Non-Carbonated Alcoholic Drinks: The Full List

If you typed “non carbonated alcoholic drinks” into a search bar, you are probably one of two people. Either you feel bloated and burpy after a couple of hard seltzers on a hot afternoon and want something that does not do that, or you are shopping for that person and have discovered that the drink aisle is about ninety percent bubbles. Here is the full list of alcoholic drinks with no carbonation in them, what each one is like, who it suits and where it falls down, from people who make one of them. Our can shows up once, at the end, with a reason, and the rest is an honest look at what else is out there.

Why the bubbles are the problem in the first place

Carbonation is carbon dioxide dissolved into a drink under pressure, and once it is in your stomach and warms up the gas comes back out and has to go somewhere, which is why a big glass of anything fizzy turns into a burp a few minutes later. Plenty of people never notice it, and plenty of others feel full and tight after two seltzers and cannot finish a third, and that second group is who this list is for. It is not a medical problem, it is a preference, and the answer is just to drink something without gas in it.

In a 2007 study published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, researchers gave 21 volunteers the same amount of vodka three ways on separate days, neat, mixed with still water, and mixed with carbonated water, and 14 of the 21 absorbed the alcohol noticeably faster with the carbonated mixer, while the other seven showed no change or went slower. It does not change how much alcohol you end up with by the end of the night, only how fast the first drink hits. The morning after is a different subject, and we wrote it up in our congener guide.

The full list

Everything we know of with alcohol in it and no carbonation, grouped by what it actually is rather than by what the marketing says.

Still wine

The obvious one, and by volume the biggest non-carbonated alcoholic drink on earth. Every wine that is not sparkling is still, most of it sits between 12 and 14 percent, it is gluten free, and it goes with food better than anything else here. What it is bad at is the beach and the boat, a bottle and a corkscrew and a serving temperature that does not survive a cooler at Moonlight. Canned wine fixes some of that, but check the label, because a fair amount of it is deliberately fizzy.

Sake

Still, brewed from rice, gluten free, and usually 15 to 16 percent, which makes it stronger than most wine and something to sip rather than pound. Sparkling sake exists, so check for the word, but the regular stuff has no gas in it at all. Cold junmai on a hot night is one of the better drinks we know, and its problem is the same as wine’s, a bottle and small cups and a temperature a cooler ruins.

Spirits, neat or on the rocks

Whiskey, tequila, mezcal, rum, gin, vodka, brandy, over ice or not, have no carbonation and never did, and this is the strongest thing on the list, at 40 percent and up. If your reason for reading this is how you feel the next morning, the thing worth knowing is that spirits differ a lot in what else is in them besides alcohol: dark, aged ones like brandy, whiskey and rum carry the most of the compounds called congeners, and clear ones like vodka carry the least, which is the whole subject of the neutral grain spirit essay. A pour of good tequila at eleven in the morning on a beach day is a plan that ends early.

Stirred and shaken cocktails

An old fashioned, a manhattan, a martini, a negroni, a margarita on the rocks, a daiquiri. If nobody added soda, tonic or sparkling wine, the drink is still, and this is where a lot of people who hate seltzer already live without calling it a category. Best option on the list at a bar with a good bartender, worst if you are hosting, because someone has to make them, and the sneakiest for strength, since a proper margarita is a few ounces of spirit at around 20 percent in a glass that looks like lemonade.

Still canned cocktails

The canned version of the section above, and it has gotten genuinely good. Cutwater, made up the freeway in Miramar with a tasting room on Distribution Avenue, does a Lime Margarita with their own tequila at 12.5 percent that is not carbonated, though a lot of the rest of their lineup (the mules, the vodka sodas, the palomas) is fizzy, so read the can. Golden Rule sells a margarita in a 100 milliliter can at 27 percent, which is a real cocktail with a pull tab, and Tip Top does an espresso martini in the same little format at 22 percent. Excellent for exactly what they are, one real cocktail, and a bad idea for an afternoon if you treat them like a seltzer. Spirit based, so gluten free.

Hard iced teas and lemonades

The category that made non-carbonated a thing people search for. Twisted Tea Original has been around for a long time, it is 5 percent, it is still, and it drinks almost exactly like the sweet tea it is named after, which is the appeal and also the catch, since it is brewed on a malt base like a beer and so is not gluten free, and one is plenty for us. The newer wave is vodka based: Surfside, made by the Stateside vodka people, is real brewed tea and vodka at 4.5 percent and 100 calories a can, and Sun Cruiser, Boston Beer’s answer to it, is the same idea at 4.5 percent, 100 calories and a gram of sugar, in tea, lemonade and half and half versions. Both of them are gluten free, and they are the best thing here if you want a beer-strength drink you can have three of on a hot day. Where they fall down for us is that they taste like iced tea, fine at a tailgate and a little one-note by the end of a weekend, and neither says what the “flavor” on the label actually is, which the clean drinking guide explains our problem with.

Wine-based punches

BeatBox is the one everyone knows, a fruit punch built on wine at 11.1 percent, sold in a 500 milliliter resealable carton, non-carbonated and gluten free. It is aimed at a college tailgate and honest about that, not our thing, but it is exactly what it says it is, a lot of sweet, no bubbles, and enough alcohol that one carton is a full night.

Still cider

Most hard cider in the United States is carbonated, so this one takes hunting. Still cider does exist, usually from small orchard cideries that make it on purpose to be drunk like a white wine, and the ones that come up most are on the East Coast, Eve’s Cidery in upstate New York among them. Lovely with food if you can find one, which at a grocery store in San Diego County you almost certainly will not.

What is not on this list

Beer, obviously, and hard seltzer, which is the thing most people are here to get away from. Sparkling wine. Hard kombucha, which sounds like it might be still and is not, JuneShine and Boochcraft (the latter started in Ocean Beach) are both naturally fizzy at around six percent. Anything with soda, tonic, ginger beer or sparkling water in it, which rules out the vodka soda, the mule, the paloma, the spritz and about half the canned cocktail shelf. None of those are bad drinks, they are just carbonated ones, and if that is your problem no amount of “light” on the label fixes it.

The gap, and what we did about it

Everything above covers a dinner, a bar, a tailgate or one real cocktail on a boat. The gap that sent us down this road is the long afternoon: a can at beer strength we could have three of on a Saturday between the water and the fire ring, no bubbles, tasting like something other than tea, with a label that said exactly what was in it and no “natural flavors” doing unexplained work. A few years ago that can did not exist, so we made one, and we called the category Hardwater. SUNGOD is organic neutral grain spirit, Palomar Mountain spring water, real organic juice and a touch of organic cane sugar, certified organic and gluten free, five percent, in two flavors (cucumber, mint, lemon and ginger, or pineapple, coconut and ginger). It is last on this list because it is the one that did not exist before, not because it is the only one you should drink. In San Diego County it is at the shops on the locator, and anywhere else it ships from the site.

One honest last word. Non-carbonated does not mean better for you, alcohol is alcohol, and how much you drink matters more than anything on this page. No bubbles just gets you a drink that sits easier over a long afternoon, ours included.