Drinking History: Fifteen Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages

GENERAL WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON was a successful military leader who is credited with winning the Battle of Tippecanoe against the Shawnee in 1811 and subsequent engagements against the British during the War of 1812. After that war, Harrison served in several governmental positions, but when Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828, he retired to Ohio and lived off the proceeds from his farm. In 1836, Harrison was nominated by the Whigs to be their candidate for president. After being soundly defeated by the Democratic candidate, Martin Van Buren, the sixty-three-year-old Harrison again retired to his farm, where he most likely would have remained had it not been for the financial panic of 1837, which was followed by a five-year depression. Many Americans blamed Van Buren.

Van Buren was vulnerable when he ran for reelection. In December 1839, the Whigs met in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and once again nominated Harrison to run for president against Martin Van Buren. The Whigs generally had the support of those favoring temperance. John de Ziska, a Baltimore newspaperman who supported Van Buren, decided to tar Harrison as an old drunkard, attempting to cause a breach with Harrison’s temperance supporters. All Harrison needed, reported de Ziska in the Baltimore Republican, was a good pension and “a barrel of hard cider” and he would “sit the remainder of his days in his log cabin by the side of a ‘sea coal’ fire, and study moral philosophy.”¹

Two Pennsylvania Whigs saw a way to turn de Ziska’s comments to their candidate’s advantage. They labeled Harrison the “log cabin and hard cider candidate”² and portrayed him as a man of the people who drank cider, the “poor man’s beverage,” while Van Buren sipped champagne. A Philadelphia manufacturer began making bottles shaped like replicas of log cabins and sold them filled with hard cider. Another firm produced hip flasks with a portrait of Harrison on one side and an emblem showing a log cabin, a plow, and a cider barrel on the other. Harrison’s supporters built log cabins in cities, and plenty of hard cider was kept on hand for any thirsty visitor who dropped by.

Verses such as Ephraim Hubbard Foster’s Hard Cider: A Poem, Descriptive of the Nashville Convention were published,³ and songs celebrating Harrison’s “log cabin” roots and his supposed love of hard cider were sung throughout the campaign. Here is one:

In Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia, the Hard Cider and Log Cabin Almanac was published to extol the virtues of Harrison and his running mate, John Tyler.⁵ Graphics representing the log cabin and the barrel of cider were independently published and widely distributed. Van Buren supporters did their best to counter these symbols, but they had nothing as rousing as Harrison’s cider barrel and log cabin.⁶ Hard cider was proffered lavishly at Whig political rallies and parades. At one event, 25,000 people showed up and were liberally “entertained” with hard cider. Cartoonists also made good use of cider barrel images. In one cartoonist’s drawing, Van Buren is shown running down a hill chased by a cider barrel, shouting, “Stop that barrel!”⁷

Until the 1830s, temperance advocates were ambivalent about the consumption of hard cider. The beverage had low alcohol content and was not as pernicious as rum, whiskey, or brandy. However, Van Buren’s supporters still tried to tar Harrison as a lush, but their message just did not resonate with the general electorate.

Many temperance supporters actually campaigned for Harrison in the election.⁸ The Pittsburgh Intelligencer proclaimed that Harrison had not, in fact, drunk a bit of hard cider for many years. The paper noted that Harrison’s connection to the beverage was through his ancestors, “who have been famous for the excellent cider which they manufactured.”⁹ Harrison may not have been a big cider drinker, but his supporters were. One wrote: “As to the matter of ‘hard cider,’ no statistics were kept of the gallons of vinegar consumed, but they were probably enough to have pickled the cucumbers from a million-acre patch! We reveled in ‘hard cider,’ and I think its antibilious tendency may have sweetened our temper; for with all our virtuous indignation against the Democratic ‘spoilsmen,’ we surely had the most jolly time ever known in a season of party contest.”¹⁰

The jolly time campaign paid off. On Election Day in November 1840, William Henry Harrison, the hard cider and log cabin candidate, won with an impressive popular vote (57 percent to 43 percent) and an even more impressive electoral vote (234 to 60). One would think that Harrison’s large electoral victory—in which hard cider had played a key role—would have guaranteed the beverage a promising future, but this was not to be.

