The Journal · Autumn
Sober October: what to drink at seven o'clock
Giving up the drink is the easy half. The hard half is what goes in the glass instead.
The bottle is not the difficult part. Most people who go alcohol free for October work that out inside the first week. You can walk past the wine aisle. You can say no in a pub and mean it.
What is difficult is seven o'clock. The point in the evening where you used to pour something, and the pouring was half of it. The stem of the glass, the colour going in, the sound. Take that away and hand someone a tumbler of tap water and they are not being asked to drink less. They are being asked to stop having an evening.
The short answer
Replace the ritual, not just the liquid. What you want at seven is something with colour, structure and a bit of tartness, served in a glass you would have used anyway. A strong fruit or botanical infusion does that, and unlike most alcohol free options it has nothing added to it. Start with Mulled Glühwein if you want something that drinks like a red, and Midnight Mint for after the plates are cleared. Five below, from £7 for fifteen cups. Three carry caffeine and two do not, and it is worth knowing which is which before ten o'clock.
Five pours for thirty-one evenings
£7 for 15g, which is fifteen cups, up to £30 for 100g. That is 47p a cup, down to 30p on the big pack. All five brew hot, iced or cold.
What a month off actually changes
Sober October is run by Alcohol Change UK, the charity behind Dry January, and it runs for the thirty-one days of the month. Because Dry January has been studied properly for over a decade, we know more about what a month off does than you might expect.
Seven in ten people report sleeping better
Research with Dry January participants at the University of Sussex found 70 percent reported better sleep, 86 percent saved money, 81 percent felt more in control of their drinking, 66 percent had more energy and 67 percent found their concentration improved.
de Visser, reported by Alcohol Change UK, 2019
The month still counts six months later
The same research followed participants to the six month mark and found lower drinking scores, better wellbeing and more confidence in refusing a drink. Earlier work from the same group looked for the rebound everybody predicts, the big February, and did not find it.
de Visser and colleagues, Health Psychology, 2016, and de Visser, 2019
What alcohol does to sleep, precisely
A 2025 meta-analysis of 27 studies found that alcohol before bed cuts REM sleep by an average of 11.3 minutes and delays the onset of REM by 18 minutes, with the effect starting at around two standard drinks and getting worse with dose. Two things it did not find, which are worth saying: alcohol did not significantly increase waking in the night overall, and at higher doses it actually shortened the time taken to fall asleep. It gets you under faster and gives you a worse night.
Gardiner and colleagues, Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2025
You are in a much larger crowd than you think
Polling for the Portman Group in January 2026 found 36 percent of UK adults who drink alcohol also drink low and no alcohol products, either regularly or occasionally, and that a quarter of those who had tried them said it had cut their drinking. The sharpest rise is not among the young: over 55s went from 25 percent in 2022 to 35 percent.
YouGov for the Portman Group, January 2026, reported in The Morning Advertiser
None of that is a claim about tea. It is a claim about the month, and about what the month is likely to feel like. What tea is for is the part in between: the thirty-one evenings you still have to get through, one at a time.
The five, in the order the evening runs
Three of these are built on a black tea base, so they carry caffeine. That is fine at seven and less clever at ten. Two have no caffeine in them at all. The running order below is the one we use.
An evening, in five pours
Pomegranate, bold and slightly astringent, over rosehip and a black tea base. The one that behaves most like a glass of red: sharp at the front, structured underneath, dry on the finish. Brew it strong, three to seven minutes, and drink it out of a wine glass.
Blackcurrant, rich and tart, with currants, blackberry leaves and cornflower over black tea. If you ever drank cassis, this is the shape of it without the sugar. Five to ten minutes. Very good over ice with a strip of orange peel.
Chocolate and peppermint over black tea. This is the after dinner slot, the one that replaces the thing you used to have with coffee. Three to seven minutes, small cup, no milk.
Hibiscus first, which gives it a deep, wine dark colour and a real tartness, then apple and rosehip to round it, and beetroot underneath for body. Apple, hibiscus petals, rosehip, beetroot, and nothing else. Brew at 85 degrees for three to seven minutes. Warm it with a cinnamon stick in the pot if the evening calls for it.
Ripe peach and apple with hibiscus and camomile flowers. Softer and rounder than the others, and the one to serve when somebody says they do not like fruit tea. Five to ten minutes. Cold brewed overnight and poured over ice it is closer to a soft drink than a cup of tea, which on the right evening is the point.
Half the job is the glass. Use the one you would have used anyway.
Making it feel like a drink
This is the part most people skip, and it is the part that decides whether you make it to the thirty-first.
