Habanero tequila gifts

We've been going through a major habanero tequila + grapefruit juice phase for the last few months, so it only seemed natural to package some up as Christmas gifts. Oh, and those little peppers there? Not purchased as photographic props, I promise. We're replenishing our personal supply this week.

{habanero tequila}

We managed to co-design a wrap around label that includes the recipe for the drink. We only argued about fonts/spacing once. Mostly because we were both too tired to keep going.

{habanero tequila}

Notes:

We were working from this recipe. It's great, but we've learned a few tricks.

Start with a decent affordable tequila. You don't want an anejo for this, mostly because it would be a waste of aged tequila. We used a Cazadores reposado, although I'd like to try it with a blanco soon.

Taste your peppers before you use them. Not all peppers are created equal and every once in a while you get a crazy hot one. Take a tiny bite first, and then decide how to handle it (you can reduce the steeping time, or you can remove almost all of the seeds - both will help).

Set a timer and taste every hour to make sure you aren't going beyond your spiciness tolerance. If it accidentally goes too far, you can mix it with regular tequila to help balance it out.

And once you want to make the drinks ...

Highly recommend using only unsweetened pink grapefruit juice. This could be my prejudice against sweet cocktails, but I think the strong flavor from the grapefruit is all you need. No sugar here.

The recipe is for a large batch. We basically break it down into parts so we can scale it. They recommend a 1:3 ratio of alcohol to juice, but you'll want to see where you like it. I'll sometimes do 1:3 but other times go for a 1:2. A normal drink has 2 oz of alcohol (1/4 cup).

Oh, and I used these bottles for packaging. I can promise you that I checked every website known to man and this ended up being the best balance of price + shipping. It drives me nuts when shipping is almost as much as the product, but I guess you can't really get away from that when you're purchasing glass.