As to how the drink tastes, well, you'll just have to see for yourself whether PB java is something that appeals to you.

Recipe: Best Peanut Butter Latte

At Starbucks, the drinks come and go with the seasons as well as the whims of the customers. What's more, there are probably issues with supplies, staffing, and other factors that may affect whether or not you're likely to find your favorite drinks on the menu on any given visit. If you're a fan of the coffee chain's Toasted White Chocolate Mocha but you'd rather not be at the mercy of your local franchise as to when (or if) you'll ever see it again, your best bet is to spend a little time and effort making a copycat version like this one. Bonus: DIY Starbucks doesn't cost big bucks!

Recipe: Copycat Starbucks Toasted White Chocolate Mocha

One drink that's so delicious it transcends its alcoholic origins is the piña colada. While Puerto Rico's national drink in its original form consists of pineapple juice, coconut cream, and rum, people quickly discovered that you could leave out the rum and the drink would be just as tasty (or perhaps even more so). This particular mocktail keeps the piña colada's coconut cream and pineapple base and adds some extra liquid in the form of coconut milk. If you like things super-sweet you can also add some brown sugar, but this last ingredient can be left out if you find that the coconut cream makes for a sufficiently sugary drink.

Recipe: Refreshing Coconut Cream Mocktail

How would you make a chocolate milkshake? Well, one way would be to take some chocolate ice cream, add a splash of milk, then give it a few spins in the blender. There's another way, though, that will produce the kind of chocolate milkshake more familiar to fast food fans – one that starts with vanilla ice cream (which is often the only kind a restaurant chain's soft-serve machine will produce) and then adds some chocolate syrup to provide the flavor. This recipe is for the latter type, which means that it's also really easy to change it up. Make the milkshake with chocolate sauce one day, butterscotch the next, and strawberry syrup the day after that, or replace part of the chocolate syrup with coffee to make it a mocha shake. You could also go for a more intensely chocolatey shake by retaining the chocolate syrup but replacing the vanilla ice cream with chocolate.

Recipe: Classic Chocolate Milkshake

Not too long ago, figs were a fruit we only knew in Newton form, but they, like Brussels sprouts, bitter beer, and super-pricey coffee, have gotten the hipster treatment in recent years. Thanks to figs' new trendy status, you'll find them popping up all over the place. Blending this fruit into a smoothie may actually be one of the best things you can do with it, as the drink is not only healthy but has a rich, smooth, sweet flavor that's reminiscent of the cookie formerly known as Fig Newton.

Recipe: Easy Fig Smoothie

While many fast food restaurants offer a pretty ho-hum selection of watery sodas as a beverage option, one of the things people love about Chick-fil-A is that it has appealing options, including iced coffee, iced tea (sweet and unsweet), and even fresh-squeezed lemonade. The one thing that would make the lemonade almost perfect, though, is the option to choose the amount of sugar, as we all have different levels of tolerance for sweetness. While you can't really expect customizable drinks from a fast-food establishment not named Starbucks, what you can do is make your own Chick-fil-A-style lemonade at home and tweak the sugar to suit your personal preference.

Recipe: 3-Ingredient Copycat Chick-Fil-A Lemonade

PBJs are a childhood favorite of many, but how healthy are they, really? That probably depends on the amount of sugar in both the peanut butter and the jelly as well as what type of bread is used. In this peanut butter and jelly smoothie, however, there's no bread and, despite the name of the recipe, there's no actual jelly, either. Instead, the bread is swapped out for bananas and the jelly for strawberries, although the peanut butter, at least, remains. While this smoothie isn't very sweet, it is certainly nutritious thanks to the nut butter, milk, and fruit. If you think it needs a flavor boost, though, you can always add some honey or maybe even a spoonful of fruit preserves.

Recipe: Easy Peanut Butter And Jelly Smoothie

What is a Starbucks Medicine Ball? If you're considerate enough to order off the coffee chain's regular menu, you may never have experienced or even been aware of this "secret menu" item. Well, actually, that's not quite true – you've probably seen it under its new name, chosen when Starbucks decided the best way to keep patrons from hassling its workers for this off-menu item was by officially adopting it and re-dubbing it Honey Citrus Mint Tea. Whether or not the tea has the magical cold-fighting properties that some have claimed, it's easy enough to make at home and try for yourself with no barista-badgering required.

