![]() ![]() One story holds that he was doing his best to come up with a decent substitute for Scotch whiskey. The original Laird (William) arrived in Monmouth County, New Jersey, in 1698, and soon thereafter began producing a more refined version of applejack, an apple brandy aged in oak kegs. “…The victim of applejack,” claimed The New York Times on April 10, 1894, “is capable of blowing up a whole town with dynamite and of reciting original poetry to every surviving inhabitant.”īy 1780, applejack had gone professional, most famously from the distillery of Laird & Company, still in business today and the producer of the bulk of America’s applejack. A common nickname for applejack was “essence of lockjaw,” and over-indulgence in it led to a wobbly condition known as apple palsy,doubtless followed by a splitting headache. Drunk in quantity, it packed a powerful punch. This process of freeze-distilling, which relies on the fact that alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water, was known as jacking-hence the cozy name applejack.Ĭider, converted to applejack, shrank to as little as one-tenth of its original volume, and could reach 65 proof–that is, over 30 percent alcohol. ![]() The water in the cider would freeze, and as ice was removed from the cider container, the alcohol in the brew became increasingly concentrated. ![]() The solution to this pressing pioneer problem was applejack.Ĭider, circa 1775, was routinely transmogrified into the stunningly stronger applejack simply by setting a pan of it on the back porch in the frigid days of winter. While the American colonists drank hard cider like their modern-day counterparts swill Pepsi and Coca-Cola, for some, cider’s relatively mild 4 to 6 percent alcohol concentration just wasn’t alcoholic enough. ![]()
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