Lairds have been in the United Sates since before there was any such thing. “Obviously, that is not what we’re tasting today,” Lisa says. The intense process also gave it such names as “Jersey Lightning,” “Corpse Reviver,” Essence of Lockjaw,” “Slug of Bluefish Quills,” and “Horn of Gunpowder.”īut don’t let those fanciful monikers scare you off from applejack-we’ve come a long way. The water would freeze, and as they kept re-freezing it, it would continuously condense the product. “They would take the hard cider and put it outside to freeze. “Most colonists made their Applejack through jacking,” Lisa says. Lisa traces the term “applejack” to colonial times, when apple brandy was made through the process of freeze distillation, or “jacking.” “You have to taste and smell it at every step along the way.Over the course of Thirst Boston this past April, I had the chance to meet Lisa Laird and attend her seminar titled “Applejack: America’s Native Spirit.” That’s a bold claim, but Laird herself is a testament to its truth: she represents the ninth generation of America’s oldest distilling family, the Lairds of Laird’s Apple Brandy.įrom the role of the Laird family in the American Revolution to their hand in creating the blended applejack category, here are just a few of the things I learned from Lisa. “The fats and esters and other flavor chemicals should ride along with the alcohol,” she said. Instead of removing the water from the cider, she says, the art is in removing the alcohol - with its fruitiness intact. Like most modern makers of applejack, she uses a complex steam distilling process, describing it in terms opposite to the jacking method. But delicate, fragrant fruit brandies, including Quarter Branch apple brandy, are Ms. Whiskeys are their main product, brewed from grains including corn, rye and wheat. Harris, 53, is a chemical engineer who had most recently worked on developing microscopically thin polymers for contact lenses. Harris described as a “midlife crisis” in which they left jobs and cities behind to enter a field that neither knew the first thing about. Scott and Becky Harris opened Catoctin Creek in Purcellville, Va., in 2009, as part of what Mr. ![]() But distilleries that make high-proof spirits remain heavily regulated at both the federal and state level. That clear spirit is applejack - not as strong as modern distilled spirits like vodka, but strong enough to last the winter.Īs microcideries open on farms, in cities and within microbreweries, hard cider and applejack are developing a stronger infrastructure, producers say. Each time the ice is skimmed off, the concentration of alcohol grows, until what is left in the barrel reaches about 40 proof. With each freeze, the water in the cider crystallizes into slushy ice. ![]() The original applejack, which many historians believe was invented by American colonists, was produced by a low-tech method called “jacking.” Jacked spirits are distilled not by the usual method of boiling, but by freezing, and any household with a supply of hard cider and cold weather could make applejack. Local Wilkes County bootleggers like Junior Johnson, the Thomas brothers and the Flock family famously became the first generation of NASCAR drivers in the 1940s and ’50s, and many of the sport’s first speedways, along with its Hall of Fame, are within 100 miles of here. Up to and through the Prohibition era, there were countless producers making and (illegally) selling applejack in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where roads were limited and trees provided thick cover from government agents. In this cool, fertile Appalachian region, as in most of the Northeast, apples were then far more plentiful than the grains needed to make whiskey.
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