Applejack (beverage)

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A bottle of blended apple brandy, along with a Jack Rose Cocktail.
Applejack is a strong alcoholic beverage produced from apples, popular in the American
colonial period.
[1]

Contents
[hide]
1 History
2 Production
3 See also
4 References
History[edit]
Applejack was historically made by concentrating cider, either by the traditional method of
freeze distillation or by true evaporative distillation. The term "applejack" derives from
"jacking", a term for freeze distillation.
[1]
The modern product Laird's Applejack is not produced
by jacking. That product is a blend of apple brandy and neutral spirits.
[2]

In New Jersey, applejack was used as currency to pay road construction crews during the
colonial period. A slang expression for the beverage was 'Jersey Lightning'.
[3]
The oldest licensed
distillery in the United States, Laird & Company, in Scobeyville, New Jersey, was until recently
the country's only remaining producer of applejack, and during the American Revolution,
George Washington asked Robert Laird for his recipe for "cyder spirits".
[3]

Production[edit]
Freeze distillation is a low-infrastructure method of production compared to evaporative
distillation. Apples and applejack have historically been easy to produce in small quantities.
Hard apple cider was an important drink in the colonial and early years of the United States,
particularly in areas without access to clean water, but was often considered insufficiently
palatable and bulky to store.
Rather than consume an alcoholic fruit beer, the cider harvested in the fall was often separated in
the winter via freeze distillation, by leaving it outside and periodically removing the frozen
chunks of ice, thus concentrating the unfrozen alcohol in the remaining liquid. From the
fermented juice, with an alcohol content of less than 10%, the concentrated result contains 30-
40% alcohol.
It is slightly sweet and usually tastes and smells of apples.
With easy availability of grain, metal stills, clean water, and eventually pasteurization starting in
the mid-19th century, cider and applejack were gradually displaced by other beverages and
liquors. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, traditional applejack acquired a stigma as a
result of its association with the older production process, and was less economical to produce
than some alternatives.
See also[edit]
Calvados (brandy), a similar French drink
References[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:
a

b
Black, Rachel (2010). Alcohol in Popular Culture: An Encyclopedia. Santa
Barbara, CA: AB-CLIO, LLC. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-313-38048-8. Retrieved 2011-10-22.
2. Jump up ^ Laird & Company. "2005-Laird apple products sell sheet". Laird & Company.
Retrieved 17 January 2014.
3. ^ Jump up to:
a

b
Karen Tina Harrison, Jersey Lightning, New Jersey Monthly, July 13, 2009.
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Alcoholic beverages

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History and production

History of alcohol
History of alcoholic beverages
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History of wine
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o History of Champagne
o History of Chianti
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