Here’s a drink you’ve likely seen on the menu of every bar you’ve been at, even the dive ones, just under a different name. The old, original name for the drink is the Stone Fence. You’ve likely seen it on menus as an Angry Ball: Fireball and Angry Orchard.
The Origin
This drink dates back to the American Revolution, famously by the Green Mountain boys (they went with cider and rum). The drink has grown over time, with the modern version going with cider, aromatic bitters, and bourbon/rye.
This is likely one of the first American cocktails, as it was made with local cider and rum. Considering the time that this was being made, I am willing to say that the cider would contain alcohol of it’s own as pasteurization didn’t come into being until the 1860s. Up until then, even if there was no yeast pitched, the natural yeasts and bacteria would kick off fermentation.
The Recipe
Here’s the Stone Fence as it existed in Jerry Thomas’s Bar-Tender’s Guide. Note, that this recipe is already calling for bourbon instead of rye. For the modern recipe, we’ll go with the following:
- 2 part (2 oz) Rum, Brandy, Applejack, Bourbon, Rye, or spirit of your choice
- 1 dash bitters (optional) – Aromatic is the default, but as I always say, if there’s a different flavor you want to accent, go with them.
- 5 parts (5 oz) cider (or to fill glass)
A very simple cocktail to build, fill your glass with ice. Add a splash of cider to it, then add in the spirit of your choice and the bitters. Top with the rest of the cider, and give a brief stir. The garnish on this can go whatever direction you’d like. Lemon twist/wedge to add some acidity, cinnamon stick to accentuate the spice notes, a cinnamon brown sugar rim to lean into sweetness, or even an apple slice (dried or fresh).
Variations
The sky’s the limit here. Nearly any spirit will work here, and with bitters, you can build some really great flavors that match your tastes. You can make this as a cold drink, either still or sparkling, or you can make it a warm drink for cold nights by using mulled or warm cider before adding the spirit.
Batch Prepping
To batch this, I would lean towards a punch bowl with a large ice cube, or a pump thermos depending on if I was serving it cold or warm. Another option would be to set up a build your own section. Set up a selection of ciders (cold and/or warm) and spirits/bitters (allows for guests to bring bottles to share).
Mocktail Version
This is a prime cocktail to do non-alcoholic versions. There already is sparkling NA cider, and this time of year cider is all over the place. For the additions, I would suggest going with infused simple syrups (such as cinnamon). If minuscule amounts of alcohol are allowed, I would stick with the bitters, but that’s a personal preference.
Have you had one of these? Either knowingly or unknowingly? Any preferences on either side of the formula? Let me know in the comments. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the drink, and the rest of the month.
Looks interesting.
I have cases of cider in the cellar, but no spirits. Oh well.
Have you had one of these?
There is a place near me with this cocktail. A local bourbon, apple cider, brown sugar simple syrup, and some bitters. It’s delicious.
A place in central PA I like has an apple cinnamon bourbon that I like.
I have been seeing a lot of posts like this of late:
https://x.com/amuse/status/2107920083578188051
Basically “black criminals not charged” with accompanying video.
Kinda out of the blue.
Makes me wonder if this isnt political propaganda coming from on high somewhere.
Here is another one
https://x.com/Vromanfo/status/2107984491448803596
I think we have all underestimated exactly how pernicious the Open Society Institute’s run through the judiciary has been.
Yeah I don’t know if someone is directing these posts but the phenomenon is definitely happening and leftist DA’s are pretty open about it. “Equity”, “social justice”, etc.
Charging the juvenile passenger and not charging the juvenile driver is a pretty ballsy move
It only took about this long for them to figure out that judges can just do things, and there’s essentially no accountability.
Naturally fermented apple cider is delicious.
We used to frequent apple festivals in the smokey mountain as kids.
They would press the apples with old-timey donkey-driven presses and bottle the juice in plastic gallon milk jugs for sale.
