THC Painkiller Riff (No-Rum Painkiller Drink Recipe) Recipe

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THC Painkiller Riff (No-Rum Painkiller Drink Recipe) Ingredients

1 packet Elevate Blood Orange THC drink mixer, 5 mg or 10 mg

4 oz / 120 ml pineapple juice

0.75 oz / 22 ml cream of coconut

0.25 to 0.5 oz / 7 to 15 ml faux rum syrup, to taste (recipe below)

Freshly grated nutmeg, for garnish

Dried pineapple wedge and dried orange wheel, for garnish (mine are from Convenient Cocktail Co; fresh works too)

How to make a THC Painkiller Riff (No-Rum Painkiller Drink Recipe)

Faux rum syrup: the classic leans on dark rum for caramel, molasses, and vanilla, so we build just that part back. Warm equal parts demerara sugar and water with a spoonful of molasses until it dissolves, then off the heat stir in a splash of vanilla extract and a splash of rum extract (heat cooks the flavor out of extracts, so always add them off the burner). And yes, extracts carry a trace of alcohol, the same way the vanilla in a birthday cake does. We're talking drops across a whole batch of syrup. It keeps a couple weeks in the fridge.

A note on sweetness: between the cream of coconut, the syrup, and the packet, this drink has plenty of sugar in play. Start with 0.25 oz of syrup, taste, and only go to the full 0.5 oz if it needs it. Use unsweetened pineapple juice, not a pineapple drink blend.

You'll notice there's no orange juice in my version. The Blood Orange packet has that job covered, and it brings more orange flavor than an ounce of juice ever did.

Give the packet a head start: stir it into about 1 oz of water until it's fully dissolved. Then add it to your shaker with the pineapple juice, cream of coconut, and faux rum syrup, add ice, and shake hard. Pour the whole thing over crushed ice. Grate fresh nutmeg over the top and don't skip it, the nutmeg is half the drink. Finish with the dried pineapple and orange.

Worried about sweetness? I was too, and then the packet surprised me. The Blood Orange Elevate is tart and only a little sweet on its own, so it balances the cream of coconut without any citrus juice. I tested this drink expecting to need a squeeze of lime and never reached for it. If your pour runs sweeter, lime is still the fix.

One shopping note: cream of coconut is the thick sweetened stuff, not coconut milk and not coconut cream. Coco Lopez is the classic can, and Coco Real is the squeezable bottle I actually use.

Painkiller vs pina colada: people mix these up constantly, and they are cousins. Both build on rum, pineapple, and cream of coconut. The Painkiller adds orange juice and a snowfall of fresh nutmeg, and it gets shaken and poured over crushed ice instead of blended. The orange and nutmeg are the whole personality of the drink, which is exactly why a blood orange THC mixer slots in so naturally.

I built this as half of a pair with the No-Booze Penicillin, two drinks named like a pharmacy shelf with no alcohol between them. And every THC discount code I have lives on the THC discounts page.

THC Painkiller riff made with Blood Orange Elevate drink mixer, served over crushed ice with grated nutmeg, dried pineapple, and a dried orange wheel

Mission Farms paid for this recipe and the video it comes from. They did not pay for my opinions. Those are still free, and still mine. The Elevate links on this page are affiliate links, so I earn a commission if you buy through one.

The Painkiller comes from the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands, a beach bar with no dock. You anchor, swim in, and pay with wet bills, which is how the bar got its name. Somebody there built this drink in the 1970s, though who deserves the credit is still argued about, and in 1989 Pusser's Rum trademarked the name and has defended it hard enough to spark a bartender boycott. So let's be clear up front: this is not THE Painkiller. This is a riff, and it swaps the rum for THC.

The THC comes from Elevate, a drink mixer powder from Mission Farms, a small farm in Bend, Oregon. The Blood Orange flavor is the move here. A real Painkiller already leans on orange juice, and the packet turns that supporting note way up while the THC rides along. One packet is one serving, 5 mg or 10 mg depending on which you buy, so dosing is as simple as counting to one. Code SHARETHEGOOD takes 40% off.

Fair warning on texture: losing the rum costs the drink some backbone, so this pours shorter and fruitier than the bar version. Over crushed ice with fresh nutmeg on top, it tastes like the beach anyway.