Applejack is a strong

alcoholic drink Drinks containing alcohol (drug), alcohol are typically divided into three classes—beers, wines, and Distilled beverage, spirits—with alcohol content typically between 3% and 50%. Drinks with less than 0.5% are sometimes considered Non-al ...

produced from

apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

s. Popular in the American colonial 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 a mixed drink, usually alcoholic. Most commonly, a cocktail is a combination of one or more spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as juices, flavored syrups, tonic water, shrubs, and bitters. Cocktails vary widely acro ...

, including the Jack Rose. It is a type of

fruit brandy Fruit brandy (or fruit spirit) is a distilled beverage produced from mash, juice, wine or residues of edible fruits. The term covers a broad class of spirits produced across the world, and typically excludes beverages made from grapes, which are ...

History

Apple brandy was first produced in colonial New Jersey in 1698 by William Laird, a Scots American 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 The Continental Army was the army of the United Colonies representing the Thirteen Colonies and later the United States during the American Revolutionary War. It was formed on June 14, 1775, by a resolution passed by the Second Continental Co ...

, incorporated Laird's Distillery in 1780, after previously operating a

tavern A tavern is a type 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 ...

. The oldest licensed applejack distillery in the United States, Laird & Company 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 and whiskey (especially bourbon) 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 manufacturing, manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption ...

, 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
''The 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. Under the U.S. Constitution, the officeholder leads the executive bra ...

: After the American Revolution,

George Washington George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...

requested from Robert Laird his family's recipe for applejack;

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...

served it during a brief stint as a tavern keeper in

Springfield, Illinois Springfield is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Illinois. Its population was 114,394 at the 2020 United States census, which makes it the state's List of cities in Illinois, seventh-most populous cit ...

;

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...

included applejack in the Manhattans he regularly consumed; and

Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), also known as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969. He became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, under whom he had served a ...

gave a case of applejack to Soviet leader

Alexei Kosygin Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin (–18 December 1980) was a Soviet people, Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1980 and, alongside General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, was one of its most ...

in the 1967

Glassboro Summit Conference The Glassboro Summit Conference, usually just called the Glassboro Summit, was the 23–25 June 1967 meeting of the heads of government of the United States and the Soviet Union— President Lyndon B. Johnson and Premier Alexei Kosygin, respecti ...

. 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 () is a geography, geographic and urban area, metropolitan region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh and Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Northampton counties in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a co ...

, New York's

Hudson Valley The Hudson Valley or Hudson River Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The region stretches from the Capital District (New York), Capital District includi ...

Holland, Michigan Holland is a city in Ottawa County, Michigan, Ottawa and Allegan County, Michigan, Allegan counties in the U.S. state of Michigan. Located in the West Michigan, western region of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, Lower Peninsula, the city is si ...

, and in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Production

Commercial

When commercial production began, applejack was also starting to be produced through evaporative

distillation Distillation, also classical distillation, is the process of separating the component substances of a liquid mixture of two or more chemically discrete substances; the separation process is realized by way of the selective boiling of the mixt ...

. Modern commercially produced applejack is often no longer produced by jacking but rather by blending apple

brandy Brandy is a liquor produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35–60% alcohol by volume (70–120 US proof) and is typically consumed as an after-dinner digestif. Some brandies are aged in wooden casks. Others are coloured ...

and neutral grain spirits.Sanborn Conner Brown, ''Wines & Beers of Old New England: A How-to-do-it History'' (1978, )

Home-made

The name ''applejack'' derives from the traditional method of producing the drink, '' jacking'', which is the process of freezing fermented cider and then removing the ice, increasing the alcohol content.

Cider Cider ( ) is an alcoholic beverage made from the Fermented drink, fermented Apple juice, juice of apples. Cider is widely available in the United Kingdom (particularly in the West Country) and Ireland. The United Kingdom has the world's highest ...

produced after the fall harvest was left outside during the winter. Periodically the frozen chunks of ice that 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, is that the substances remaining after the removal of the water include not only ethanol, but also harmful

methanol Methanol (also called methyl alcohol and wood spirit, amongst other names) is an organic chemical compound and the simplest aliphatic Alcohol (chemistry), alcohol, with the chemical formula (a methyl group linked to a hydroxyl group, often ab ...

ester In chemistry, an ester is a compound derived from an acid (either organic or inorganic) in which the hydrogen atom (H) of at least one acidic hydroxyl group () of that acid is replaced by an organyl group (R). These compounds contain a distin ...

aldehyde In organic chemistry, an aldehyde () (lat. ''al''cohol ''dehyd''rogenatum, dehydrogenated alcohol) is an organic compound containing a functional group with the structure . The functional group itself (without the "R" side chain) can be referred ...

s, and fusel alcohols. In modern times, reducing methanol with the absorption of a

molecular sieve A molecular sieve is a material with pores of uniform size comparable to that of individual molecules, linking the interior of the solid to its exterior. These materials embody the molecular sieve effect, in which molecules larger than the pore ...

is a practical method for production.

Comparison to calvados

Applejack is somewhat similar to calvados, an apple brandy from

Normandy Normandy (; or ) is a geographical and cultural region in northwestern Europe, roughly coextensive with the historical Duchy of Normandy. Normandy comprises Normandy (administrative region), mainland Normandy (a part of France) and insular N ...

, France, to which it is often compared.Eric Asimov
An Apple Orchard in a Glass
''The New York Times'' (December 8, 2004). However, calvados is made from

cider apple Cider apples are a group of apple cultivars grown for their use in the production of cider (referred to as "hard cider" in the United States). Cider apples are distinguished from "cookers" and "eaters", or dessert apples, by their bitterness or ...

s, while applejack is made from apples such as Winesap.

References