Why I'm Flying to Florida for the High and Dry Festival
One Minnesota drinker's honest take on the cannabis beverage scene, why High & Dry is worth the flight, and what I'm planning to taste on July 11
Three summers ago, I poured my last glass of pinot grigio and decided I was done — or at least mostly done — with alcohol. Not for any dramatic reason. I wasn't in crisis, although I do have MS and it changed my life completely. I just noticed that I felt better when I didn't drink, slept better when I didn't drink, showed up for my mornings better when I didn't drink, and the math finally got too obvious to keep ignoring.
What I wasn't ready for was the social part. The "what are you having?" part. The wedding-toast part. The Friday-night-with-friends part. The part where you suddenly realize how many of our shared rituals are organized around a glass with something in it.
So I started looking for what came next. I tried sparkling water with bitters. I tried non-alcoholic spirits. I tried mocktails that tasted like a child's juice box wearing a tuxedo. And then, somewhere in there, I tried my first cannabis beverage — a can handed to me at a backyard cookout by a friend who said, "trust me." And something clicked.
That click turned into a passion, soon 23rd State's FRESH PRESS was born, and I'm excited to be sharing it with everyone in attendance on Saturday, and that is why I'm flying from the Twin Cities to St. Petersburg, Florida on Saturday, July 11, 2026 to attend the High & Dry Festival. And it's why I think you should consider going too.
I can't wait to meet you all there!
— Leah Kollross, founder, 23rd State
What Is the High & Dry Festival?
The High & Dry Festival is, by its own description, Florida's premier functional beverage celebration — and after looking at the lineup, I'm inclined to believe it. It takes place at The Coliseum in St. Petersburg from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, July 11, 2026, and brings together more than 75 brands working in the functional beverage space.
If you're not familiar with the term "functional beverage" yet, you will be soon. It's the umbrella that covers cannabis-infused drinks, adaptogenic blends, ceremonial kava, kanna-based mood drinks, mushroom elixirs, and basically every category of drink that exists for a reason other than getting you drunk. Some of these ingredients have been used for centuries. Some are brand new. All of them are part of a larger consumer shift away from alcohol and toward drinks that do something — relax you, lift you, focus you, connect you — without the next-day cost.
What makes High & Dry different from a typical festival is that it isn't built around bands or DJs or VIP cabanas. It's built around tasting and learning. Your ticket gets you unlimited samples from every participating brand, plus access to four dedicated education stations covering cannabis, mushrooms, kanna, and kava. The whole thing is sized to feel personal — three hours, one venue, real conversations with the people actually making the drinks.
Early Bird tickets are $25 for General Admission and $40 for VIP, with the sale ending May 31.
If it was up to me, I'd get a VIP pass, partly because I'm a sucker for early access and partly because I'd want as much time as possible to talk to founders.
How I Got Here: My Personal Path to Functional Beverages
I think a lot of people end up at events like High & Dry because of a personal journey, so I'll share mine briefly.
The pivot away from alcohol wasn't dramatic for me, but it was complete enough that I had to figure out what to do with the social muscle memory. The reach for something cold and interesting at 6 p.m. on a Friday. The "first drink of the evening" ritual. The thing in your hand at a party that signals you're participating.
For me, low-dose cannabis beverages turned out to be the closest analog. Not because they replicated alcohol exactly — they don't, and that's a feature, not a bug — but because they slotted into the same emotional space. A drink that marks the beginning of an evening. A drink that softens the edges of a long week. A drink that fits in your hand at a backyard party.
The first time I had a 23rd State FRESH PRESS in the R&D lab at Earl Giles, I was three months into the alcohol-free experiment and starting to wonder if I was going to spend the rest of my life as the person sipping cold seltzer while everyone else's drinks looked more interesting. The FRESH PRESS was vivid, fruit-forward, and cold, and it gave me a gentle, social, low-dose lift over about 45 minutes that felt right for the moment. I wasn't impaired. I wasn't sloshed. I was just there — present, relaxed, having a great time I knew I had to share with everyone.
