Latest / Into The Barchive / Hard Cider Cocktails: From the Stone Fence to the Snakebite
Transcript
- 44 Audio Only: Into the bark eye where the past comes alive. Great. Zip the tails, let them drive. Welcome to the bark hive. Hello, Barkhabists, and welcome to Into the Barkive, the podcast where we dive deep into the stories, people, and cocktails that have shaped the way we've drunk. I'm Tim Wright, mixologist, above average curious drinker, and your tipsy tour guide through Boo's history. And I'm Dr. Blake Jones, historian, mixologist, and certified specialist of spirits. Here to pour out the stories behind what's in your glass. Long before the cocktail became a fixture at the American Bar. Cider was already a picture of the American table. Yeah, in colonial America, apples weren't just food. They were an important source of fermentation, producing a beverage that could be stored, transported, and enjoyed throughout the year. And eventually cider found its way into mixed drinks. Yeah, the stone fence, for example, reaches back to the colonial era, combining cider with spirits like rum or whiskey. Centuries later, British drinkers created a very different cider combination, the snake bite, right? Mixing hard cider with a lager. And by the 1980s, that snake bite had particularly become associated with British pubs and youth culture. Two drinks separated by centuries in an ocean, but united in a simple idea. Ciders make a surprisingly versatile cocktail ingredient. So today we're exploring the history of hard cider. How it became part of drinking traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, and what happens when you bring cider behind the bar. We'll make the stone fence and that snake bite along the way, and we're gonna raise a glass to the orchard. So let's get into the barcide. The first cocktail we're gonna make is called the Stone Fence from Colonial America. This is just spirits, a few dashes of bitters, and hard cider. So for this one, I'm gonna use rye whiskey, which of course would have been the traditional choice of whiskey in the colonial era. So predates bourbon. You could also use a rum or an apple brandy or even a grape. Brandy if you like. So add my rye whiskey. I'm gonna add one dash of Angostura bitter, so that's two with the Japanese dasher, so one and two. And then when I do highballs, I like to pour a little of the carbonated ingredient in first. So I've got my hard cider. This is the painted porch cider from Yazoo Brewery, a local craft brewery here in Nashville. So I've poured a little to start combining the bitters, the whiskey, and the cider together. Then I'm gonna add ice to my glass and kind of fill it up with some ice. And then I'm gonna top it off with some more of that hard cider. And then essentially depending on how rustic you want the drink, you can leave it there, plain and simple. You could garnish with a fan of apples, but I just want to keep it simple like they probably would have in the colonial era, because they wouldn't have been slicing apples and putting it on a pit. So there's the stone fence. Cheers. The snake bite, a very uncomplicated cider cocktail. And a pint glass. Let's take and get a half a glass full of a nice lager. I don't like all the carbonation, so I make sure I get a lot of that head out of the way. I don't want it all extra bubbly in my stomach. Next, crack open a nice cider. Fill it the rest of the way. And here my friends, as the head settles, we have our snake bite. Cheers! Now that we've built the cocktails, let's build the context. Dr. Jones, let's start with this obvious question. What are we actually talking about when we talk about hard ciders? Well, at its most basic, hard cider is fermented apple juice. Okay? Apples are pressed, the juice is fermented by yeast, and the resulting beverage contains alcohol. That sounds incredibly straightforward. It is, and that's part of the reason why cider has such a long history. Apples grow in a lot of climates where grapes don't necessarily thrive. And once you have apples, fermentation gives you a way to preserve their juice in an alcoholic form. And that's important historically because fresh water wasn't always something that you wanted to drink. Exactly. Fermented beverages were often a part of everyday life. Now we should be careful about the old cliche that people in the past simply couldn't drink water. Okay. They they certainly did drink water, but fermented beverages had advantages. They were storable, potable, calorie containing, and socially embedded in daily life. And the in the American colonies, I guess the cider becomes equally as important then. Yeah, particularly in New England. Apples could be grown locally there, and cider became a