Dia de los Muertos: A Mezcal Cocktail to Celebrate our Ancestors!

Looking for a fun cocktail to whip up in celebration of all the spookiness this weekend? With a little extra time, you’ll have the elements you’ll need to impress your friends. Plus, you can batch this up for super easy serving, as well as tweakability. And if you want to try it, we batched some up so you can try it all weekend!

Ingredients:

Bacanora Mezcal (any Mezal will do, though the one we used isn’t super smokey)

Honey syrup infused w/ lemon peel, black pepper, sea salt and allspice

Kas Orange Soda

Topo Chico

Lemon juice

Lemon wheel garnish

Making the Syrup

The key is the honey syrup, which also has lemon peel, black pepper, sea salt and allspice to give it a deep, rich complexion from the spices, and brightness from the citrus.

To make it, combine two cups each of your favorite honey and water. Note that you can double or half the recipe easily. Lightly crush a tablespoon of whole black peppercorns, and half a tablespoon of whole dried allspice berries using a mortar and pestle, or by wrapping them in a kitchen cloth and banging with a heavy pot. You’re not looking for a fine powder, just to break up the spices a bit so you get more flavors, aromas, and heat.

Drop in two peels of lemon - use a vegetable peeler or paring knife if you don’t have a bar peeler - then bring to a simmer. Let reduce by about half, or until the mixture is very sweet and the aromas have infused. Just make sure the syrup isn’t too thick, so it’s easy to mix. Finally, taste it, and then add some sea salt until the flavors really pop. You don’t want to make it salty. Instead, think about this like you’re seasoning a sauce.

Mixing the Drink

At this point, the syrup will be too hot to work with. Pop it in the fridge until it’s at least lukewarm. Go ahead and leave the spices and lemon peel if you’d like for more flavor development. You can strain them out later.

When you’re ready to make the drink, grab the honey syrup, Bacanora Mezcal, Orange Soda, lemon juice, and Topo Chico. As we mentioned, you can batch the base of this for easier serving. A large mason jar works perfectly. This recipe makes about 4 ½ cups worth of the base.

The rest of this recipe will make enough for 4 drinks. This means you’ll have extra syrup. Experiment with this later in other drinks, or increase this recipe for a bigger batch. Combine 8 oz of Mezcal, 3 or 4 oz of syrup, depending on sweetness, 4 oz lemon juice, 2 oz Kas orange soda, and a cup or so of ice into the jar. Stir with a long spoon until the ice has melted a little. Strain entire batch into another jar.

Serving Options

At this point, you have two ways you could serve this. For a boozier libation with amped up flavors, give it a good shake pour into cope glasses and finish with just a touch of topo chico, then drop a lemon wheel into each. For a more refreshing, easy sipping concoction, pour over ice into a Collins glass until about ⅓ of the glass is full, then top with Topo Chico and garnish with a lemon wheel on the rim of the glass.

Keep in mind, you have extra honey syrup. You can always add a dash here and there to sweeten the drink ro your tastes. Play around a little and see how it affects the balance!