opinionated alchemist

Usually I call them [out of laziness] mocktails - but really I never liked this denomination. As "mocktails" are usually long drinks, it is even twice wrong, to connect them to a cocktail [which is technically a short drink with alcohol].  Apart of this, I am not a big believer in mocktails. Sodas can be fantastic [home made grapefruit soda is fantastic, or homemade ginger ale, ginger beer or any other odd ingredient sodas]. Juices - fine. Lemonades - yes, refreshing and good. And iced teas - can be absolutely amazing. Hence you don't need sickly sweet syrupy juice mixtures. But yes - there are few good ones. Most of them a mimicking drinks with alcohol. You can make a pretty good alcohol-free Planters Punch, Hurricane or Mojito, if you are using Caribbean Syrup. Or you can use a juniper syrup for some alcohol-free gin drinks. A drink which I got to know long time ago, very early in my career, is a bit a different beast [well - you cannot call an al...

Yeah - another old post. We carbonated today the first time at the Yas Viceroy hotel Abu Dhabi some grapefruit soda as well as peach soda; means we didn't only used carbonated club water, but used an iSi container with a CO2 cartridge. Due to the increased CO2, the sodas became a bit more sour. Overall they were more than fantastic - really tasty. And housemade sodas become one part of my beverage strategy for the hotel. Following the old post: Let me tell you a secret: I am addicted to sugar and addicted to sweet sodas; first of all Coca Cola. Unfortunately Coca Cola is really inexpensive [and mineral water quite expensive] in Dubai, so it is very hard to break through this bad habit! Though there are very few sweet sodas, which taste great - good Tonic is great [especially if it has a good companion like gin], or Ginger Beer is great [but not so much as protagonist - ginger beer is another drink, which greatly benefits of a companion, which is now dar...