We're the Lucky Ones

Wotcha!

This newsletter turned three this last Wednesday. Thanks to all of you who keep reading each week and to those of you who have recommended it to friends and family over the years. I truly appreciate the support.

As we head into year four, I’m going to be making some tweaks to the design and layout which will hopefully benefit you in the form of a quicker read.

This week I’m sharing a glimpse into what I’ve been up to on my summer break and what non-alcoholic discoveries I found on my travels.

Enjoy some great drinks this week.

Cheers,

Myles

In this week’s edition:

NAN
New NA Drink News

TRAVEL
Copenhagen Sparkling Tea
Bintang 0.0
Bora Sodas

Read time: 9 minutes 09 seconds

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My NAN, who researches all the new non-alcoholic drink launches and brings them to you each week, is on her summer break.

She’ll be back on August 29.

NA TRAVELOGUE

Where am I?

Well, I’m on a plane, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, heading towards the International Date Line. That invisible divide that robs you of a day heading one way and doubles down on your jet lag on the way back.

I’ve been on a five-week journey with the ModSub family, visiting Sydney, Singapore, Java and Bali—a trip we have been planning for over two years.

It’s been a rewarding, sometimes intense journey, dipping our toes into Southeast Asia for the first time. As someone who writes about non-alcoholic drinks almost every week, I thought I’d share what I found along the way. It certainly surprised me and left me with one key takeaway that changed the way I look at the non-alcoholic drinks industry in this country.

Rules of the Game

Whenever I travel anywhere new with the ModSub family, I’m careful to strike a balance. While I could easily spend hours, if not days, trying to hunt down drinks I’ve read about, it’s clearly not fair to drag the family around to watch me wet myself with excitement about some new bottle or can to add to my ever-growing list of drinks “tried.”

This trip was different. It was about discovering new cultures as a family, taking time away from work and domestic duties and not, I decided, about hunting down non-alcoholic drinks. I would just see what came my way and hopefully be pleasantly surprised.

Who Stole All the Drinks?

I had hopes for Sydney. From the handful of years I’ve covered new non-alcoholic drink releases from around the world, I had come to assume that Australia was going to be the equivalent of a bird-watcher’s paradise for non-alcoholic drinks.

And yet it wasn’t.

In fact, if I had been an ornithologist, I’d have been ecstatic. So many two-winged wonders we’d only seen in Disney movies were wandering around like it was nothing out of the ordinary. Ask for a non-alcoholic beer in a bar or restaurant, though, and staff across Sydney all seemed to respond with the same sympathetic resignation—we probably should, but, well … no.

To be fair, I did find a Heineken 0.0 at a pub during England’s rather irritating capitulation to Argentina during the World Cup semi-finals but I’m here to tell you, it tastes no better at 5:00 a.m.

Walking to Nowhere

One of our excursions, on the suggestion of a family member, was a ferry ride and afternoon walk along Manly Beach. Sydney is blessed with some cracking beaches, and this one did little to dissuade us of that notion. White sandy beaches, rolling Tasman Sea waves and all manner of unusually creative sports we’d never witnessed before—volley football, anyone?

For me, though, I knew that over in the next bay in Freshwater Beach, there was what seemed to be the only dedicated non-alcoholic bottle shop in Sydney—Sans Drinks.

Aha, I thought, now I’ll get my hands on some tasty Aussie NAs. But I got there to find the store shuttered and empty, seemingly relocated to a part of town that wasn’t within walking distance.

I don’t know if Apple Maps just hadn’t caught up, or if it was user error on my part, but I was resigned to the fact that it was not meant to be.

Regrets Are Normal

If I have one regret about my stay in Sydney, it is not taking the time to visit the Heaps Normal Health Club. I was hoping to work it into one of the five evenings we had in the city, but it just never quite came off.

You may remember I covered two of their beers a few weeks back, and given the explosive growth of the Australian brewery, I had just assumed I’d find it jumping out at me at any given eatery.

Bummer, then, that the only place I found it was at the Sydney Cricket Ground during a Sydney Swans match—though not quite within touching distance, as it was only served in the members’ section.

I did so want to try their Jazz Stout.

So, no Heaps Normal either.

continued below

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NA Travelogue continued

All Lost in the Supermarket

The barren non-alcoholic drinks landscape continued at our next port of call, Singapore. Surely there had to be something here.

Well, yes, but mainly, no.

Much of our eating in Singapore was done in hawker centres, collections of food stalls surrounding communal eating areas. It would have been remarkable to find an NA beer here, as there really didn’t seem to be many beers with alcohol, let alone without. Still, it was here that we fell in love with Lychee Iced Tea, a drink that became a staple in the weeks ahead.

Even in the supermarkets, an easy fallback for picking up the most basic of non-alcoholic beers, I came up empty-handed. There were a couple of online NA stores based in the city but no bricks-and-mortar options, and I wasn’t there long enough to risk missing a delivery.