I've been drinking a variety of hemp bevys pretty consistently since. The brand is based in Minnesota, and built around an alcohol-alternative thesis that believes ditching alcohol doesn't mean being left out, and most importantly that joy is an important part of wellness.
Why I'm Excited to See 23rd State on the Floor
Most cannabis beverage companies I've tried are perfectly fine. A few are great. A small handful are doing something genuinely different. 23rd State falls in that small handful for me, and not just because the drinks taste good.
What should get everyone's attention early is that the brand can cite actual consumer research — specifically, the MoreBetter Real-World Infused Beverage Study, which is the largest independent consumer study of infused beverages to date, with more than 5,000 participants across 20 brands. That's not a marketing study. That's a real-world look at how people are actually using these drinks — when, why, in place of what, and with what effects.
For someone like me, who came to functional beverages skeptical and is still figuring out my own relationship to them, that research-forward orientation matters. I don't want to be told a story about what a drink "might" do. I want to know what other actual people, drinking the actual product in their actual lives, have actually experienced. 23rd State leans into that, and it shows up in everything from our packaging to our content to the way our team talks about our products.
The other reason I'm excited to be at High & Dry is that the festival's audience is essentially our target customer. Sober-curious. Wellness-aware. Skeptical of marketing. Open to real conversation. If you're going to introduce yourself to a few thousand brand-new functional beverage drinkers, this is the room.
What I'm Planning to Taste at the 23rd State Booth
There are three drinks, plus a beverage enhancer in the 23rd State lineup, and I am sampling Fresh Press Perry, our flagship pear cider.
FRESH PRESS
This is the one I came in on, so it gets the first paragraph. FRESH PRESS is the juice-forward member of the family — built on real fruit, bright in flavor, and formulated with a low-dose, fast-onset hemp-derived THC profile that comes on in about 15 to 20 minutes and lasts through a reasonable social window before easing off. For me, it's a backyard drink, a deck drink, a "we're walking to the brewery but I don't actually want a beer" drink. It was a featured product in the MoreBetter study, which means there's a lot of real consumer data behind how it actually performs in real lives.
The fruit forward-ness is part of what makes FRESH PRESS work for new consumers — there's no cannabis-y vegetal taste hiding behind sweetness. It tastes like fruit, because it is fruit.
SHAKE
SHAKE is the more sophisticated cousin. If FRESH PRESS is the backyard drink, SHAKE is the dinner-party drink. It sits in the same flavor space as a craft cocktail or a glass of wine — richer, more developed, a little more grown-up. This is the one I reach for when I'm going to be sitting at a long table with friends and I want a drink that holds its own next to whatever they're drinking.
I won't be sampling this one, but if you stop by the booth you can get a 40% off coupon.
Blush Crush Infused Bubbly
Blush Crush is the celebration product, and honestly, it's the one I've ended up recommending to the most people in my life. It's pink. It's bubbly. It's lightly sweet. It looks gorgeous in a champagne flute, which means it solves the "I want to participate in the toast" problem at weddings and milestone parties.
I've watched several of my friends transition into the cannabis beverage category through Blush Crush specifically — because it looks and feels enough like a glass of sparkling rosé that the social part requires zero explanation. You hold a flute. You clink. You're part of the moment. The fact that there's no hangover is just a bonus.
If you're heading to High & Dry and you're brand new to cannabis beverages, I'd suggest starting your tasting at the 23rd State booth.
I can get you reserved access to our 750mL Blush Crush bottles. It's the gentlest introduction in the lineup. These things sell out fast, so this may be your only opportunity to get a bottle before they are gone!
The Education Stations I'm Most Curious About
Beyond the brand tables, High & Dry has built out four dedicated education stations that I think will be one of the highlights of the event.
