We love to mix things up and add spice to life around our restaurant and brewpub. While we’re best known for our handcrafted beer, our bartenders and beverage mavens are always crafting festive, flavorful concoctions. To satisfy the entire family, they specialize in both libations and non-alcoholic drinks.

This holiday season, we’ve got a few delights waiting. Come and enjoy them, and share your own favorites in the comments section.

Wassail

Our wassail is a steamed blend of rum, spiced apple cider and Standing Stone Oatmeal Stout, melding tradition with one of our brewery favorites. Wassail refers to a drink, a festival and caroling. The custom originated in England as part of a celebration expressing gratitude for the apple harvest and toasting future growing seasons. Communities would go a wassailing, singing and drinking among the orchards to boost apple trees’ health and protect them from evil spirits. Traditional wassail drinks combined cider, mulling spices and toast, sometimes with ale or mead. It’s evolved into lots of recipes over time, and we hope you enjoy our take on it. It goes well with our Marionberry Cobbler, Cheescake or Bread Pudding, as well as many of our other special seasonal desserts.

Spiced Apple-tini

Apple cider is synonymous with autumn in Southern Oregon, where orchards dot the landscape and trees with ripe fruit can be found on almost any street. To add a little kick to this seasonal beverage, we created a martini by shaking organic cider, cinnamon schnapps and spiced rum. This will warm the palate and awaken your taste buds on winter’s cloudy cool days.  We think it pairs best with warm gingersnap cookies or our Oregon Raised Pork Chops with sauteed apples and spinach. You can try this at home, too. With such a hearty local bounty of apples, it’s easy to find an organic cider from an orchard in your area. We like Thompson Creek Organic from the Applegate Valley.  If you have a juicer, consider buying organic apples from your local coop, natural foods store, orchard or roadside fruit stand and prepare with your own spices.

Chai Toddy

Our house made Black Chai Tea is a customer and employee favorite year round, served either steamed and warm or shaken over ice. We brew the black tea and spices from scratch, offering a unique chai blend available only at Standing Stone. As much as we enjoy the alcohol-free version, which is always available, we thought we’d add a holiday twist to make this the perfect night cap. Our bartenders are happily preparing the new Hot Chai Toddy, served warm with spiced rum and Tuaca liquer. With a little bite and and sweetness, this wintertime drink satisfies through the last sip. We enjoy a glass with our Stir Crazy Cake,  served warm with cinnamon and topped with bourbon whipped cream.

Steamed Ginger Lemonade

Our housemade ginger lemonade is a staple on our menu. We like the zest of  fresh ginger as it plays with honey and freshly-squeezed lemon to create a refreshing and healthful beverage. Last year, one of our employees was feeling under the weather and our bartender steamed a mug and served it to her warm. A new drink was born!  Steamed ginger lemonade has steadily become a favorite among our local customers as the weather grows colder, and we suggest asking for it this way on your next visit.  We don’t have it listed on our menu, but our servers are happy to bring it steaming and warm upon request.