Article updated on September 12, 2024 at 1:12 PM PDT
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David Watsky Senior Editor / Home and Kitchen
David lives in Brooklyn where he's spent more than a decade covering all things edible, including meal kit services, food subscriptions, kitchen tools and cooking tips. David earned his BA from Northeastern and has toiled in nearly every aspect of the food business, including as a line cook in Rhode Island where he once made a steak sandwich for Lamar Odom. Right now he's likely somewhere stress-testing a blender or tinkering with a toaster. Anything with sesame is his all-time favorite food this week.
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We may be entering apple cider season, but what about drinking apple cider vinegar? Apple cider vinegar is said to offer a variety of health benefits, from killing bacteria to improving cholesterol levels. But if you've tried it, you've probably found out that it's quite rough to drink on its own. Thankfully, tons of brands have hopped on the bandwagon to develop delicious sodas, shots and more that make drinking apple cider vinegar much more palatable. We've found the best apple cider vinegar drinks to sip on, no matter your health goals.
These flavored Apple Cider Vinegar drinks make downing the healthy elixir a whole lot more pleasant.
David Watsky/CNETIf you want the potential benefits of apple cider vinegar without having to drink it straight, there's a slew of tasty apple cider vinegar beverages and sweetened shots to ease you into that healthy apple cider vinegar lifestyle. These apple cider vinegar-based beverages are mixed with fresh fruit juice, honey and ginger -- also known for health benefits -- and are meant to be enjoyed, not endured.
I tried seven in total including an ACV sparkling water, a few ACV and fruit juice blends, and flavored, premixed vinegar shots. Below, you'll find a list of super sippers and shooters for getting your daily fix of apple cider vinegar along with my notes on how they taste.
Read more: The ABCs of Apple Cider Vinegar: Benefits, Precautions and Proper Dosage
Watch this: Taste-Testing 6 Apple Cider Vinegar Drinks
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Braggs Refreshers contain apple cider vinegar along with juice, lemon and other natural ingredients to create a refreshing beverage anchored by healthy apple cider vinegar. The beverages come in four flavors, but I liked the lemon ginger refresher best. The 40-calorie refreshers taste a lot like kombucha and are best consumed cold or poured over ice.
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Sidekicks are not your typical sugar-packed soda. These fruity and tart sodas mix healthy ACV with plum, strawberry and mango juice and a dash of New Zealand honey. All three recipes I tried were excellent; not too sweet and perfectly refreshing. I enjoyed the plum strawberry the most and found the sparkling beverage was best when poured over ice.
Sidekicks aren't cheap. You can order a 12-pack from the website for $50 or subscribe and save 50%.
I'm a massive sparkling water drinker so it's no surprise that I connected with this ACV drink. It's lighter and less intense than Bragg's Refreshers. The sweetness of the blood orange and a bit of stevia helps to offset the tartness of the vinegar.
ACV is the second ingredient after water in this 5-calorie beverage, but this balanced sparkling drink is one I could see myself happily downing every day. If you're a habitual seltzer drinker, you'll likely find it easy to incorporate into your daily routine, too.
This fun and flashy line of low-calorie sodas is marketed as aiding in digestive health and boasts apple cider vinegar as the third ingredient after water and cane sugar. Poppi prebiotic sodas come in several flavors; I tried lemon-strawberry and ginger-lime and found both delicious. The apple cider vinegar flavor is tamer than in some of the other beverages I tried, and with 4 grams of sugar, the sodas aren't too sweet and have just 25 calories.
A 12-pack of Poppi's healthier ACV sodas costs $30 at Walmart or $8 for a four-pack at Target.
If you prefer to down your ACV in one gulp, there are premixed apple cider vinegar-based shots to try. Remedy's version is intended to aid in digestion and contains apple cider vinegar, prebiotic zinc and vitamin D along with ginger, honey and cayenne pepper to balance the tart flavor.
A 12-pack of 2-ounce shots goes for $50 on Amazon.
Bragg has a line of apple cider vinegar shots available in several flavor combos. All of them are pretty tasty, but the carrot-ginger and pineapple-cayenne were my personal favorites. The 20-calorie shots are sweetened with organic honey and fruit juice and go down smoother than rum punch in July. A pack of four 2-ounce shots costs about $13 on Amazon.
If you want your apple cider vinegar with an extra shot of immune-boosting vitamins, try Emergen-C's daily immune support packets with added botanicals for energy. Each 35-calorie packet contains 260mg of dehydrated ACV. It's unclear if powdered apple cider vinegar is as potent as vinegar in its liquid form, but the powdered elixir contains loads of vitamins C, B-6 and B-12, so it certainly can't hurt to slug one mixed with water during cold and flu season.
These drink mixes taste OK but were my least favorite of the bunch. I missed the punch of fresh juice and tartness that comes with the other beverages on this list. A package of 18 packets is $10 on Amazon.
For more, find out if unpasteurized milk is safe to drink and how to make an all-natural home cleaner with just three ingredients.