The soft and the powerful: apple juice and apple jack. Photo by Jennifer Harington Brizzi
Juice to jack
Ran in the column "Ravenous" in the Woodstock Times, Kingston Times and Highland Post-Pioneer, December 1, 2005
When it comes to liquid apple, there's a big range of beverages. They run the spectrum from apple juice, the favorite drink of sweet young children (forget milk, Mom), to a butt-kicking liquor called applejack that was originally made by freezing hard cider and siphoning off the rotgut left behind.
Between those two extremes, the drops squeezed from apples make a stupendous variety of refreshing beverages from gentle to potent. Flavors range from cloying to astringent and from one-dimensionally appley to aromatic with nuances of apricot and leather.
My kids love apple juice so much that I rarely buy it or they would likely consume it to the exclusion of all other foodstuffs. As supermarket shelves groaning with gallons of the stuff attest, other people's kids are the same. In February of 1989 the TV show 60 Minutes gave birth to the Alar Scare, calling the common apple pesticide poisonous to children and causing mothers all over the country to pour their kids' apple juice down the drain.
Cider is technically apple juice, too, but to my palate much more pleasing. Here in the United States the word means an unfiltered, often unpasteurized apple juice that's traditionally made from the tangier, less sugary apple varieties from the start of the harvest season. It's opaque rather than clear, with a much richer flavor than commercial apple juice.
Hot and spiced or “mulled” cider is a thoroughly different animal, rich with cinnamon, orange, nutmeg and clove. A few years ago my husband and I replaced our yearly tree-trimming tipple of eggnog with dark-rum-spiked hot mulled cider, whose aroma and warmth rarely fail to get us right into that yo-ho-ho spirit.
Cider has long been popular in cooking, from traditional Shaker cider pies to boiled-down concentrated cider used to sweeten jellies, desserts, drinks and applesauce. Cider is used in spice cakes, donuts, and muffins. You see it in sauces for pork tenderloin, chops and hams, in gravies for roast turkeys and vinaigrettes for salads. Cider goes well blended with sweet autumn vegetables like yams and squash.
Common and not-so-common cider enhancements include adding sugar or crabapples to it while it's being made, using tart varieties not suited to fresh eating or leaving the apples around a while after they fall from the tree to rot a little and develop flavor.
Cider has been around since around 1300 B.C., nearly as long as apples. By the ninth century A.D. it was big all over Europe and farm workers were paid partly in cider. In 1796 our own John Adams told his diary that the tankard of hard cider he drank each morning helped to ease his stomach and cut down on gas. At Monticello Thomas Jefferson brewed his own. Even the clergy, who disapproved of whiskey and ale, kept their own personal barrels of cider around.
In our historic past and in present day life in other countries, the word “cider” always refers to what we would call “hard cider,” a sometimes-fizzy beverage a bit stronger than beer. The alcohol in natural ciders comes from fermentation caused by a wild yeast already present in the apple skins, or from an added yeast culture in the case of mass-produced ciders.
In the olden days in Europe ale and cider were drunk in place of the often-contaminated water of towns and cities. In England, where there is a long cider tradition, many commercial operations produce it with varying standards of quality. Sweeter and cheaper than beer, it is the favorite drink of teenagers there. The heyday of cider making was the mid 1600s, when a cider press was standard equipment on most farms, and in 1708 English poet J. Philips wrote a two-volume ode of love called Cyder.
Our northern neighbors in Canada have long enjoyed hard cider, as well as a dessert “ice cider” from apples made sweeter by frost. And you'll find plenty of sparkling hard cider in Normandy and Brittany, France's apple country, where it's sold in corked bottles and they drink it with dinner instead of wine. Varieties range from sweet and mild to strong and dry.
Cider country in Spain is in the northwest of that country as well, Asturias and the Basque region. There they enjoy their strong sidra, with its notes of vanilla, plum, green apple and honey, with hearty meals in cold damp cider mill cellars. In the Basque country the cider house meal is often a cod omelet and ox chops. To aerate the cider and add a little effervescence, it's poured from a height or it squirts from a ten-foot high oak barrel into a glass four feet away.
