Thought Process The bartenders at Brillig make their cocktails very, very dry. at her husband’s Mighty Good Coffee, a local roaster and café in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. Brillig is a word from Jabberwocky in which the slaying of the problematic Jabberwock is celebrated as a “frabjous day.” Sims is not an alcoholic but knows many people who are: “I’m an ally. I love a lot of alcoholics.” Among them is her mother, now sober for more than three decades. Sims herself has attended Al-Anon meetings for 30 years and hasn’t had a drink in 20. “I come from a family of alcoholics and people with mental health issues. It’s just something that most of the people I love struggle with in various ways. Brillig is a space intended to provide love and support and that feeling of celebration.” She knows of a similar place in the U.K., but Brillig is the only such entity—“a bar-like night spot, as opposed to a café opened at night”—that she knows of in the U.S. At Brillig Dry Bar, Sims—a former chef whose day job is account director at a digital marketing agency—offers specialty drinks and a compact POMEGRANATE-ROSEMARY SODA Absolutely Frabjous BY JEFF HAGAN ’86 “we all have our demons, our jabberwocky,” says Nic Sims ’90, referring to the Lewis Carroll non- sense poem of the same name that appeared in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. It’s because of such demons that Sims opened Brillig, the pop-up, alcohol-free “dry” bar that first popped up a couple of nights late last year We asked Nic Sims, proprietor of Brillig Dry Bar, to share one of her alcohol-free cocktails. DIRECTIONS 1. Make a simple syrup by heating up 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup water, and about 6 fresh sprigs of rosemary. Bring just to boil and stir to ensure all sugar is dissolved. Let cool. 2. Fill a tall glass 1/3 with ice 3. Add 1 oz. (jigger) of pomegranate juice and 1 oz. of rosemary simple syrup. 4. Fill to top with club soda or plain seltzer. Stir. Garnish with rosemary sprig. Add more juice or syrup to taste. Play and enjoy! 8 ▼ MLIVE.COM/LANDOV