Distillation came to human civilization rather recently. Although doctors, chemists, and alchemists had been flirting with the idea of distillation since perhaps the early middle ages, it was not until the 16th century that the common man came into contact with distilled spirits, namely gin. Before this era, we relied on fermentation alone to garner us with enough alcohol to get us through our days. Yeast, however, limits the strength of the beverages that fermentation can produce. Most yeast will die or become inactive in solutions with an alcohol content over 18-20% by volume. Wine is theoretically the strongest tipple we can make through the process of fermentation.
Distillation helps to increase the concentration of alcohol in a beverage by extracting alcohol from water by using the lower boiling point of the intoxicating liquid. This is the most efficient way to bolster alcohol content, but it is not the only way. Early New Englanders were party to a tradition of farmers who used the cold to strengthen their drinks. While distillation uses fire to separate alcohol and water by boiling point, fractional crystallization uses cold to separate them based on freezing point. For New Englanders this meant the autumn’s fresh cider could be left outside over the winter to produce a fiery applejack by spring.
Fractional crystallization is a technical term in chemistry to describe a process by which crystals can be purified. Alcohol is simply a solution of water and alcohol. Colloquially, New Englanders called the process jacking. When barrels of cider were left outside in the winter, sometimes buried in the ground in cider holes, sub-0 degree temperatures would make water freeze (crystalize) out of the solution. Pure ethanol freezes at a chilly -173℉. Although water in a solution with ethanol will not freeze at 32℉, it will freeze long before the alcohol will. If the farmer removes the ice from her barrel after a cold snap, she is effectively removing water from the cider and leaving a higher concentration of alcohol.
Distillation has one major advantage over fractional crystallization though. In distillation, alcohol is removed from water in its purest form and other impurities remain in the water which is thrown out or re-distilled. During fractional crystallization, the impurities, which can sometimes be nasty toxins, are concentrated further in the alcoholic solution while pure water is removed. This means the resulting beverage has concentrated toxins which can lead to a worse hangover among other things. Some warned that overconsumption of the stuff could lead to apple palsy.
=Unlike fractional crystallization, jacking was not an exact science as it relied on the caprices of New England weather. If a winter was warm, the apple jack would be weak. Sanborn C Brown, an MIT professor of Physics who also specialized in early New England alcoholic beverages, suggested that a warm winter might yield applejack at 25% ABV. Colder winters could produce much stronger spirits. The same can be said for applejack made in coastal Rhode Island versus the forests of northern Maine. The Mainer will be far more drunk in the spring. New Englanders also called their applejack frozen heart or hollow heart.
While New Englanders relied on their infamous cold to strengthen their applejack, the neighboring Mid Atlantic states, particularly New York and New Jersey, were famous for their distilled applejack. Unlike New England’s frozen drink which was homemade and home-consumed, New Yorkers made big business with their apple brandy. A 1903 newspaper reported that Orange County, New York paid more in excise tax on distilled fruit than any other state in the Union.
In Orange County, NY and Essex County, NJ distillers cranked out applejack and jersey lightning. Reports suggest that the average capacity of stills was 3,000 gallons and that these were housed in make-shift sheds beneath cider presses everywhere the eye could see. Horses would grind the apples, the juices ran down into vats to ferment, the fermented juice ran down into great copper stills, and the finished product was always left to age at least one year. Three years was considered the standard for a good, mellow applejack. New Jersey was also famous for its sparkling cider which was passed off as champagne and happily consumed as such. Meanwhile, the Sayer family of Orange County ran the most famous applejack distillery since the Revolutionary War.
By the turn of the 20th century, however, the brandy’s hold on America’s palate was waning as it competed with the several threats including immigrant preferences for beer and the emergence of rye whiskey from America’s heartlands. Even in New York, where ordering a glass of whiskey would certainly result in a glass of ‘apple’ once upon a time, the drink was falling out of popularity. The temperance movement and mother nature also dealt heavy blows to the industry. A 1905 story in the Trenton Evening Times bemoaned debauchery at a church event as women did lewb “skirt dances” after some “Miscreant Puts Applejack in Lemonade.” The moralizing forces of temperance at the turn of the century overlapped with a terrible apple crop in the late 1890s. 1888, 89, and 90 all witnessed record bad years for the apple crops. This was particularly bad, as the industry would be crippled for the following three years, during which time applejack is aged before sale.
Mid Atlantic distilled applejack had already become a thing of the past in the 1900s. During the Civil War, rumors of Confederate invasions of Pennsylvania drove farmers to stow their “liquid assets” underground. There were several reports in the 1900s of locals unearthing these aged caches with one 1906 man describing the 50 year old applejack as “the consistency of sweet oil and of a rich tanny yellow.” The American staple had become an antique and a curiosity.
Today, we don’t even have buried barrels of this long forgotten Northeastern staple. Whether distilled or crystallized, applejack is absent from the bars of New York and Boston. At one point, a measure of applejack was also a measure of hospitality in both New England and the Mid Atlantic states. Now, Apple Jacks are only a fruity cereal beloved by children everywhere. All we have left is a couple of lines of verse honoring the beloved tipple:
What drink we in the apple jack?
Sweets from that Jersey farm of Spring’s
That load the wagons, carts and things,
When from the orchard-row he pours
His fruit to the distillery doors;
And toddy blossoms, red that be;
Drinks for the sick man’s silent room,
For the bon vivant, rosy bloom,
We brew, with the apple jack.
Each year shall give this apple jack
A mellower taste, a warmer bloom,
A potency ‘gainst mopes and gloom,
And make it when the frost clouds lower,
A thing for punch of wondrous power;
The years shall come and pass, but we
Shall grow no better where we lie,
While Summer’s songs and Autumns sigh
Shall ripen the apple jack.
From “Poetry.” Boston Post (Boston, Massachusetts) December 28, 1863.
Brown, Sanborn C. “Beers and Wines of Old New England: Under Harsh Conditions in a Country Very Different from the Fatherland, the Early Settlers Gradually Evolved Beverages Which They Came to Appreciate for Their Own Qualities.” American Scientist, vol. 66, no. 4, 1978, pp. 460–467. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27848754. Accessed 19 Aug. 2021.
Pinney, Thomas. A History of Wine in America: from the Beginnings to Prohibition. University of California Press, 2007.
White, W. (2014). Early American alcohol and tobacco use. Posted at www.williamwhitepaeprs.com
“Applejack Scarce.” Sun (published as The Sun) (Baltimore, Maryland), January 3, 1891.
“Do Skirt Dance At Church Festival Miscreant Puts Applejack in Lemonade and ‘High Doings.’” Trenton Evening Times (Trenton, New Jersey) August 10, 1905.
“Image 12” New York Journal and Advertiser (New York [N.Y.]), January 3, 1899.
“Painted Roses On Brain Landscape This is the Effect of Applejack Buried During the Civil War”.” Trenton Evening Times (published as Trenton Times) (Trenton, New Jersey) May 16, 1906.
“Passing of Applejack, an Old-Time Beverage Once a Test of Hospitality.” Omaha World-Herald (published as Sunday World-Herald) (Omaha, Nebraska) December 27, 1903.
“Poetry.” Boston Post (Boston, Massachusetts) December 28, 1863.
“Some Tall Tales Are Almost True.” New England Today, 1 Nov. 2004, newengland.com/today/living/humor/some-tall-tales-are-almost-true/.
“The Manufacture of Applejack.” New Haven Register (published as New Haven Evening Register) (New Haven, Connecticut) December 10, 1878.
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