There seems to be an infinite variety of ciders. “Scrumpy” cider was originally made from apples fallen from the tree but the word now can mean a crude cloudy cider, a young cider or a fine mature select cider. “Cyser” is a cider with honey added, or sometimes a mead or honey wine with apple juice. “Perry” is the pear version of cider, at least half pear juice. "White cider" is a highly processed, bleached out industrial product, strong and cheap. French-style cider is a light, low-alcohol, sweeter cider that can be fizzy or still. Farmhouse style cider is the oldest style, sometimes called “real” cider, with an alcohol content between 5 and 12%. It can be dry or sweetened, its aggressive apple flavor less refined than others because wild yeasts may have been used in the fermentation. Farmhouse ciders may be still or sparkling and are usually dry. New England style is only marginally higher in alcohol, with raisins, molasses or sugars sometimes added for flavor and color. Draft style is not from a keg but has an alcohol content of less than 6 percent.
Apple wine is another apple juice product but one that's higher in alcohol than hard cider. Softer and less sharp, it's usually made with sweeter apples than cider.
Kicking it up a bit is the potent Calvados, a contender as Cognac's rival. Made in France's apple country from distilled cider, it's a drink for the working class, many French folk think. It begins with well-rotted apples, followed by years spent in oak barrels, both contributing to its assertive, complex character.
In Normandy the traditional “trou Normand” (Norman hole) is a shot of the stuff meant to make a hole in a belly full of food in order to make way for more food. When my cousin Bruno got married in 1992 in France he served a multi-course feast that lasted for hours and included a helpful shot of Calvados between the eighth and ninth courses.
In Normandy they mix it with unfermented cider and age it for 30 months to make an aperitif called pommeau. Like cider, Calvados is lovely to cook with, to soak dried fruit in or to ignite over a sauce or stew. I like to soak currants in Calvados and add them to an apple pie I'm baking. It's great flamed over pork chops with apples, and my mother likes it for steeping yellow turnips.
And then there's good old American applejack. Although made commercially by a company called Laird, the oldest continually operating distillery in the U.S., applejack is also produced illegally by cider makers who want to kick things up a bit, usually by freeze distillation. They put a big barrel of cider out in the cold and when it freezes they remove the ice chunk, leaving the hooch. This process leaves nasty byproducts like methanol and fusel oil and is not exactly a health tonic, but I know people who claim to make it anyway. Commercial applejack is heat distilled and a little less dangerous.
Ran in the column "Ravenous" in the Woodstock Times, Kingston Times and Highland Post-Pioneer, December 1, 2005
When it comes to liquid apple, there's a big range of beverages. They run the spectrum from apple juice, the favorite drink of sweet young children (forget milk, Mom), to a butt-kicking liquor called applejack that was originally made by freezing hard cider and siphoning off the rotgut left behind.
Between those two extremes, the drops squeezed from apples make a stupendous variety of refreshing beverages from gentle to potent. Flavors range from cloying to astringent and from one-dimensionally appley to aromatic with nuances of apricot and leather.
My kids love apple juice so much that I rarely buy it or they would likely consume it to the exclusion of all other foodstuffs. As supermarket shelves groaning with gallons of the stuff attest, other people's kids are the same. In February of 1989 the TV show 60 Minutes gave birth to the Alar Scare, calling the common apple pesticide poisonous to children and causing mothers all over the country to pour their kids' apple juice down the drain.
Cider is technically apple juice, too, but to my palate much more pleasing. Here in the United States the word means an unfiltered, often unpasteurized apple juice that's traditionally made from the tangier, less sugary apple varieties from the start of the harvest season. It's opaque rather than clear, with a much richer flavor than commercial apple juice.
Hot and spiced or “mulled” cider is a thoroughly different animal, rich with cinnamon, orange, nutmeg and clove. A few years ago my husband and I replaced our yearly tree-trimming tipple of eggnog with dark-rum-spiked hot mulled cider, whose aroma and warmth rarely fail to get us right into that yo-ho-ho spirit.
Cider has long been popular in cooking, from traditional Shaker cider pies to boiled-down concentrated cider used to sweeten jellies, desserts, drinks and applesauce. Cider is used in spice cakes, donuts, and muffins. You see it in sauces for pork tenderloin, chops and hams, in gravies for roast turkeys and vinaigrettes for salads. Cider goes well blended with sweet autumn vegetables like yams and squash.
Common and not-so-common cider enhancements include adding sugar or crabapples to it while it's being made, using tart varieties not suited to fresh eating or leaving the apples around a while after they fall from the tree to rot a little and develop flavor.