Cannabis is the one most attendees will be familiar with, at least at a high level. But there's a lot of nuance below the surface — full-spectrum versus isolate, different cannabinoid ratios, fast-onset emulsion technology, dosing for new consumers, the difference between hemp-derived and marijuana-derived THC, and what the regulatory landscape actually looks like state by state. I expect to learn things here even as a regular consumer.
Kava is the station I'm most personally curious about. Kava is a traditional Pacific Island plant medicine that produces a calm, sociable, slightly euphoric effect — and there are full kava bars in cities like St. Pete, Tampa, and Asheville that operate like neighborhood pubs. It's been on my list to try for a while, and I'd rather try it for the first time at a station where someone can actually walk me through what to expect.
Kanna is even more obscure to most American consumers. It's a South African succulent that has been used for centuries for mood lift and stress relief, and it's quietly emerging as one of the more interesting new ingredients in the functional beverage space. I have no real reference point for kanna yet, which is exactly why I want to spend time at this station.
Mushrooms in the functional beverage context typically means adaptogenic and nootropic mushrooms — lion's mane, reishi, cordyceps, chaga — not psilocybin. These ingredients have a much longer track record in wellness culture and are showing up in everything from coffee alternatives to elixirs to soft drinks. I'm curious to see who's doing it best.
Why This Festival Matters for Consumers
There's a version of the alcohol-alternative conversation that gets stuck at "you should drink less." High & Dry isn't that conversation. It's the next one.
The next conversation is: okay, so what are you drinking instead? And the answer is no longer "water" or "an awkwardly fancy mocktail." It's a real, mature, ingredient-driven, research-backed category of drinks that work — in flavor, in function, in social context. Functional beverages are not a placeholder for alcohol. They're their own thing. And they're starting to be really good.
For me, the value of an event like this isn't just discovering new brands, though I'll definitely do that. It's the experience of being in a room where the conversation has already moved past defending the choice to drink less. Everyone at High & Dry is past that. The question on the floor isn't should we be doing this? It's which one of these do I like best? That's a much more interesting question.
It's also a way to support a category that's still finding its footing legally and culturally. Cannabis beverages, in particular, are navigating a patchwork of state-by-state regulations and an evolving federal landscape. Showing up to events, talking to founders, and buying from brands that are doing the work of moving the category forward responsibly is one of the most concrete ways consumers can shape what this market becomes.
Planning Your Day in St. Pete
If you're flying in like I am, here's what I'd suggest based on a few weeks of planning:
The venue. The Coliseum is a historic ballroom in downtown St. Petersburg with great acoustics and even better light. It's an underrated event venue and worth seeing in its own right.
Hydration. Three hours of unlimited functional beverage samples is a lot, even at low doses. Drink water between tastings, pace yourself, you don't actually have to finish every sample.
Pacing your dose. If you're brand new to hemp-derived THC drinks, my honest recommendation is to start with smaller pours, give each one 30 to 45 minutes before reaching for another, and remember that the goal is to enjoy the afternoon, not to find your ceiling. The brands at this festival are pouring with consumer wellness in mind, but pace is your responsibility.
Tickets. Grab them through the official festival site before Early Bird pricing ends on May 31. VIP is worth it if you want extra time and a less crowded entry.
After the festival. Plan something low-key for the evening. You'll have tasted a lot, learned a lot, and probably met some great people. I'm planning a slow dinner somewhere with outdoor seating and absolutely no obligation to be anywhere afterward.
See You at The Coliseum
If you've been even a little bit curious about what life looks like on the other side of alcohol — or if you're already there and looking for the brands worth knowing — High & Dry is the place to spend a Saturday afternoon this July. I'll be at the 23rd State table for a chunk of it, FRESH PRESS in hand, probably oversharing about my journey to anyone who asks.
Come say hi. And if you're new to all of this, don't worry — that's most of the room.
For more on 23rd State's full 2026 events calendar, including festivals, pop-ups, and community partnerships beyond High & Dry, visit the 23rd State events page. And for full details, ticketing, and the complete brand lineup, head to the official High & Dry Festival site.