- Use the glass. A wine glass, a tumbler, the heavy one with the cut base. Not a mug. The shape of the thing in your hand is doing more work than the liquid in it.
- Brew it stronger than you would a cup. A heaped teaspoon per 200ml, and leave it the full time. These are meant to have an edge. A weak fruit tea tastes like an apology.
- Get it off the boil for the hibiscus blends. Around 85 degrees for Mulled Glühwein. Boiling water pushes hibiscus into sourness.
- Make a pot and put it on the table. Refilling is part of it. The teapot holds enough for two people and an evening, and the infuser does a single glass in the same few seconds.
- Cold brew the next day's in advance. A spoonful in the cold brew bottle, into the fridge, and by tomorrow evening there is something waiting that you did not have to think about at seven o'clock. That matters more on day nineteen than on day two.
- Ice, peel, a sprig of something. Not decoration. The thirty seconds you spend making it is the ritual you are trying to keep.
The ten o'clock problem
Three of the five above have caffeine in them, and if you are drinking them late you have swapped one thing that wrecks your sleep for another. A 2013 trial found 400mg of caffeine six hours before bed cut total sleep time by more than an hour, and the people taking it did not notice.
So the late pour is a separate decision. Rooibos and herbal blends have no caffeine to begin with, and the Sweet Dreams Box is five of them in one order from £25. We went through the whole evening range, and the research on caffeine timing, in the evening cup.
Thirty-one evenings
Nobody gets to the end of a sober month on willpower alone. They get there because the seven o'clock gap got filled with something they actually wanted, rather than something they were tolerating.
A pot on the table, a proper glass, and something in it dark enough to look like a decision. That is the whole trick, and it works just as well in November.
Questions we get
What can I drink instead of alcohol in the evening?
Something with colour, tartness and structure, served in the glass you would have used anyway. A strong fruit or botanical infusion does that, brewed at a heaped teaspoon per 200ml and left the full time. Hibiscus led blends give you the depth and dryness that a soft drink cannot.
When is Sober October 2026 and who runs it?
It runs for the thirty-one days of October and is organised by Alcohol Change UK, the charity behind Dry January. Participants go alcohol free for the month and raise money for the charity.
Does giving up alcohol for a month actually do anything?
Research with Dry January participants found 70 percent reported sleeping better, 86 percent saved money and 81 percent felt more in control of their drinking. Followed up six months later, the same people had lower drinking scores and more confidence in refusing a drink, and the predicted rebound month did not show up in the data.
Does alcohol affect your sleep?
Yes, and in a specific way. A 2025 meta-analysis of 27 studies found alcohol before bed cuts REM sleep by an average of 11.3 minutes and delays REM onset by 18 minutes, starting at about two standard drinks. It did not significantly increase waking in the night, and at higher doses it shortened the time taken to fall asleep. It gets you to sleep faster and gives you a worse night.
Do fruit teas have caffeine in them?
Only if there is tea leaf in the blend. Crimson Jewels, Bombastic Blackcurrant and Midnight Mint are built on a black tea base, so they carry caffeine. Mulled Glühwein and Peach Bellini Bubbles have none. Read the ingredients rather than the name.
Are alcohol free drinks full of sugar?
Many are, which is why the labels are worth reading. Loose leaf tea has no sugar in it at all unless you put some in. Mulled Glühwein is apple, hibiscus petals, rosehip and beetroot, and that is the complete list.
How do you make tea feel like a proper drink?
Brew it stronger than a cup of tea, serve it in a glass rather than a mug, and put the pot on the table so there is something to refill from. Ice and a strip of citrus peel on the fruit blends does the rest.
Can you cold brew these?
Yes. A heaped spoonful per 200ml into cold water, into the fridge, and leave it four to twelve hours. Bombastic Blackcurrant and Peach Bellini Bubbles are the two that reward it most.
Sources
de Visser R. Dry January participant research, University of Sussex, 2019, summarised by Alcohol Change UK.
de Visser RO, Robinson E, Bond R. Voluntary temporary abstinence from alcohol during Dry January and subsequent alcohol use. Health Psychology, 2016.
Gardiner C, Weakley J, Burke LM et al. The effect of alcohol on subsequent sleep in healthy adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2025.
YouGov polling for the Portman Group, January 2026, reported in The Morning Advertiser.
Drake C, Roehrs T, Shambroom J, Roth T. Caffeine effects on sleep taken 0, 3, or 6 hours before going to bed. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2013.
Thirty-one evenings. You only have to fill one of them at a time.
Browse the tea shopOr let us choose for you with the Discovery membership.
For the late pour, read the evening cup. For the daytime half of autumn, the October reset.
JoJo