Cider has been around since around 1300 B.C., nearly as long as apples. By the ninth century A.D. it was big all over Europe and farm workers were paid partly in cider. In 1796 our own John Adams told his diary that the tankard of hard cider he drank each morning helped to ease his stomach and cut down on gas. At Monticello Thomas Jefferson brewed his own. Even the clergy, who disapproved of whiskey and ale, kept their own personal barrels of cider around.
In our historic past and in present day life in other countries, the word “cider” always refers to what we would call “hard cider,” a sometimes-fizzy beverage a bit stronger than beer. The alcohol in natural ciders comes from fermentation caused by a wild yeast already present in the apple skins, or from an added yeast culture in the case of mass-produced ciders.
In the olden days in Europe ale and cider were drunk in place of the often-contaminated water of towns and cities. In England, where there is a long cider tradition, many commercial operations produce it with varying standards of quality. Sweeter and cheaper than beer, it is the favorite drink of teenagers there. The heyday of cider making was the mid 1600s, when a cider press was standard equipment on most farms, and in 1708 English poet J. Philips wrote a two-volume ode of love called Cyder.
Our northern neighbors in Canada have long enjoyed hard cider, as well as a dessert “ice cider” from apples made sweeter by frost. And you'll find plenty of sparkling hard cider in Normandy and Brittany, France's apple country, where it's sold in corked bottles and they drink it with dinner instead of wine. Varieties range from sweet and mild to strong and dry.
Cider country in Spain is in the northwest of that country as well, Asturias and the Basque region. There they enjoy their strong sidra, with its notes of vanilla, plum, green apple and honey, with hearty meals in cold damp cider mill cellars. In the Basque country the cider house meal is often a cod omelet and ox chops. To aerate the cider and add a little effervescence, it's poured from a height or it squirts from a ten-foot high oak barrel into a glass four feet away.
There seems to be an infinite variety of ciders. “Scrumpy” cider was originally made from apples fallen from the tree but the word now can mean a crude cloudy cider, a young cider or a fine mature select cider. “Cyser” is a cider with honey added, or sometimes a mead or honey wine with apple juice. “Perry” is the pear version of cider, at least half pear juice. "White cider" is a highly processed, bleached out industrial product, strong and cheap. French-style cider is a light, low-alcohol, sweeter cider that can be fizzy or still. Farmhouse style cider is the oldest style, sometimes called “real” cider, with an alcohol content between 5 and 12%. It can be dry or sweetened, its aggressive apple flavor less refined than others because wild yeasts may have been used in the fermentation. Farmhouse ciders may be still or sparkling and are usually dry. New England style is only marginally higher in alcohol, with raisins, molasses or sugars sometimes added for flavor and color. Draft style is not from a keg but has an alcohol content of less than 6 percent.
Apple wine is another apple juice product but one that's higher in alcohol than hard cider. Softer and less sharp, it's usually made with sweeter apples than cider.
Kicking it up a bit is the potent Calvados, a contender as Cognac's rival. Made in France's apple country from distilled cider, it's a drink for the working class, many French folk think. It begins with well-rotted apples, followed by years spent in oak barrels, both contributing to its assertive, complex character.
In Normandy the traditional “trou Normand” (Norman hole) is a shot of the stuff meant to make a hole in a belly full of food in order to make way for more food. When my cousin Bruno got married in 1992 in France he served a multi-course feast that lasted for hours and included a helpful shot of Calvados between the eighth and ninth courses.
In Normandy they mix it with unfermented cider and age it for 30 months to make an aperitif called pommeau. Like cider, Calvados is lovely to cook with, to soak dried fruit in or to ignite over a sauce or stew. I like to soak currants in Calvados and add them to an apple pie I'm baking. It's great flamed over pork chops with apples, and my mother likes it for steeping yellow turnips.
And then there's good old American applejack. Although made commercially by a company called Laird, the oldest continually operating distillery in the U.S., applejack is also produced illegally by cider makers who want to kick things up a bit, usually by freeze distillation. They put a big barrel of cider out in the cold and when it freezes they remove the ice chunk, leaving the hooch. This process leaves nasty byproducts like methanol and fusel oil and is not exactly a health tonic, but I know people who claim to make it anyway. Commercial applejack is heat distilled and a little less dangerous.