When Governor John Winthrop sailed for North America in 1629, his ship, the Arabella, was stocked with cider to fortify crew and colonists on the trip across the Atlantic.¹¹ English colonists also brought apple seeds with them when they arrived on American shores in the early seventeenth century, and they planted the seeds in America. It took a few decades for the trees to acclimatize to North American conditions, but by 1650, orchards were producing bountiful supplies of apples, especially in New England.¹² Orchards had several advantages over field crops: they required relatively little maintenance, they produced prodigious quantities of fruit, and farmers could plant grain between the rows of trees.¹³ Farmers also could feed any excess apples to their pigs, lending sweetness to the taste of the pork.

The colonists planted different varieties of apples for specific purposes. For instance, apples with high sugar content were eaten right off the tree, whereas sour apples were used for cooking. Whole apples kept well if stored in a cool place, such as a root cellar; alternatively, they could be sliced and sun-dried to preserve them for subsequent seasons. The fruit was exceptionally versatile, providing the basis for jams, jellies, preserves, butters, pickles, sauces, and ketchups; apples could also be used to make cakes, dumplings, pies, tarts, and puddings, as well as juice, cider, and vinegar.

Hard cider was the most important commercial product of apples during the colonial era and early days of the republic. It was cheap and easy to make; any farmer with access to apples could crank out barrels of cider and set them aside to ferment without any specialized equipment. Even decayed or unripe apples could be used to make cider, as long as the fermented juice was boiled (ginger and molasses were sometimes added to pep the insipid flavor).¹⁴ After water, hard cider quickly became America’s most important beverage, and it remained as such well into the nineteenth century.

At first, cider making was done by hand. Apples were crushed in wooden mortars and the pomace was pressed in baskets. More sophisticated cider mills, run by horsepower, were in operation by 1652. Cider mills often were built on hillsides: carts were driven up and apples unloaded at the uphill side of the building, while barrels of cider were rolled out of the downhill side directly onto carts. A cider mill was equipped with two wooden cylinders—one with knobs and the other with corresponding holes—that were turned by horsepower. After apples were loaded in from the top, the turning cylinders drew in the fruit and crushed it. When the holes clogged up with pomace, the mill was stopped and one of the workers—usually a young boy—climbed into the works and scraped out the blockage. The pomace fell into a large shallow vat, from which it was shoveled onto a grooved press board. The pomace was alternated with layers of clean straw to a depth of about three feet, and then a board was placed on top and screwed down to squeeze the pomace. The apple juice collected in the channels of the press board and ran into a pan below. The fresh juice was stored in wooden barrels, where it fermented almost immediately. When the cider ran clear from the barrel’s tap, it was ready to drink.

After pressing, the pomace was removed from the press and brought to a gentle boil, and the scum could be skimmed off. This unfermented apple juice could then be barreled. The pulp could be pressed again in a day or two, producing ciderkin, a mildly alcoholic drink for children.¹⁵

Hard cider was typically about 6 percent alcohol. For a stronger drink, the cider was boiled (to drive off some of its water content) before fermentation or the barrels were left outside during freezing weather. In the morning, the ice that formed on top of the cider was removed, leaving behind a more concentrated drink with a heavier alcoholic content. This was variously called heart cider, apple brandy, or more commonly applejack.¹⁶ Distillers also often added sweeteners, such as molasses, that increased the beverage’s alcoholic content; others added rum, which produced a beverage with a much stronger kick, called a stonewall.

By the late seventeenth century, cider was very common in colonial America. According to John Josselyn, an explorer who traveled to New England and lived there for a while: “Syder is very plentiful in the Countrey, ordinarily sold for Ten shillings a Hogshead. At the Tap-houses in Boston I have had an Ale-quart spic’d and sweetened with Sugar for a groat.” A Connecticut magistrate told Josselyn that he made 500 hogsheads (about 100 gallons each) of cider from his orchards in one year.¹⁷

Cider was an important export item for New England colonies. Within the colonies, cider barrels served as a unit of exchange when specie was scarce. By the mid-seventeenth century, cider had eclipsed beer as the favorite beverage of New England, where it was “served at every meal, carried to workers in the fields, and drunk by young and old on every social occasion.”¹⁸ New England cider was exported to other colonies and was important even in areas of southern colonies, where apples were not easily grown.