Recipe: Copycat Starbucks Medicine Ball

Got an Instant Pot? Are you getting enough use out of it? Perhaps not, since this much-hyped appliance turns out not to be a master of all trades (or cooking techniques). One thing that Instant Pots do fairly well, though, is serving hot beverages due to the "keep warm" setting that will allow the contents to do just that. If you prefer not to use (or do not own) an Instant Pot, though, you can make this same creamy hot chocolate in a slow cooker (which should also have a "warm" setting of its own) or even on the stovetop.

Recipe: Instant Pot Hot Chocolate

Gingerbread lattes are something you'll see in almost every coffee shop during the winter holiday season, but if you want one come January, you may be out of luck and you definitely won't be able to order this item in June or July. What you can do at any time of year, though, is make the drink yourself. This recipe tries to recreate the gingerbread flavor pretty closely, down to using the ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and molasses found in the cookies. (Word to the wise: do not use blackstrap molasses! It has its health benefits, true, but the flavor is way too strong for cookies or lattes.) If you don't have an espresso maker, though, don't worry, as you can simply use strong brewed coffee, instead.

Recipe: Homemade Gingerbread Latte

Once upon a time milkshakes were made with just milk (plus some flavorings), but over the course of time ice cream became practically de rigueur. Ever since the 20-teens, though, some now expect their milkshakes to come with add-ins such as cake, cookies, brownies, or pie. A bit over-the-top? Yes, but then again, just think of this pumpkin pie shake as a way for you to cut down on food waste. After all, a person can only eat so much pumpkin pie between September and December, but if you toss a slice of the stuff in the blender with some vanilla ice cream and milk, all of a sudden you've got a whole new treat.

Recipe: Pumpkin Pie Milkshake

You can use an Instant Pot to make this mulled cider, but this recipe will work equally well with a slow cooker, just more slowly. You can also combine chopped apples, water, and seasonings in a pot on the stove. While the directions say to discard the apples once you've squeezed the juice out, there's no need to waste the cooked fruit like that. Once you squish up a bunch of boiled apples, what do you have left, after all? Yep, that's right: applesauce. Eat it as-is, sweeten it, or use it in baking and you'll have a zero-waste lagniappe to go along with your apple cider.

Recipe: Instant Pot Spiced Apple Cider

The early 2020s may go down in pop-culture history as the years when everyone learned to cook from TikTok, with decidedly mixed results. One of the safer food fads involved making whipped beverages – safer, that is, than trying to use a toaster inappropriately, as there's only so much trouble you can get into with a blender. If you're wondering how TikTokers gave lemonade the whippy treatment, the secret turns out to be replacing the water with cream and condensed milk. The result is less a regular beverage than it is a kind of super-sweet lemony milkshake – tasty, but more of a special occasion treat than an everyday refresher thanks to its astronomical calorie count. (Nearly 1100 per serving!)

Recipe: Whipped Lemonade

Strawberries and chocolate go quite nicely together, and in fact, this combo seems to be the unofficial flavor of Valentine's Day. One problem with strawberry-flavored chocolate (or chocolate-flavored strawberry), however, comes when artificial strawberry flavoring is employed. Strawberry, like many fruit flavors, is difficult to duplicate without an unpleasant chemical aftertaste. With this hot chocolate, though, the flavor comes from real pureed strawberries which also help to thicken the drink. If strawberries aren't your favorite fruit, you can swap them out for raspberries, blueberries, or cherries instead.

Recipe: Strawberry Hot Chocolate Recipe

While a plain latte consists of nothing more than espresso and steamed milk, when is the last time anyone drank one of those? Back in the '80s, we'd guess, or at any rate at some point before Starbucks took over the entire United States and made inroads into colonizing the planet. Dunkin', too, has now been sucked into the coffee chain's gravitational pull with the result that it has morphed from a donut shop that brewed decent coffee to a specialty coffee drink chain where the signature caramel syrup latte is so sugary it makes any donut superfluous. Still, the drink does taste pretty good, and our copycat recipe even makes use of a few healthy ingredients like cashew butter and coconut oil to help offset all of the heavy cream, sugar, and syrup it contains.

