![Jack Rose Cocktail](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Jack_Rose_Cocktail.jpg)
Applejack is a strong
alcoholic drink
An alcoholic beverage (also called an alcoholic drink, adult beverage, or a drink) is a drink that contains ethanol, a type of alcohol that acts as a drug and is produced by fermentation of grains, fruits, or other sources of sugar. The con ...
produced from
apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ances ...
s. Popular in the
American colonial
American colonial architecture includes several building design styles associated with the colonial period of the United States, including First Period English (late-medieval), French Colonial, Spanish Colonial, Dutch Colonial, and Georgian. T ...
era, the drink's prevalence declined in the 19th and 20th centuries amid competition from other spirits.
[Michael Foley, ''Drinking with the Saints: The Sinner's Guide to a Holy Happy Hour'' (2015, ): Perhaps the most interesting option is applejack, the first distilled liquor native to North America and a great favorite among the colonists. owusually a blend of apple brandy and neutral spirits that retains the flavor of the apples /ref>]
Applejack is used in several cocktails
A cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink. Most commonly, cocktails are either a combination of spirits, or one or more spirits mixed with other ingredients such as tonic water, fruit juice, flavored syrup, or cream. Cocktails vary widely acr ...
, including the Jack Rose. It is a type of fruit brandy
In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering.
Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particul ...
.
History
Apple brandy was first produced in colonial New Jersey
The Province of New Jersey was one of the Middle Colonies of Colonial America and became the U.S. state of New Jersey in 1783. The province had originally been settled by Europeans as part of New Netherland but came under English rule after the ...
in 1698 by William Laird, a Scottish immigrant who settled in Monmouth County.[Karen Tina Harrison]
Jersey Lightning
''New Jersey Monthly'', July 13, 2009. The drink was once known as Jersey Lightning. Laird's great-grandson, Robert Laird, who served in the Continental Army, incorporated Laird's Distillery in 1780, after previously operating a tavern
A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food such as different types of roast meats and cheese, and (mostly historically) where travelers would receive lodging. An inn is a tavern that h ...
. The oldest licensed applejack distillery in the United States, Laird & Company
Laird & Company is a distillery located in the Scobeyville section of Colts Neck Township, New Jersey. Founded by Robert Laird, it is the oldest licensed distillery in the United States and received License No. 1 from the U.S. Department of th ...
of Scobeyville, New Jersey, was until the 2000s the country's only remaining producer of applejack, and continues to dominate applejack production.
Once popular in early America, applejack declined in popularity due to the rise of other spirits that were easier to manufacture on a commercial basis, including rum, bourbon, and whiskey in the 19th century and gin, vodka, and tequila in the 20th century. In 1920, with the beginning of the Prohibition era
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic be ...
, Laird's ended the production of liquor and began producing apple juice. In 1931, John Evans Laird received permission to produce apple brandy for "medicinal purposes" and stockpiled its product until the repeal of Prohibition in 1933.[Ralph Ginzburg]
Harvest Is In at Centuries-Old Distillery
''New York Times'' (October 26, 1986).
Applejack has been associated with four presidents of the United States
The president of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States, indirectly elected to a four-year term via the Electoral College. The officeholder leads the executive branch of the federal government an ...
: George Washington requested instructions for producing applejack from Robert Laird for the family's recipe for applejack; Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
served it during a brief stint as a tavern keeper in Springfield, Illinois
Springfield is the capital of the U.S. state of Illinois and the county seat and largest city of Sangamon County. The city's population was 114,394 at the 2020 census, which makes it the state's seventh most-populous city, the second largest ...
; Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
included applejack in the Manhattans he regularly consumed; and Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
gave a case of applejack to Soviet leader Alexei Kosygin
Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin ( rus, Алексе́й Никола́евич Косы́гин, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ kɐˈsɨɡʲɪn; – 18 December 1980) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as the Prem ...
in the 1967 Glassboro Summit Conference.
