By Day and By Night

MODSUB#102

Wotcha!

Next Saturday is the inaugural Drinks With Benefits Festival in NYC. It’s a jam-packed event featuring food, DJs, meditation tents, live podcast recordings, a beer garden, and plenty of surprises the organizers have up their sleeves.

Most importantly, more than 60 non-alcoholic and functional beverage brands will be pouring samples. Where else would you ever get the chance to taste that many fabulous drinks in one place? And that “place” just happens to be New York City.

So if you fancy a last-minute weekend getaway to one of the coolest cities in the world and want to try a ton of amazing non-alc drinks, grab a ticket for the Drinks With Benefits Festival in the sponsor section below. Don’t forget—there’s a code for 15% off.

Going to Drinks With Benefits? Let me know!

Myles

P.S. Thank you to everyone who responded to my BIG ASK last week. I didn’t get 1,000 new subscribers (ha!), but I did get 18—which is 18 more than I had last Saturday. Welcome to all of you!

And if you were thinking about sending out a quick “Hey, you should read this” to a friend last week but it slipped your mind—here’s one last reminder. Please and thank you.

In this week’s edition:

NAN
New NA Drink News

FUNCTIONAL SODA
Kick Fizz - Day Drinking and Evening Buzz

COCKTAIL
Agave Margarita

Read time: 6 minutes 29 seconds

From this week’s sponsor:

Upcoming Event: Drinks With Benefits NYC Festival

Drinks with Benefits Festival NEXT WEEK!

Join us Saturday, September 27, 2025 at the iconic Altman Building in Chelsea for a one-of-a-kind celebration of wellness!

What to expect:

• Taste 60+ nonalcoholic beverage brands

• Enjoy curated “omakase-style” food pairings with top restaurants like The Butcher's Daughter, Spring Cafe Aspen, Cipriani and more!

• Dance to live sets from NYC’s coolest DJs like DJ Maku and Mona Matsuoka

• Recharge with a mindfulness experience led by Dara Hart of Sage + Sound

• Catch live podcasts with Sam Feher (Bravo) & Sober Fit Girl

• Explore the Alcohol Free Beer Garden 

• Step into Instagrammable photo moments designed by world-class florists

Whether you’re wellness-minded or just want to sip something new, this is your chance to experience the future of drinking and have a really fun Saturday!

VIP Noon Entry | General Admission 1–7PM
Altman Building – 135 W 18th St, NYC

Tickets are limited—secure yours today by clicking HERE ⬅️

Discount code: Modern15 for 15% off

Thank you for supporting our sponsors who in turn support this newsletter.

New Non-Alcoholic Drink News

NORTH AMERICA

• FUNCTIONAL COCKTAIL: Strawberry Spritz (5mg THC) is the new flavor from Louie Louie. (Link)

• COCKTAILS: MIngle Mocktails inroduce Mingle Moods. (Link)

WORLDWIDE

• BEER: Germany’s Klosterbräu Bamberg brewery makes the world’s first 0.0% Rauchbier. (Link)

• COCKTAIL: Popping over to Norway, last month saw the release of Orange Spritz from ALT. (Link)

FUNCTIONAL SODA

Kick Fizz - Day Drinking and Evening Buzz

ModSub’s thoughts: A chemist, a marketer and a business veteran walk into a bar and … they start Kick Fizz. Whether or not they actually walked into a bar together, I have no idea—but what I do know is they created an exciting functional soda company.

Kick Fizz currently offers two experiences—Day Drinking and Evening Buzz—with drinks designed for the activities we might be doing at different times of the day.

Day Drinking’s first flavor, Lemon Berry Ice, keeps things light yet peppy with a flourish of fruits including lemon, strawberry, blueberry and raspberry. But this is no ordinary lemonade. Beyond the attention to flavor, it also contains 25mg of caffeine, 2mg of Delta-9 THC, and 2mg of CBD. The result? A little stamina, a little smoothing of the edges and a touch of calm—without leaving you wiped out by dinnertime.

Evening Buzz’s Black Cherry Vanilla is made for winding down. As the name suggests, it’s a cherry-flavored soda, with the same low-dose THC and CBD as Day Drinking but no caffeine—because no one needs their evening buzz turning into a sleepless night. It’s a fun, flavorful soda that I’d be happy to sip while out on the town.