The jugs would sit out on site until sold, and they vented the top with a hot nail to make a small hole.
By the time we got home, it would be carbonated and have quite a bite, without an overt alcohol flavor.
Delicious.
What is unnaturally fermented cider?
Pasteurize it and add brewers yeast
This was just squished apples with none of the equipment, even being entirely clean. Let alone sterilized
And the filtration system was to run it through some cheese cloth to get the big pieces out. So it was a cloudy and delicious affair.
Like cyto said. Just apple
Cider.
Have you tried supernaturally fermented cider?
Yes. It tasted of tilled spirits.
Pasteurization of the juice is bad for the end product.
We use potassium metabisulfite to kill wild organizations prior to pitching yeast. Most people use wine yeast for cider, but I us ale yeast. I think it provides a superior flavor profile and leaves a bit of residual sugar.
I bottle condition for some products and keg-carbonate others.
Spontaneous fermentation (aka wild fermentation) can produce spectacular results. It is also quite capable of producing disasters.
I have some cans of hard cider that have been sitting around for a few years. Never thought to pair it with bourbon or rye – looks interesting.
Rum, Brandy, Applejack, Bourbon, Rye – nothing good I hope otherwise this sounds like alcohol abuse
Heresy. The only way to abuse alcohol is to not drink it.
Burning it as fuel is okay, I guess, but you really should have planned better…
Just because you’ve never had Patterson’s cider is no reason to disparage it.
Sounds good, I am a huge fan of the Maggie’s Farm rums.
I made some cider syrup yesterday and bought some walnut bitters to make an apple old fashioned this weekend.
I was planning on using either Uncle Nearest 1884 or Laird’s Apple Brandy because I am not a bourbon fan.
Maggie’s Farm Rum is an independent craft distillery located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
rum should come from the Caribbean not Pittsburgh
Not enough sodomy and the lash in Pitsburg?
Not enough sodomy and the lash in Pitsburg?
Pittsburg (no h) is in NH. There is not much of anything up there. The border crossing into Canada isn’t even open 24 hours.
Pittsburgh (h) in PA is big enough to have both sodomy and the lash.
Thank you for not recommending a pumpkin-flavored drink.
It’s less the pumpkin than the mix of spicess commonly associated with it.
I tend towards classics, not modern trends. Off the top of my head, I would think a twist on a Brandy Alexander would be the way to go with a pumpkin spice drink. If you want to go the old school route, I would say to go with a Pumpkin Beer Flip that’s properly pokered. Get a pumpkin beer, mix that with a whole egg, and a splash of cream. Hit that with a red hot poker, and let it heat up and caramelize the sugars in the beer.
There is no pumpkin in “pumpkin spice”. Pumpkin is not and cannot be made into a spice.
“Pumpkin spice” is the set of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, etc.) classically used to make pumpkin pie.
Been doing cider and fireball or rum for a long time.
I like the idea of doing it with the angry orchard or the like plus the bitters.
I like my apple cider sweet but the fermented cider dry as possible. There was a woodchuck we found years ago what was perfect but haven’t found it since. Seems like most people like their canned ciders sweet.
How much wood could he chuck?
One Norris.
They don’t have thumbs.
Not sure how they would chuck anything.
That heirloom cider pictured was from a new to me cidery out in the Eastern exurbs in our wine country. I was pleasantly surprised to learn it was released still, and slightly tart.
Nice.
Maybe Trump can invite Mindy McCready to the Roger Clemens medal ceremony.
Tribal recognition is another Nixon legacy that the rest of us now have to live with. Racist pseudo governments with legal authority have no place in the US under the constitution. No states should be recognizing or extending any sort of legal authority to them.
I did not know that was largely a Nixon thing.
I hate him for China detente, gold standard and the epa.
Now I hav a fourth reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_policy_of_the_Nixon_administration
Of course it was the exact opposite of what should have happened.
