Smoky-Smooth Orange Mezcal CBD Cocktail with Brady

This post is a part of Populum’s Recipe series where we partner with a talented bakers, chefs, and bartenders to bring you unique and adventurous CBD oil recipes you can make at home.

In our last post, we shared a recipe for a classic twist on an Old Fashioned that’s mixed with our CBD oil. Today we’re back with a second CBD cocktail recipe from Brady, an Omaha-based bartender and bar manager. This time we asked Brady to make us something using mezcal, a smoky, agave-based spirit that’s a popular drink of choice for the team here at Populum's midwest home base. The smoky flavor of mezcal, paired with the hint of orange in our CBD oil packs a punch, but the finished cocktail creates to a smooth, subtle concoction, making this drink easy to sip. “When I was workshopping different recipes I noticed how well the oil really soothes the smoky, earthy notes of the mezcal,” Brady tells us. “The flavor in the oil might help someone who is not familiar with mezcal find it to be a little more approachable.”

This recipe is a little more intricate than the old fashioned from the last post, but we promise, you won’t be sorry.

You'll need:

• 1oz mezcal
• 1oz Aperol
• 1oz Cocchi Sweet Vermouth
• 1ml Full Spectrum CBD Tincture (500mg)
• One orange
• Hawthorne strainer

Using a jigger or shot glass, measure out 1 oz of mezcal, and pour it into a beaker or mixing glass.2. Add 1 oz of Aperol and 1 oz of Cocchi Sweet Vermouth. Aperol is our favorite thing to pair with our CBD oil because it has a unique flavor of orange bitters that enhances the orange essence in the oil. The sweet vermouth, which is the backbone of this cocktail, helps make it a little more complex and interesting by adding some herbal notes.

Add one full dropper (1ml) of Signature 500 Hemp Oil. You’ll feel the benefits from your daily dose of CBD, with the added bonus of all the flavors it brings out in this drink.

Stir the ingredients together with a mixing spoon, but try not to over-stir and beat the ingredients too hard. At this point, you might see the oil separate to the top, and that’s totally normal. Consider it an interesting visual touch.

Add ice to the mixing glass and stir. This can be regular ice from your refrigerator. You might remember in our last post we added the ice first, but for this drink Brady purposefully adds it at the end. As is, the drink can have a pretty sharp edge, so by adding ice at the end, you can stir it into the ingredients and melt the ice to dilute the cocktail, softening the edge to your liking.

Put a Hawthorne strainer on top of your mixing glass and pour the mixture through the strainer, catching the ice and sieving just your perfect cocktail mixture into a drinking glass over ice. We recommend using one large ice cube for the actual drinking glass. It melts slower than regular ice cubes and won’t further dilute your drink.

To finish, express an orange peel over the cocktail and rub it around the outside rim of the glass to complete the flavor profile. Add the orange peel as a garnish, and bottoms up!

If you try out this recipe, show some love and let us know by Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or carrier pigeon.