practical farm beverage. There was a whole infrastructure around the apple harvest: orchards, presses, barrels, taverns. So, which gives us a very useful distinction, I guess. Then when we're talking about ciders historically, we're talking about something that is consider considerably different than this sweet, filtered apple cider that we might buy at the grocery store today. Absolutely. Farmhouse cider could be dry, tart, funky, acidic, tannic, and sometimes quite strong. Strong? Good segue into the stone fence. Yeah, and I mean this is a drink that where the recipe is almost comically simple. Which is often a sign that we're dealing with something very old. Yeah, the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails traces the drink back to the colonial era. Okay. Under the name Samson. Samson strong. Yeah. So and under the name Samson, we have records of it as early as seventeen fifty. The drink also appears under names including the stone wall and the stone fence. And the basic idea is wonderfully direct. It's spirit, cider. Yeah. And historically the spirit was originally rum, later whiskey, specifically rye whiskey. Okay. the cider could be non-alcoholic sweet cider, although hard cider was preferred. And apple jack or apple brandy was also sometimes substituted when whiskey was scarce, or apple jack was in abundance. And this is one of those cocktails that the cider that you choose really matters. Absolutely. If you use a very sweet cider, the drink becomes something quite different. A dry tart cider, like the painted porch cider, gives the whiskey room to breathe in this cocktail. And this is one of the great historical cocktails where sometimes a recipe isn't a recipe in the modern sense. It's kind of that formula. Yeah, spirit plus cider. And that formula could be adapted to whatever you had in terms of spirits or cider. And this is one of the reasons that like the stone fence has survived. It's less It's it's kind of the single I guess recipe that you could just make a family of drinks and then build around that. So you mentioned substituting rum or rye or brandies. And then maybe I just like that one whiskey, but I want a different flavor. So I substitute my cider because I want it more tart or more sweet. Absolutely. Well. And the other interesting historical wrinkle here is that Jerry Thomas, of course, included the stone fence in his 1862 book. How to mix drinks, his version calls for whiskey, a couple small lumps of ice, and sweet cider. Which is a great reminder that historical cocktails don't always come conform to the modern idea of what we think a drink has to be this woolen, like correct recipe. especially when we're talking about drinks that I guess existed decades and decades before anyone bothered to actually write them down. And and what's interesting, the stone fence has one of those fantastic stories that has become attached to it. Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, right? A militia unit from the Revolutionary War. And the story goes that Ethan Allen and his men drank stone fences before their 1775 attack on Fort Ticonderoga, which is a wonderful cocktail story. It is, but it's also one where we need to distinguish legend from documented history. In other words, don't put it in your dissertation because just because it's a great bar story. But this story does tell us something about the drink's reputation. And namely that it was considered potent. Yes. Okay. The Oxford Companion has a wonderfully colorful description of the colonial version. Hard cider and plenty of rum with a reputation for being remarkably strong. And then there's an old explanation for the name that essentially compares the effect the effect of drinking too many of these drinks to running headfirst into a stone wall. It feels less like a cocktail a cocktail origin story. It feels more like a warning label, like don't do this, or caution, handle with care. Quidado. Cuidado. So now let's make a pretty dramatic geographic and cultural jump from the colonial New England to Britain. Yeah, we're going straight from this straight spirit and cider to an equal balance of boot beer and cider, the snake bite. Which sounds like something you'd order at a cocktail bar today and expect to be served in a fancy Nick and Nora glass, and instead you're getting a pint. Yeah, it just comes up easy. And possibly a bartender is looking at you suspiciously when you ask for it. Yeah, because the snake bite is simply a mixture of lager beer and an hard cider, generally in roughly equal proportions. I noticed there was no jiggering. Nope. Just eyeballing it. I again, I don't like a lot of the extra gases in mine. It just it's a preference, so I do pour a heavier head and