The Non-Alcoholic Hot Toddy (Made With THC Lemonade)

There’s a specific week every year when 5:01 PM stops being golden hour and starts being just… dark. The clocks changed, the porch is off the table, and the thing you want isn’t cold anymore. You want the mug. You want both hands around the mug.

The classic answer is a hot toddy: lemon, honey, hot water, and a pour of whiskey. Great drink, one problem: the whiskey is doing the heavy lifting, and you’ve done the weeknight whiskey math before. So we made a non-alcoholic hot toddy. This one swaps the whiskey for a can of San Buzi Strawberry Lemonade (The Social Lifesaver, demoted to a mug for the evening) — 10mg of hemp-derived Delta-9 THC, 5mg of CBG, zero alcohol — and keeps everything else that makes a toddy a toddy.

The Non-Alcoholic Hot Toddy Recipe (Strawberry)

Serves 1 — one can

What you need
1 can San Buzi Strawberry Lemonade
1 teaspoon honey
1 cinnamon stick
1 lemon slice
2 whole cloves (optional, for people who own cloves)

What you do
1. Pour the can into a small saucepan with the cinnamon stick and the cloves.
2. Warm it over low heat, stirring now and then, until it’s steaming. Keep it off a boil; it tastes better that way, and the fizz goes on its own.
3. Pour it into a mug, stir in the honey, and float the lemon slice on top.
4. Hold it with both hands like it’s a plot point.

Why a non-alcoholic hot toddy works without the whiskey

A toddy is three jobs: something tart, something sweet, and something warm. The can already handles tart — it’s lemonade, that’s the whole personality. The honey handles sweet, and you control how much (the can itself is 0g sugar, so the teaspoon is the entire sugar budget). The stove handles warm. The cinnamon stick is what makes it smell like a toddy before it tastes like one.

Warm strawberry lemonade tastes like a fruit tea somebody actually cared about. Bright, a little tart, nothing like microwaved cider from the back of the fridge.

A few true things

• One can is one can: 10mg of Delta-9 THC, and warming it doesn’t change that. One mug per person; a shared mug is roughly 5mg each.
• Give it time. Many people notice a THC drink within 10-15 minutes, but it can take up to an hour. Same rule in a mug: finish it, wait, then decide about a second. (New to this? Make a half-can toddy. Roughly 5mg.)
• 21+ only, don’t drive after one, skip it if you’re pregnant or nursing, and any amount of THC can show up on a drug test.

Make it for two

Two cans, same pan, two mugs. The rule doesn’t change: one can per mug, one mug per person. If one of you is the Couch Command type, make theirs with Blueberry Lemonade — it goes deeper and jammier when it’s warm, and it pairs with the kind of movie you’ve seen four times.

The rest of the recipes — the spritz, the slushie, the half-and-half — are on the recipes page, and the cans are at sanbuzi.com/products. In Georgia, pickup is free at ATLRx in Atlanta and Alpharetta. And if the mug becomes a habit, there’s a whole winter’s worth of alcohol-free evenings to plan for.

Cold front’s here. Put the kettle away. You’ve got a saucepan and a plan.