I was beginning to resign myself to a break not only from work and newsletter writing, but from non-alc beverages too.

You’ve Got to Go Posh

That was until we found Atlas Bar.

It’s frankly hard to convey just how stunning this bar is. Designed to resemble a 1920s Gatsby-esque hotel-lobby-meets-cocktail-bar, its lavish grandeur is anchored by an extraordinary tower housing the better part of 1,300 gin varieties.

It was here that I finally found a small corner of Singapore that knew about non-alcoholic cocktails.

Making up for the previous week, I ordered a Lyre’s Gin & Tonic and coerced the rest of the family into ordering virtually every other non-alcoholic cocktail from the 0% section of the drinks menu—the Rose Compass, Shackleton and the fabulous tomato, basil and strawberry Timekeeper. I was making up for lost time, and who knew when I’d see another drink of such quality?

Turns out it was the very next day.

The Raffles Hotel bar is famous for being the place where the Singapore Sling was created. The bar was lovely, for sure, but we had our eye on tea and cakes in true Withnail fashion and had treated ourselves to an early-afternoon high tea reservation.

Upon sitting down at our table, we were offered a glass of prosecco, which we all politely refused. Our waiter immediately followed up by asking if we had any interest in sparkling tea instead.

To my delight, he poured us a glass of Lyserød from Copenhagen Sparkling Tea, seemed rather chuffed that I was aware of and excited by the brand, and proceeded to tell me they had taste-tested numerous wine alternatives before landing on the one he had in hand.

He could have kept the cakes. I was a happy man.

Temple Treasures

Bintang is the king of beers in Indonesia. It’s everywhere in numerous forms, though the flagship Pilsner remains its most popular. Fortunately for me, I knew they were early to the NA beer game, and after striking out twice for a good NA beer in Sydney and Singapore, I was hoping Bintang 0.0 would fall into my lap with ease.

And weirdly, it did.

Wandering around the quite stunning Hindu temple at Prambanan on the island of Java, my daughter pointed to a can resting on the temple wall and said, “Oi, Dad, isn’t that the beer you’re after?”

What ensued was an odd exchange via Google Translate with the can’s owner, his girlfriend and two passers-by who got sucked into the back-and-forth. The result was me owning a Cheshire Cat grin, four bemused Indonesians and an address for a supermarket I was assured was selling the beer.

Three hours later, I was sitting by a pool at the hotel, having tracked down a number of Bintang 0.0s at the local Indomarket, and I was ready for my first Indonesian non-alcoholic beer.

Now, you know by now that I make a point of never, or at least very rarely, being negative about anyone’s beverage creations, and amongst some cracking drinks over the years, I’ve tolerated my share of duds.

But boy, was this a huge disappointment.

I was expecting a Pilsner. What I got was an apple-flavoured malt soda that resembled neither a beer nor a cider—or, frankly, even a soda. Why on earth hasn’t Bintang made an NA version of its Pilsner?

It was at that point I realized Lychee Iced Tea was likely to be my only fallback for the remainder of the trip.

Glimmers of Hope

There were some hopeful signs for the future, though. Many restaurants we ate at had a small mocktail section on the menu. These were, unfortunately, usually just combinations of fruit juices. With time, the introduction of non-alcoholic spirits and greater use of the fantastic array of tea grown on the island might encourage some places to be a little more adventurous.

A small Balinese restaurant in Ubud called Cucu mixed pineapple, lychee, lemongrass and butterfly-pea tea to create one of the best drinks I had during our stay on the island.

Equally, I came across a number of intriguing canned drinks, the best of which was from Bora Soda. I randomly picked out Lemon Kemangi from a row of Bora flavours on the supermarket shelf.

The soda turned out to be delightfully tasty, blending the citrus fruit with kemangi, a lemon basil herb that boosted the citrus and rounded off the lightly carbonated soda with a delicate herbal twist. It was definitely one of the picks of the trip, and I wish I’d had the foresight to pick up more of their line.

The Return

So here I am, sitting on a plane heading back home to Portland and back to life as normal.

I was incredibly fortunate to spend so long with my family exploring parts of the world none of us had seen before. Staring wide-eyed at temples, biking through jungles and rice paddies, washing elephants and swimming with tropical fish. Not to mention meeting so many kind and welcoming people, walking on famous beaches, gazing at famous landmarks and exploring all kinds of new and intriguing cuisines.

We were richly rewarded by our travels in so many ways. We were lucky, and we knew it.

But the trip also reminded me, at least from a non-alcoholic drinks perspective, how lucky we are in the U.S. to enjoy the kind of choice that we do. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of options out there for us to choose from. The nearest supermarket to me probably has 50 different non-alcoholic drinks.

I realize that isn’t the case for everyone, but these drinks are available almost everywhere now, even if it sometimes feels like just a token effort.

I certainly won’t take that for granted again.

EXTRA READS

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