have to let it settle. So but for filming, it's kind of Poured pasture just to get it going. But yeah, it's whatever is there. Finish the bottle, finish the can, kind of eyeball it, and there it is. Yeah. Now the Oxford Companion to Beer describes the snake bite as a beer cocktail. Yes. Although it notes it has little in common with what we may think of as cocktails. So and unlike this the stone fence, the snake bite isn't an accident. Or this type of, I guess, ancient drink either. Yeah, the heyday of the snake bike was in nineteen eighties Britain, particularly among students and youth subcultures, including like goths and punks. Which gives this drink a very different kind of historical s significance. Yeah, it's a reminder that mixed drinks aren't only products of elegant hotel bars and famous bartenders. Sometimes they're products of pubs, students, subcultures, and peoples who want to combine two things already sitting in front of them. I mean, this has to be one of the most aggressively uncomplicated drinks that we have made, right? It's that's part of the charm of this thing is hey, I've got a lager, I my cider, I'm done. Yeah. Are there any variations? Sure. One of the best known is known as the snake bite and black. Where you add a black currant cordial to the drink. And that addition changes the drink considerably now because suddenly you're introducing this dark intensity of like this dark fruit sweetness and hell color. Absolutely. In fact, this drink has sometimes been called diesel or purple nasty. Purple nasty. I like that a lot. So now that you we've talked about this snake bite and its reputation. Let's go into a little bit different approach. Like, why does cider work in these types of cocktails? Well, I think it gives us an opportunity to think about what it's bringing, like acidity. Okay, that's huge. And we tend to think only of citrus when we're thinking about cocktail acidity, lemon juice, lime juice, to a lesser extent grapefruit. But cider can contribute acidity. without delivering that same sharp concentrated sourness of citrus. Instead of this cocktail having this lemon, the the cider is actually giving this acidic brightness to it, not this kind of acidic sourness to it. Exactly. In addition to acidity, cider brings fruit character. Apple is interesting because it can be delicate though. Yeah, and complex. Depending on the cider, you can get tart apple or baked apple or hair-like notes or tannin or spice, earthiness, funk, sometimes even savory characteristics. I mean, and then mine is still bubbling, carbonation. Absolutely, and that gives it texture and lift. And that's especially important when you're using cider as a modifier instead of simply using it as a premium beverage mixer. Yeah, and finally the last thing cider brings to a cocktail is sweetness, or more accurately, the perception of sweetness. Yeah, because not every cider is sweet. Exactly. A dry cider may have a little residual sugar left in it, but still tastes fruity. And that's useful in cocktails because it allows you to get apple flavor without turning the drink into like liquid apple pie. Then let's let's take cider to the side for a moment and go, hey, I'm a novice. I'm going into the liquor store. I'm buying cider for the first time. Like Yes, if I'm standing in front of a bottle shop and looking at a dozen different ciders in front of me, what should I be thinking about? So the first question you need to think about is dry versus sweet. And if you're adding a spirit with a lot of character, I guess you say like the w rye whiskey for yours, you're generally wanting something dry enough to keep the drink balanced? Yeah. And the second thing you want to look for is acidity. Because a cider with good acidity is gonna behave much more like a cocktail ingredient. Okay, so now you're talking about cocktails. So if we're really thinking about a balanced cocktail, another thing would be like tannin then. Absolutely. Some traditional ciders are rich in tannins that sensation that astringency that helps cleanse and dry your palate and give you all a wine-like experience. I guess this means like this tannic cider makes I guess it could stand up. against that like robust kind of spirit. Yeah, and then there's this question of flavor intensity. If it's extremely delicate, don't pair it with something that's gonna obliterate it. Yeah, that that kind of makes sense there. I guess that's one of the reasons that the stone fence uses uses that rye and that dry cider. It balances itself. if we were to use a more fragile, delicate cider, which could be great on its own. We would want a lighter spirit to kind of pair that with if we were going with that lighter cider. That that that makes