Once America's favorite beverage, hard cider is now an afterthought
“It is indeed bad to eat apples; it is better to turn them all into a cider.” Benjamin Franklin recorded this comment when overhearing a Native American’s response to the story of Adam and Eve.
180 years before the United States, an iron screw likely was taken from a hard cider press and driven into the central mast of the Mayflower to prevent the ship from sinking.
Indeed, hard cider played a pivotal role in the formation and of the early colonies in many aspects. The pilgrims relied heavily on apple cider for their basic survival needs–cooking, sanitary hydration, and of course keeping warm in those frigid early winters.
By the turn of the 19th century, hard cider consumption was recorded at 34 gallons a year for every citizen over 15 years of age. It had earned its place as the most popular alcoholic beverage by staying cheap, strong, and plentiful for every one of every class.
Even the founding fathers had a strong bond with the beverage; John Adams proudly admitted to drinking a tankard of cider every morning because he believed it had a direct connection to longevity. He lived to be 91.
Today, if you were to go to a bar and order a glass of hard cider you likely wouldn’t find the same beverage enjoyed by early Americans. It has become a commodity so foreign that few people can claim to have tasted the real stuff. Cider currently accounts for only 1.5 percent of the entire alcohol industry in the United States, and more than half of the beverages making up that statistic are merely apple-flavored lagers.
The fruity brew went from winning William Henry Harrison a presidency in 1840 to being nearly extinct shortly before the prohibition of 1920. So what happened?
The obvious historian would point to the rise of the temperance movement as a major player in the downfall of the cider industry. However, a more likely culprit could have been the influx of immigrated German beer breweries in the mid 1800’s. Their superior techniques and cheaper brews gained popularity in major cities over the rural hard cider.
Unlike beer, which could be brewed relatively quickly and easily in the middle of a city, cider breweries had to be within close proximity of apple orchards that were always far from urban areas. Due to the sheer amount of apples involved and expense of horse-drawn shipping, beer brewed from low cost and lightweight barley quickly became a more plausible option for the 19th century urban alcoholic.
At the peak of the industrial age beer companies had nearly cornered the market entirely. Wary of large hard cider industries in countries like Canada and England, federal regulations in the early 1900’s that prohibited the sale of low alcohol beverages containing added preservatives were unanimously backed by beer conglomerates.
This, of course, was a necessary component to keeping ciders from spoiling with age. It had no effect on beer or liquor manufacturing.
What little was left of a once blossoming industry withered away over time, then prohibition dealt a final deadly blow in 1920. The hard cider industry of the colonial era has since never recovered. Though, if you have a bunch of apples and a lot of patience, you could attempt to revive the cider experience yourself.
Want to make hard cider from home like your great-great-great-great-great grandparents?
What you’ll need
- 15 lbs. of Apples or
- Pears
- 1 juicer
- Demijohn(s)
- 1 funnel
- 1 siphon hose
- rubber stoppers
- airlocks
- sugar, and lots of it
- swing-top bottles
What to do
- Wash and cut your fruit.
- Juice it up.
- Add about a cup of sugar to every gallon of juice, stir it up.
- Put your juice in a demijohn and keep it in a warm spot for about a day, then put a rubber stopper on top and let it sit for a week.
- Siphon and filter into a clean container, wash your demijohn, and add the juice back with rubber stopper. Taste and add sugar if you want.
- Let it sit 1-3 weeks, tasting for desirability. Bottle when you think it’s good, I guess. Drink it and think of a simpler time.