But here’s the twist: Kick Fizz’s website features a recipe collection that uses both drinks as bases for non-alcoholic cocktails. I haven’t made any of those yet, because I decided to experiment differently—why not use both as mixers instead?

For the Lemon Berry Ice, I made a simple spritz: 2 oz of Wilderton Citrus in a highball glass topped with the tart, fruity soda. The result was a bold cocktail full of bright summer fruit, its sweetness balanced by a welcome herbaceous bitterness. I’ve yet to have a Wilderton Citrus cocktail I didn’t like, but this one is up there with the best.

With the Black Cherry Vanilla, I got a little more ambitious. Adapting a recipe I’d used in a previous issue, I mixed 1.5 oz each of The Pathfinder and Dr. Zero Zero, topped it with Evening Buzz, and added a few shakes of All The Bitter’s Cherry Coffee Bitters. The result? A lovely evening cocktail layered with complex flavors from the amaros and bitters, playfully lifted by the cherry and vanilla notes of the soda. It’s a solid nighttime sipper.

These Kick Fizz sodas are easy to fall for. Enjoy them straight, use them as mixers, or build them into cocktails. However you choose, they’re pretty darn versatile.

How Kick Fizz describes Day Drinking: A crisp, refreshing sip designed for those who want to keep the fun going—minus the crash. With a balanced blend of tart lemon and juicy berries, it’s like your favorite fruity popsicle, all grown up. Not too sweet. Not too fizzy. Just right. Light, uplifting and perfectly crafted for easygoing moments, Day Drinking gives you that social spark while keeping the vibe smooth.

How Kick Fizz describes Evening Buzz: The perfect drink for winding down without missing out. Evening Buzz delivers a rich black cherry flavor with a smooth hint of vanilla, like your favorite cherry soda—but better. Lightly carbonated and perfectly balanced, it’s made for those moments when you want to enjoy the night without the alcohol (or the hangover). With 2mg THC and 2mg CBD, this low-dose sip is just enough to take the edge off while keeping you in control.

COCKTAIL

Agave Margarita (from All The Bitter’s recipe collection)

ModSub’s thoughts: I don’t usually let one newsletter spill into the next, but I’m making an exception because I don’t want you to miss out on this exceptional Margarita recipe.

After last week’s cocktail playtime with Almave’s Blanco and Āmbar, Ian from All The Bitter reached out to share a recipe their crew have been enjoying over the summer. It’s an adaptation of an Agave Margarita from their excellent recipe collection, where the tequila alternative is “split-based” between two different brands.

For industry veterans and mixologists, the term split-base will be familiar. I only learned about it last month after reading Sam Bail’s excellent LinkedIn post on non-alcoholic spirits. Essentially, split-basing is a technique that uses two spirits to form the base of a cocktail. This approach combines the flavors and complexity of each spirit to create a single base with alternate balance and depth to the one the different brands could provide alone. 

Of course, many cocktails are split-based—think Negroni, Sazerac, or Long Island Iced Tea. What was new to me was the idea of combining the same type of spirit—in this case tequila—to create a completely new flavor profile. As Sam points out in her piece, for some, the spice level in Free Spirits Tequila might need balancing to tone down the heat. Mixing in a second tequila provides just that.

It really got me thinking: as I look at my bar cart, what other flavors might be quietly waiting to reveal themselves if I tried mixing two versions of the same style of spirit?

In the meantime, treat yourself to this Agave Margarita recipe by splitting the 2 oz of tequila between Almave Blanco and Free Spirits’ The Spirit of Tequila—you’ll be very glad you did. Thanks, Ian!

Have you experimented with split-basing the same the style of spirit? Let me know by hitting reply.

How does All The Bitter describe their Agave Margarita recipe: Our preferred margarita recipe is a slight variation on Tommy’s Margarita, a version of the drink created in the early 90s in San Francisco at Tommy's Mexican Restaurant. Bartender Julio Bermejo dropped the traditional triple sec from the recipe and used agave nectar (made from the same plant as tequila) instead of simple syrup. And, of utmost importance, only fresh lime juice is used … no pre-made sour mix here.

Tommy’s Margarita has its naysayers who believe a margarita must contain triple sec, but we think you can have it both ways. Our alcohol-free Orange bitters add the same orange flavor—without diluting the drink or adding sugar—plus a botanical depth from coriander that complements tequila and lime nicely. Next time you're craving a margarita mocktail, we think you'll agree, this margarita recipe wins.

READS & LISTENS
Last Week’s Edition