It’s cocktail hour and you’re thirsty. Do you pour yourself a frosty craft beer, sip a glass of wine or pick up a non-alcoholic beverage? They’re all refreshing, of course. Beer is an excellent bet because it pairs with nearly everything. Take the shandy, a delightful combination of beer and fruit juice. Or “spangria,” which consists of equal parts red sangria and light beer, and drinks like a spritzer with a kick. And that’s just the start of the possibilities.

This native British cocktail — often considered the No. 2 English drink, after tea — is known for being sipped in copious amounts on hot summer afternoons. Traditionally, it is made by mixing Pimm’s #1 — a pre-made mixture of gin, liqueur, citrus and spices — with lemon-lime soda or ginger ale, and then a garnishing of mint, cucumber and various fruits. James Pimm created it in the mid-1800s, and the boozy drink became famous when a Pimm’s bar opened at Wimbledon in the 1970s.

Flavored vodkas are pretty common nowadays and most — from whipped cream to cookie dough — are plainly awful. But one happy surprise comes from Delaware’s Dogfish Head Brewery, a craft brewer that has a line of well-regarded spirits. Its roasted peanut vodka, in particular, is so good you may want to start planning a road trip. Pair it with chocolate and ascend to peanut butter cup heaven.

Imagine, if you will, the most viscous, teeth-achingly sweet, nutritionally bankrupt beverage you could possibly imbibe, ladled into a mug and mercifully thinned with a bit of hot water. Eggnog is child’s play compared with this drink, especially if you had the adult version: spiked with a jigger of equal parts rum and brandy.

Toffee Apple and Pink Marshmallow are just two of the sickly sweet moonshines now being bottled in the U.K. by the Sweet Potato Spirit Company. The base? You guessed it: sweet potatoes. And we’ll tell you a secret: The sweetness of the spirits has nothing to do with the sweet potatoes. All that candied yam, marshmallow, toffee apple and spicy chocolate flavor is added to the small-batch spirits, which are distilled in copper stills.

This popular Japanese cocktail is a perfect autumnal warmer (but it can also be enjoyed cold, if you’re into that). All you do is brew up a cup of oolong tea and add half a shot of Crème de Cassis. It’s a low-alcohol aperitif, with just enough pep to perk you up for intimate, I-don’t-want-to-walk-home-in-the-cold-yet conversations. Take that, hot buttered rum!

Why spring forward when you can fall back this autumn? There’s a movement afoot to recreate libations of yore with exotic ingredients like quince, birth syrup and lingonberries. A roving team of archeologists that have extracted residue from age-old drinking vessels is pairing up with brewers and winemakers to bring ancient spirits to anyone looking to drink as our ancestors once did.

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There’s nothing quite like biting into a cold, crisp dill pickle fresh out of the jar. And there’s also nothing like supping a sour, dill-infused liquor. Yes, pickle-flavored vodka from Canada. It may sound terrible, but it’s actually refreshingly tasty and … convenient (if you tend to save jars of pickle juice in your fridge for those DIY picklebacks). Starting with a Bloody Mary, the dill-icious cocktail opportunities are endless. Pickletini, anyone?

Just holding the strange bottle of Riga Black Balsam — it looks like a ceramic wizard’s flacon — you know that this isn’t just any spirit. Because it isn’t. This dark, dense liqueur is intensely bitter and complex. While East Europeans have long known about the explosive herbal Latvian liqueur first crafted in 1752, it’s now making a push for the U.S. market.

A young crop of Bolivian distillers is using unusual ingredients (e.g., Amazonian tree bark) to make spirits for locally obsessed drinkers. For starters, 1825 Vodka is made from nearby glaciers and Amazonian wheat, and Killa Andean Moonshine has proudly created the country’s first whiskey. So what’s the secret to great Bolivian booze? The altitude.

What's your favorite lawn drink?