Recipe: Copycat Dunkin' Donuts Signature Latte

The slow cooker may not be nearly as trendy as the Instant Pot, but it is also a lot less expensive. What's more, using it allows you the luxury to do something we all secretly enjoy: procrastinate! Let's say the idea of mulled cider sounds good to you, or maybe you want it for an afternoon or evening get-together. All you need to do is throw a few simple ingredients (apple juice, a sliced orange, and some spices) into your trusty slow cooker in the morning, and it will be warm and waiting later in the day with no urgent dings, dongs, or rushing to release the pressure.

Recipe: Slow Cooker Mulled Cider

Lemonade typically isn't cooked, so it doesn't seem like the kind of recipe that could easily be adapted to an Instant Pot. If you're curious as to how we do it, the truth is, this recipe won't actually result in lemonade straight out of the pot. Instead, what you are doing is making lemon syrup with juice, zest, and sugar. These ingredients are cooked in the Instant Pot – or on the stove if you don't want to wait for the pressure to build up and release – until the sugar melts. (In fact, you could even skip the cooking altogether, as the sugar will dissolve on its own given enough time in liquid.) Let the syrup cool and infuse for an hour, then strain out the zest if desired and combine the lemon/sugar mixture with water or seltzer.

Recipe: Instant Pot Lemonade

Does a chocolate peanut butter banana milkshake sound like something Elvis would drink? Well, not this drink, as the King would probably go for a more indulgent version complete with ice cream, whipped cream, and maybe some bacon. This recipe, however, doesn't even use ice cream but instead could be considered as more of a smoothie since it's made with milk thickened by ice cubes, peanut butter, and bananas. The chocolate flavor comes from unsweetened cocoa powder, but the drink does get a little sweetness from a spoonful of honey. While the shake is still pretty calorie-heavy (over 450 per serving), at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that all of the ingredients are healthy.

Recipe: Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Milkshake

Starbucks may have invented (or at least popularized) the pumpkin spice latte, but they also turned it into a source of embarrassment for some. If you enjoy the PSL flavor but just can't get past the whole "basic" association, or it's the price tag that makes the drink an automatic "nope," you do have the option of making a very similar beverage at home. Our recipe is fairly easy as it uses a pre-mixed pumpkin spice blend as well as instant coffee granules. There's only one somewhat specialized ingredient called for in the directions, that being superfine sugar, but there's actually no need to use the stuff because plain granulated sugar will dissolve just as well in the warm liquid.

Recipe: Copycat Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte

While some cider slushie recipes call for hard cider (the boozy stuff), this recipe is made with sweet cider instead. In fact, you could actually use plain old apple juice since there's not much difference between the two beverages. The fall flavors of this drink – cinnamon and nutmeg in addition to the apple – provide a fun contrast to the crushed ice texture of the slushie, making this a perfect transitional beverage as summer slowly gives way to autumn.

Recipe: Apple Cider Slushie

Sweet tea is a somewhat divisive beverage – some swear by the stuff, others swear at it, or at least consider it too syrupy-sweet to drink. The great thing about making your own sweet tea, though, is that you can customize the sugar levels to suit your own taste – make it half-sweet or even quarter-sweet if that's what you prefer. (Start with a smaller level, then work your way up, since with sugar you can always add but you cannot subtract.) With this recipe, you may not need much sugar at all as the drink gets a load of flavor and a certain amount of sweetness from the fresh strawberries it contains.

Recipe: Strawberry Sweet Tea Recipe

To make a pie shake, you just drop a slice of pie in the blender along with the milk and ice cream. For a smoothie, however, you probably wouldn't want to do that since it would tend to defeat the primary point of such a beverage, which is to be somewhat good for you. This is all by way of explaining that this apple pie smoothie contains no actual pie, but it does have apples. It also has maple syrup, cinnamon, and even oats, lending it a somewhat apple pie-ish (or at least apple-cinnamon oatmeal-ish) flavor as well as providing some healthy fiber.

Recipe: Easy Apple Pie Smoothie