Which of course stoked racial hatred and further entrenched the welfare state and locked up even more land. The amount of private property bought by the tribes and state land transferred to them outside the reservation line in my neck of the woods is massive.
Then we have had a county accessor who for the last thirty years refuses to access a single taxable Indian or tribal owned property in my county above zero. Good democrat of course.
Government collectivizing as “self-determination”. Other than popular (leftist) hatred and tough guy attitude (militarism/law & order), Nixon was left-wing in both economic and social policy.
🍿
Trump admin bars Microsoft and other tech companies from seeking permanent residency for foreign workers
https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-admin-bars-microsoft-other-154728235.html
Sadly will be reversed day one of the Newsom administration.
That ain’t gonna happen.
Newsom won’t be president, but the next Democrat president, whoever that is, will reverse the police.
Oh it’ll be some gay race communist waving a jihadi flag.
Gavin only checks two of those boxes.
All these visa programs need to have a “any kid you have here with another non citizen is not a U.S. citizen” clause.
Go one step further – require permanant surgical sterilization where the visa holder is neutered completely.
Go on UCS.
I have never heard of this “PERM” program but it sounds like eliminating that would be the way to go, not just slut-shaming a handful of “tech giants”.
We can’t have real reform.
Just a little trimming around the edges of the bigger problem.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16193155/Obama-presidential-center-workers-union-foundation-Chicago-staff.html
From the prior thread from my X feed. The Mall of America is a “gun free zone” so there was never any danger to begin with!
I’m going to post “Gun Free Zone” signs around my property, to lure the deer into a sense of complacency.
It’ll have the same effect as the Mall of America’s declaration.
Wait until the deer start carrying.
You’ll attract the long pork.
Perfect.
That story reminded me of the existence of that ugly ass building.
I looked up the words on the building because they are undecipherable in all the pictures I’ve seen. Theu=y are truly inspiring, uplifting, and utterly empty:
For them to think that was important enough to put on the building like it was the Gettysburg address just clarifies the vapidness of the man and all of his true believers.
“Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be”
There are some folks that take that too literally and start the seizing part.
A thing of beauty.
Someone needs to tell Obama to spread the wealth around. He didn’t build that – literally. All that good shit.
It’s funny how progressives get when they actually do things in the private sector. Like I know people who are progressives politically and say all the cute bullshit, but then at work they’re the biggest cunts without the slightest bit of human empathy. Like that’s how they think they actually have to be. And it kind of dominates corporate America. Virtue signal how you support good thing politically and then do the opposite.
The government obviously has to mandate x because I’m too cunty to just do x voluntarily on my own if not forced at the barrel of a gun.
And that’s the Obama team and how its treated workers in Chicago in a nutshell.
“Workers say they were recently told that their healthcare costs would increase…”
Yeah, he made promises to all of us about that, too.
“Luke Gilday, an Obama Foundation employee and member of the union organizing committee, told the Sun-Times that workers decided to unionize because they ‘don’t even have a seat at the table.'”
That’s hilarious. ‘Seat at the table’ is a favorite Michelle Obama phrase.
Are we on the verge of a Canadian civil war? The War of the Maple Leaves?
I don’t think they will do anything other than roll over when the Mounties go door to door stealing guns.
We didn’t do shit over COVID and that should have been a shooting war.
You might not be wrong. I hope you are, but you might not be.
I would, however, point out that it’s not the first bee sting that triggers the allergic reaction – it’s the second…
I hope I am too.
Not just for the Canadians but for us. We need to wake the fuck up, and prepare. I know I’m not prepared. I could look tacticool but I know I’m a soft target.
If there’s one easy trick to not being a soft target, it is this – find three other soft targets and start training and preparing with them regularly.
Libertarians often have trouble with this, and I get that. I’m quite introverted myself. But it’s almost impossible to do anything of note operating solo. A pair of swim buddies is much more capable, and a four-man fire team can really start to get some shit done.