Different types of apples gave cider varied flavors; cider was also flavored with additives. Cider royal was made by adding an equal amount of mead to cider and then fermenting the mixture. The Pennsylvania Germans drank their cider hot and sweet. They also made cider soup by adding bread and milk or by thickening the cider with cream and flour.¹⁹ Other colonists added brandy and muscovado sugar to fermenting cider, which increased its alcohol content and improved its flavor. Aged cider bottled with raisins was called apple wine. Mulled cider was made by adding sugar, egg yolks, allspice, and occasionally rum.²⁰ Mole cider, favored by the Pennsylvania Dutch, was a hot beverage fortified with milk and beaten eggs.²¹ A similar beverage, egg cider, was a New England concoction commonly made by breaking an “egg or two into a quart of heated cider, with a little sugar or molasses.”²² For a summer drink, cider was diluted with cold water and flavored with nutmeg.

Because different varieties of apples were used and the apples were of different ripeness, the quality of the cider varied greatly from very sweet to very sour. Consumers did not want sour cider, so cider makers combined sweet cider with it to produce a palatable drink.²³ Cider could also be used to make nogs, flips, punches, and nectars based on different fruit. Syllabub (cream whipped to a froth with sweet wine and spices), a favorite dessert of colonial times, could also be made with cider. Samuel Sewall, a Puritan judge in Massachusetts, recorded his special recipe for a syllabub that blended cider, sugar, cream, and nutmeg. Cider also was used to flavor cakes, and ham was often baked in cider.²⁴

Cider vinegar was an important byproduct of cider production, especially because grape vinegar was available only as an expensive import. Cider vinegar was also used as a beverage, usually mixed with water. Not everyone liked cider vinegar beverages, though. As one foreign observer reported, it was “usually unwholesome, [causing] ague when it is fresh, and colic when it is too old. The common people damask the drink, mix ground ginger with it, or heat it with a red-hot iron.”²⁵

Virtually every farm in New England had an apple orchard, and even a modest orchard could produce prodigious quantities of apples. Pressing apples into cider made it possible to preserve thousands of apples in a small space. It was estimated that upstate Vermont families polished off an average of a barrel of cider per week in colonial times.²⁶ By the time of the American Revolution, one in every ten farms in New England operated its own cider mill. Throughout the colonies, cider was more popular than beer or ale.

The typical New Englander made from twenty-five to fifty cider barrels per year. The well-to-do usually had a cider barrel on tap, which was available for themselves and any guests who might drop by. Many colonists began the day with a draft of cider. Farmers carried cider jugs into the fields, and in winter people took them on hunting trips. Cider was always offered to guests, and a pitcher of cider was served at every meal. When the day ended, more cider was downed. In the 1790s, the French gastronome and culinary philosopher Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin visited a Connecticut farmhouse where he saw “huge jugs of cider so excellent that I could have gone on drinking it for ever.”²⁷ Cider was shipped from the countryside to towns and cities, where it was consumed in great quantities in taverns. It was also exported to the other English colonies in North America and the West Indies. In 1767, it was estimated that Massachusetts farmers drank 1.14 barrels of cider per capita, about the same as in New York, where cider was served at breakfast and was always available both during and between meals.²⁸ In addition, vast quantities of cider also were converted into apple brandy.²⁹

The quality of cider produced in the colonies varied greatly. One traveler in America reported that the cider in Maine was purified by frost, colored with corn, and had the appearance and taste of Madeira.³⁰ A British visitor remarked that the cider in Virginia was better than he ever had in England: “It is genuine and unadulterated, and will keep good to the age of twelve years and more.”³¹ Israel Acrelius, a Swedish Lutheran missionary who lived in colonial Delaware in the mid-eighteenth century, criticized American cider because it was “drunk too fresh and too soon; thus it has come into great disesteem, so that many persons refuse to taste it.”³² The French historian and politician Médéric Moreau de Saint-Méry, who lived in the United States from 1792 to 1799, reported that the cider he sampled in Philadelphia was good, but the cider from Newark, New Jersey, deserved its reputation as the best in the country. As good as the cider was, however, Moreau de Saint-Méry’s French colleague still found it inferior to French cider.³³

