Reinventing the Nightcap

From the Sleepy Girl Mocktail to the science of sleep, how non-alcoholic cocktails are the better choice for sustainable rest.

Photo by Farrah Skeiky.

The term I use to describe my days as a bartender is vampiric. I rarely slept more than 6 hours and, when I did, it was early in the morning, often after a post-shift drinking binge. Sometimes, I slept in the bar itself.

In a Sleep.com article, I described one such moment:

It was about 4 a.m. when I finished the shift at my bar. After a few drinks, I found comfort lying across four chairs, eventually passing out. The cleaning crew came in at 8 a.m., swung the door open, and — surprised to see me — quickly shut it.

In the article, I proclaim that “this is no way to sleep,” which you likely already know. But my ignorance led me to a much larger discovery about alcohol, sleep, and overall wellbeing, and a subsequent discovery that I could find something far better for sleep while still enjoying a late-night libation.

First, a little primer on alcohol and sleep. While alcohol might help you get to sleep––as it did for me on those bar chairs––that is only the first stage of sleep. Alcohol disrupts subsequent stages of sleep, especially the REM stage, where the most restorative sleep occurs. The result is fragmented sleep that leaves you feeling exhausted, no matter how many hours you spend in bed. This affects almost every aspect of health from mood to metabolism.

Recently, I spoke with my favorite neuroscientist, Dr. Jaime Tartar, on The Mindful Drinking Podcast about the effects of alcohol and sleep. If you want to learn more, listen here:

Yet a nightcap is one of the best parts of the evening and the ritual itself is relaxing even if alcohol itself isn’t necessarily helpful for sleep. If you don’t want to compromise, the answer is to make a non-alcoholic nightcap as complex and sophisticated as alcoholic drinks.

Now, you may have heard of the “Sleepy Girl Mocktail,” which is a combo of tart cherry juice, magnesium, and a prebiotic soda. If you’re not a Tik Tok user, then you likely missed it. Either way, it utilizes magnesium, which can help with relaxation and works in non-alcoholic cocktails (a.k.a. mocktails). I even worked with Natural Vitality Calm who produces a dissolvable magnesium to produce a series of cocktails for Dry January earlier this year. And they’re good.

Magnesium-based cocktails are worth a try, but my personal go-to is with Three Spirit’s appropriately named, Nightcap, a non-alcoholic functional spirit that includes lemon balm, valerian root, and other calming botanicals. Three Spirit Nightcap is super complex, woody, rich, with baking spices. Immediately after tasting it, I gravitated toward a Sazerac-variation. I added All the Bitter New Orleans Barrel-Aged Bitters, which are excellent, and Lyre’s “Absinthe,” which lacks some of the heft you might get from a high proof Absinthe but does add in the anise.

It’s called the Nightcap-erac.

This drink is delicious, complex and puts me to sleep like a baby. It’s designed for the whiskey drinkers among us but is good enough to cut across spirited lines. Whether you try a magnesium-based cocktail or go for the Nightcap-erac, I hope this opens a whole new world of bedtime beverages for you, alcohol-free but full of flavor and supportive of sleep.

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Nightcap-erac

Single Serving/Double Rocks Glass

• 2.25 oz Three Spirit Nightcap

• .25 oz Rich Simple Syrup (2:1, sugar to water)

• 3 dashes All the Bitter New Orleans Bitters (Barrel-aged if you can snag ‘em)

• Lyre’s “Absinthe”

• Lemon peel

Chill rocks glass and coat with absinthe. Combine all other ingredients in a mixing glass or tin with ice and stir. Strain liquid into chilled and coated glass. Add one large cube. Garnish with lemon peel.

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Derek Brown is an author, NASM-certified wellness coach, and founder of Positive Damage, Inc.

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