In the 2010s, a number of smaller craft distilleries began to produce applejack in places such as New Hampshire, Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley
The Lehigh Valley (), known colloquially as The Valley, is a geographic region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County and Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a component valley of the Great Appalachian Valley bound to the n ...
, New York's Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley (also known as the Hudson River Valley) comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York. The region stretches from the Capital District including Albany and Troy south to ...
, Holland, Michigan
Holland is a city in the western region of the Lower Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated near the eastern shore of Lake Michigan on Lake Macatawa, which is fed by the Macatawa River (formerly known locally as the Black R ...
,. and most famously in Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most pop ...
's Nickel 9 Distillery
Production
The name ''applejack'' derives from the traditional method of producing the drink, '' jacking'', the process of freezing fermented cider and then removing the ice, increasing the alcohol content:[ Cider produced after the fall harvest was left outside during the winter. Periodically the frozen chunks of ice which had formed were removed, thus concentrating the unfrozen alcohol in the remaining liquid.][ An alternative method involved placing a cask of hard cider in snow, allowing ice to form on the inside of the cask as the contents began to freeze, and then tapping the cask and pouring off the still-liquid portion of the contents. Starting with the fermented juice, with an alcohol content of less than ten percent, the concentrated result can contain 25–40% alcohol.][ Because freeze distillation is a low-infrastructure method of production compared to evaporative distillation, and does not require the burning of firewood to create heat, hard cider and applejack were historically easier to produce,][ though more expensive than grain alcohol.][Lew Nichols, Annie Proulx, ''Cider: Making, Using & Enjoying Sweet & Hard Cider'', 3rd Edition (2015, )]
The disadvantage of freeze distillation, also called fractional crystallization Fractional crystallization may refer to:
* Fractional crystallization (chemistry), a process to separate different solutes from a solution
* Fractional crystallization (geology)
Fractional crystallization, or crystal fractionation, is one of the ...
, is that the substances remaining after the removal of the water include not only ethanol, but also harmful methanol, ester
In chemistry, an ester is a compound derived from an oxoacid (organic or inorganic) in which at least one hydroxyl group () is replaced by an alkoxy group (), as in the substitution reaction of a carboxylic acid and an alcohol. Glycerides ...
s, aldehyde
In organic chemistry, an aldehyde () is an organic compound containing a functional group with the structure . The functional group itself (without the "R" side chain) can be referred to as an aldehyde but can also be classified as a formyl group ...
s, and fusel alcohol
Fusel alcohols or fuselol, also sometimes called fusel oils in Europe, are mixtures of several higher alcohols (those with more than two carbons, chiefly amyl alcohol) produced as a by-product of alcoholic fermentation. The word ''Fusel'' is G ...
s. In modern times, reducing methanol with the absorption of a molecular sieve
A molecular sieve is a material with pores (very small holes) of uniform size. These pore diameters are similar in size to small molecules, and thus large molecules cannot enter or be adsorbed, while smaller molecules can. As a mixture of molec ...
is a practical method for production.
When commercial production began, applejack was also starting to be produced through evaporative distillation
Distillation, or classical distillation, is the process of separating the components or substances from a liquid mixture by using selective boiling and condensation, usually inside an apparatus known as a still. Dry distillation is the he ...
.
Modern commercially produced applejack is often no longer produced by jacking but rather by blending apple brandy and neutral grain spirits. [Sanborn Conner Brown, ''Wines & Beers of Old New England: A How-to-do-it History'' (1978, )]
Comparison to calvados
Applejack is somewhat similar to calvados, an apple brandy from Normandy
Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...
, France, to which it is often compared.[Eric Asimov]
An Apple Orchard in a Glass
''New York Times'' (December 8, 2004). However, calvados is made from cider apples, while applejack is made from apples such as Winesap.
See also
* Cider
* Fractional freezing
* Ice beer
Ice beer is a beer that has undergone some degree of freezing during production. These beers generally have a higher alcohol content, and lower price relative to it.
The process of "icing" beer involves lowering the temperature until ice cryst ...
References
{{Apples
Distilled ciders
American distilled drinks