One guy, two FBI informants, and one undercover fed?
It’s not really all that hard to keep informers out of a small group that confines itself to strictly legal training and civil preparation activities.
A licky boom boom down.
I’m good on fuel. I think I’ve got around 2000 gal of red around here.
In the organizing committee’s open letter, the group quoted directly from a letter Obama circulated during the 2016 presidential election, which called on workers to join unions across the nation.
‘If I were looking for a good job that lets me build some security for my family, I’d join a union. If I saw a problem in my workplace, I’d organize my coworkers to do something about it,’ the quote read.
no no no. You don’t understand. You only unionize bad people’s workplaces.
Merry-go-round
Wells Fargo stock slipped as federal housing officials announced a probe into its mortgage programs aimed at boosting black and minority homeownership — with Housing Secretary Scott Turner blasting the bank’s race-based approach as “immoral” and “un-American.”
The investigation from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which put Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf on notice in a Wednesday letter — marked the latest Trump administration effort to crack down on DEI programs and similar efforts.
“Even if Wells Fargo did not violate the law, its practice of dividing Americans based on race is immoral, unethical and un-American,” Turner said in a statement.
——-
Wells said in 2022 that the effort would begin by locating black borrowers in its servicing portfolio who might qualify for refinancing assistance.
It set aside $150 million for reduced rates and other refinancing costs, along with $60 million in grants intended to support homeowners of color.
The Biden-era policy came in the wake of a Bloomberg report finding Wells turned down half of all refinancing applications by black families in 2020.
Back in 2017, the bank committed to providing $60 billion in mortgages intended to help create at least 250,000 African-American homeowners by 2027.
When I saw the headline I assumed Elizabeth Warren was accusing them of predatory lending.
They got themselves into a boatload of trouble earlier opening fake accounts.
They tried to buy their way out of trouble with DC with programs like this.
This is what happens when you make a deal with the devil.
Where better to retire for a nice supper after a hard day of pretending to honor the Hamas massacre victims than at your favorite “Palestinian” restaurant which pretends that Israel doesn’t exist.
This guy…. When Donald trolls, the media goes apeshit but this guy does it knowing none of his “friends” will call him out on it. It is impressive.
I saw that. It’s perfect trolling.
Wouldn’t all the items on a ‘Palestinian’ menu be gifted by Israel?
I saw no chicken on the menu.
I was just drinking cider and bourbon last weekend. Another interesting article. Thanks!
Unanswered in the whole article is what price diesel has to be to make electric economic…
“I don’t know that just subsidizing people is a complete answer,” Seroka said. “But maybe in the interim we’ve got to do something to help.”
Electric Big Rigs Struggle to Compete, Even With Diesel at $8 a Gallon
California ports consider $60-a-trip subsidies as truckers struggle to cover the steep costs of zero-emission fleets
https://www.wsj.com/logistics-report/electric-big-rigs-struggle-to-compete-even-with-diesel-at-8-a-gallon-2d16fd68?st=ZfLZ2B&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I would love to see the cost per mile for cargo for electric trucks vs. diesel.
I charge $1.70 a mile. I get on average 9mph between two midrange trucks.
It covers maintenance, fuel, insurance, $30 an hour windshield time and a little profit for me.
Most class 8 trucks are charging 2-2.50 a mile loaded.
California already offers generous grants to truckers to offset some of the higher costs of zero-emission vehicles that can run three times more than diesel rigs.
I can’t understand why it’s not working.
CARB sucks.
The end.
Holy shit am I tired of work. I am beating my head against a wall trying to solve issues. I just abandoned my office and came out to the garage to bitch about it.
I would love to see the cost per mile for cargo for electric trucks vs. diesel.
They don’t come out and say what sort pf an absurd price tag there is on them. What are the payments?
I looked at a couple of Kenworth box trucks two years ago. $160,000+
The last of the 2026 900 class 8 trucks started around $250,000