Everything I Love. Starting with Pickles.

Wotcha!

Anyone have a recipe for a non-alcoholic version of a Pimms Cup?

Let me know if you do please.

Enjoy some great drinks this week!

Cheers,

Myles

In this week’s edition:

NAN
New NA Drink News

COCKTAILS
Five Corners - Pickleback

COCKTAIL RECIPE
Carolina Cherry Bounce

Read time: 5 minutes 16 seconds

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BEER: Roadie Super Light Brew launches in LA. (Link)

BEER: Wild American lager is the latest from Best Day Brewing. (Link)

WINE: Chile’s Morandé Wine Group is rumoured to be debuting their first non-alc wine with Hax Zero. (Link)

COCKTAILS: A handful of European countries will be the first to try the new alcohol-free version of Freixenet Solare Spritz. (Link) 

COCKTAILS

ModSub thoughts: Here’s what I love about Five Corners Beverage Company:

Everything.

I love their name. Born from weaving the five foundational tastes—sour, bitter, salty, sweet, and savoury—with the five corners of the world: north, south, east, west and home. Cool huh!

I love their approach. They don’t take themselves too seriously, and they seem to be having a lot of fun doing what they’re doing. It doesn’t hurt their products are fantastic, so they can allow themselves some levity, but still, it’s as refreshing as the stuff inside the can. Check out their IG account for some fabulously self-deprecating reels.

I love what’s in the cans. I’m only going to write about Pickleback today, as I want to give attention where attention is due because discovering Pickleback is also how I found out about Five Corners Beverage Company. So let’s just take them one at a time. I’ll cover the other two flavours later in the year, because they too are pretty darn special.

I love Pickleback. It’s hard to know when the pickleback, a brine shot accompanying a shot of liquor, was actually invented. Some say it was at a bar in Brooklyn around 2006, others say years before that. In the Northeast, it’s a chaser for whiskey. In the Southwest, for tequila. And in Poland, it’s long been associated with vodka. 

Five Corners’ version takes the pickle-brine shot companion to the next level. There’s the salty tartness from the dill pickle brine, a rich vegetal boldness from the celery, the sweet, mildly bitter earthiness of the cucumber, a touch of simple syrup to sweeten things along with a moderate level of carbonation to tie it altogether. 

It’s simply splendid. A drink you could quite easily get obsessed with. I may already be there and I know I’m not alone.

One thing I don’t love: they aren’t available at stores in Oregon. I’d love to see that change. Soon.

Five Corners Beverage Company. Drink their drinks. They’re smashing it.

How Five Corners describes Pickleback: Inspired by the dive bar classic of a bracing chaser of pickle brine, this Pickleback marries midwestern brine, cucumber, celery, gentle carbonation, with just a hint of sweetness. No chugging required, just deliciously pickle-y sipping.

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COCKTAIL RECIPE

The ModSub thoughts: I was recently at a dinner celebrating author Rick Atkinson, who was on tour for his latest work, The Fate of the Day, the second in his American Revolution trilogy. It was a lovely evening at a beautiful home in the West Hills of Portland, with sprawling lawns, a large pond with a choir of vociferous frogs and a meal fit for a king general.

I bring all this up because the cocktail served that evening was a Cherry Bounce and it reminded me that, roughly two years ago, Jason Pedrick, former owner of NoLo in Asheville, sent me a recipe for a non-alcoholic version.

So I thought it might be fun to revisit it as it’s a cracking summer’s evening cocktail. Enjoy!

——

If you live anywhere in the vicinity of Asheville, North Carolina, and you’ve tried an adult non-alcoholic drink, it was likely because of Jason Pedrick. Toward the end of 2021, he started NoLo with the goal of making it easier for folks to socialize without alcohol. He began with monthly pop-ups where he would teach people how to make non-alcoholic cocktails and then sell the ingredients needed to make them. Later, he expanded the business, creating an online store that delivered non-alcoholic products around the city.

Buoyed by the overwhelmingly positive response, he took the business one step further, becoming a small distribution hub promoting NA drinks to local bars, restaurants, and venues. In his words, he was attempting to “accelerate the normalization of non-alcoholic adult beverages and create more diversity, choice and inclusion in how we socialize.” (Bear in mind this was 4–5 years ago, in a very different non-alc environment from the one we know today.)

By February 2023, with significant momentum behind him, Jason opened his first retail location inside a huge art gallery, stocking a whopping 300 products.

Back in an April 2024 edition of this newsletter, Douglas Watters of Dry Atlas gave us his thoughts on Kentucky 74, an NA bourbon by Spiritless. Jason had reached out with his take on North Carolina’s official state cocktail, a big hit with his customers: the Carolina Cherry Bounce. The original, dating back to the 18th century, was essentially a brandy-based liqueur, though over the years the recipe evolved to incorporate vodka or bourbon, along with cherries and spices.

Here’s the recipe:

4 Bada Bing cherries, muddled
2–3 fl. oz. Spiritless Kentucky 74
1/4 fl. oz. Stirrings Blood Orange Bitters
1/4 fl. oz. lime juice
A couple of splashes of cherry juice

Shake with ice, then pour into a rocks glass over fresh ice, including the muddled cherries on top.

Notes: Jason suggests using 3 fl. oz. of the bourbon to make sure the flavor really comes through. I used fresh Pacific Northwest black cherries and All The Bitter Orange Bitters in place of the Bada Bing cherries and Stirrings bitters, mainly to use up things I already had in the house. Jason also suggests adding a little honey simple syrup if you want to sweeten things up.

You can pick up Spiritless Kentucky 74 and All The Bitter Orange Cardamom at The Zero Proof. Use code MODSUBREADER at checkout for a discount.

——

NoLo changed hands not long after I posted this piece in June 2024. The company is still up and running under new owners, Jen and Jason. Visit them if you’re anywhere near Asheville.

EXTRA READS