perfect sense. So let's get practical here for for a moment then. If you're a bartender or just somebody experimenting at home, how do you start working with cider? I'd start with the stone fence principle. Okay, g take meaning flight. Take like take the spirit that you already have and work with apple. So you could use bourbon. Okay. Maybe rye. Rum. Calvados. Okay, now you're starting to get a little fancy. Yeah, so French apple brandy. So brandy itself could could Scotch work with this. Absolutely, especially if you're using a more dry acidic cider. And if it's dry and acidic, maybe you use a little less sweetness, what we talked about earlier. And then but we don't want to forget about the bitters, right? Yeah. is to make it complexity or to make it complex. the Angostura bitters like I use in the stone fence bring baking spice. If you use orange bitters, it can emphasize the citrus or fruit notes. you could even use other sorts of spice bitters or apple bitters to like reinforce the autumnal character of the drink. Okay, but I think there's a trap there because even though we are in fall, we don't necessarily have to always lean that deep into the cocktail, right? You don't need to make Every cocktail of slider tastes like fall, Thanksgiving. Yeah, and apple does not automatically mean cinnamon or nutmeg or clove or pumpkin. Okay, we talked about cider can be bright, it can be dry, it can be funky, it can be mineral, it can be all these different things. So think about it kind of like a wine-like. Yeah, so if we treat cider like a serious fermented beverage, rather than merely some sort of seasonal ingredient. It opens up a lot more possibilities. Okay. We we've taken this dive into cider. We've traveled to our little colonial New England taverns back in the 1980s, British pubs, right? We've traveled to I guess two different drinks today that united by one decep deceptibly see I guess simple ingredient. It was hard cider. Yes. So the stone. Fence reminds us that cider had been has been intertwined with American drinking for centuries, sometimes alongside rum, sometimes whiskey, sometimes applejack. And the drink is documented under several names and reaches back at least to the colonial period. And the snake bike reminds us that cocktails don't have to come from this famous bartender or from a luxury hotel. Sometimes it just comes in a pint glass from a pub. That a bunch of goth kids really liked. Yeah. And then that even create a legend that the snake bite was illegal. Is there more to come about that? Well, I mean, it's one of those things where like there's been this reputation because Britain has regulations about how the sizes of alcoholic drinks and how you measure and serve them. And so In the time when the snake bike came about, there was a whole concern about like binge drinking among the among these youth populations. And so even though you would think about the snake bike being lower ABV than something with spirits, there was a concern that it was an illegal drink, but that's largely a myth. So sorry for the digression. So we'll add to the fact that not only became culturally significant because of It brought in individuals and just created a very good atmosphere for our bar scene. It became controversial, which most great drinks have some kind of story like that. Absolutely. let us know on social media if you like to make a stone fence. Share what you made. Show us your version of this. Or if you do like the snake bike, which lager did you choose? Which cider did you go with? Make your own. Share it with us. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you're listening. on our podcast or on YouTube. If you're enjoying the show, leave a rating, make some kind of interaction. It bumps us up in some kind of algorithm. So it will help other future bark of this find us. Yeah. So like, subscribe, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and then those podcasts are Spotify and Apple. Yeah. I guess as we move deeper into our fall, our next episode, we're gonna start looking at another ingredient. That has an especially fascinating relationship with this season. Yeah. Walnuts, and more specifically, noccino. That dark, bittersweet Italian liqueur made from young green walnuts. And if cider is all about the fruit of the orchard, Noccino takes us kind of somewhere a little darker, more aromatic. Into the world of nuts, spice, bitterness, and digestive. Which sounds like exactly where we should be as these leaves are starting to turn. So next time we'll pour ourselves some nochino and explore the cocktails that have grown up around this unusual liqueur. Until next time, keep exploring the past, one drink at a time. As we dive deeper into the barka.