How many drinks does one bottle make?
Each of the 950ml bottles make 38 drinks at our recommended mix. You can adjust to suit your preference. Also we give you guidance based on a 25ml measure but if you want to go by eye in a glass work on the ratio of 1 Drinks Kitchen aperitif to 7 of your mixer. You can of course mix it to suit you but it is a concentrate so not meant for neat consumption. If you want it as a stronger short drink, try shaking in a cocktail shaker 1 part DK to 4 parts still water and serve over ice.
What should I mix it with?
Bear in mind tonic, or lemonade will add more sweetness as well as bitterness from the tonic.
Soda will add a more mineral flavour.
Sparkling water will keep the sweetness lower as was our intention and you can use a soda stream to save on packaging.
How do you make your drinks?
We use distillates and extracts from fruits, herbs, spices, bitters such as Cinchona bark which we blend to make a drinks recipe…in our kitchen! We start with an idea, maybe from a recipe we have made from a cookery book or, it could be that we have a particular ingredient we really love. Once we have our recipe, we make at The Foodworks development centre in Weston Super Mare.
Live for Today, Drink for Tomorrow. Why did we make drinks for sober days?
Here at Drinks Kitchen, we don’t want to preach about not drinking. We just want to celebrate it. If you are abstaining because you are the designated driver or pregnant for example, we wanted you to have something special and not feel like the odd one out.
Founder Alli realised that alcohol had begun to really affect how she was feeling though and now much prefers a sober lifestyle. “I’m not sure if it was partly hormonal as I get older but drinking alcohol made me feel really lethargic and anxious the following day. Life can be hard enough at times so I began to question why I was making it even harder!”
Can you tell us more about the environmental credentials of the product and packaging?
We originally chose ceramic for our bottle as we pasteurise to ensure product quality and most glass won’t safely withstand the temperature. Although ceramic is recyclable, it is not collected in most recycling scheme boxes as its not one of the most commonly used materials day to day, but most recycling centres accept ceramic and list it as ceramic/rubble and hard core materials. In our local Weston Super Mare centre, you can take a bag of this along for free. Please check your centre. More recently, we have introduced an amber glass bottle because now we pasteurise then bottle. This new bottle can be recycled and we love it because its like an old medicine bottle and has a lovely apothecary feel.
Also see our reduce, reuse & recycle page because we have lots of ideas here for you to reuse your bottle as it’s a thing of beauty.
Our outer packaging is paper board using recycled content and no plastic. We buy from a company based in Wellington, Somerset. This can be recycled in your kerbside box scheme.
We also wanted to create the most concentrated version of our recipes possible so that a little goes a long way. Our 950ml bottle will make 38 long 200ml drinks – that’s 25ml of our aperitif and 175ml of mixer (water, tonic etc). Our ingredients are all responsibly sourced from UK suppliers and we buy in bulk to minimise transportation.
We pack our drinks locally just down the road in Somerset at The Foodworks.
Do you use sugar in your drinks?
Despite sugar having such a bad wrap in recent years, we will give you our thoughts and you can make your own mind up.
We honestly believe in the ‘everything in moderation’ approach. Eat plentifully, plant foods and drinks lots of water. Eat a limited amount of refined foods (including sugar) and keep alcohol no, low or moderate. Have treats but not too many and exercise regularly. We try to keep this approach… …..of course this sometimes goes out of the window!