Like most Americans, the founding fathers drank their share of cider. When George Washington ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1757, he gave away “treats” to potential voters totaling 160 gallons of beer, ale, cider, and other alcoholic beverages. Washington had an apple orchard on his Virginia plantation and made his own cider, but because tidewater Virginia is not ideal apple-growing country, Washington occasionally ordered cider from up north.³⁴ In November 1775, the Continental Congress recommended that all soldiers receive a daily beverage ration consisting of a quart of either cider or spruce beer.³⁵ John Adams drank a morning gill (about a half pint) of cider before breakfast for most of his life.³⁶ Jefferson, too, liked his cider: he reported in his Garden Book that one type of apple, the Taliaferro, produced “unquestionably the finest cyder we have ever known, and more like wine than any liquor I have ever tasted which was not wine.”³⁷ General William Heath, who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, was “a true farmer,” according to J. P. Brissot de Warville, a French political leader, who visited Heath’s farm in 1788. Warville wrote that Heath presented a glass of cider “with frankness and good-humor painted on his countenance,” and his guest found the cider “superior to the most exquisite wines.”³⁸

This is where John Chapman stepped in. Born in Leominster, Massachusetts, in 1774, he headed to western Pennsylvania like many other Americans at the time. In 1797, Chapman became a convert to Swedenborgianism, a religion inspired by the Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg.³⁹ Chapman spent the remainder of his life as a missionary for his new religion. In approximately 1801, Chapman headed west again—this time to southeastern Ohio. On the way, he picked up some apple seeds at a cider mill in southwestern Pennsylvania and planted apple orchards along the way westward. Apple orchards provided a plentiful food supply, and Chapman could sell the seedlings to settlers who were streaming into Ohio. Chapman was not the first nurseryman in Ohio, nor was he the most fastidious orchardist; he often left the orchards he planted and returned a year or more later to sell the seedlings.⁴⁰ To produce edible apples, nurserymen needed to graft on the variety that they wanted. Chapman strongly opposed grafting. Although he likely ate the sour and small apples produced by his trees, most settlers would not have done so. These settlers likely used the apples to make hard cider.

The American temperance movement began in the late eighteenth century as a response to the problems associated with alcohol overconsumption. One prominent temperance advocate, Dr. Benjamin Rush, opposed rum, whiskey, and brandy, but he believed that small (that is, weak) beer, wine, and cider did not cause the drunkenness commonly associated with stronger drink. Rush believed that cider was an “excellent liquor” that contained “a small quantity of spirit, but so diluted and blunted by being combined with a large quantity of saccharine matter, and water, as to be perfectly inoffensive and wholesome.” Cider promoted “cheerfulness, strength, nourishment, when taken only at meals, and in moderate quantities,” proclaimed Rush.⁴¹

The temperance movement gained momentum during the early nineteenth century. In addition to opposition from the medical profession, many members of religious groups jumped on the temperance bandwagon. As a result, the focus of the movement shifted from serious medical issues to a moral crusade against all alcohol. The temperance movement was ambivalent about hard cider. Some temperance advocates saw hard cider as “good and useful taken in moderation.” For others, however, no alcoholic beverages, including cider, were “necessary or beneficial to health.”⁴² Early temperance societies permitted the use of beer, wine, and cider as substitutes for “ardent spirits.”

In the early 1830s, some temperance leaders embraced “total” abstinence. The Dutch Reformed Church supported this principle, as would many Quakers, Universalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. As one proponent of total abstinence sloganized, “Hard cider, too, will never do.” But there was still strong opposition to including cider in the ban on alcohol. As one opponent of total abstinence argued, declaring cider drinking “as disreputable as the use of ardent spirits” would have the opposite effect, for it “would reduce the offence of dram-drinking to the level of cider-drinking.”⁴³

Dr. William Alcott, one of America’s prominent temperance advocates (and a vegetarian), lined up against drinking cider. He was particularly opposed to egg cider: “I have seen a family of children brought up to relish this as one of the greatest treats. And yet it is, as it were, a parent of abominations. Cider is bad enough for the human stomach; but cider, eggs and molasses form a compound still worse, and one which deserves not to be named, except to expose its folly, in any decent circle or civilized society.”⁴⁴

Others agreed. Some New England farmers chopped down their apple orchards, reported Alcott in 1834, due to the conviction that “generally prevails that fermented drinks must not be continued.”⁴⁵

Despite the strong support for total prohibition, temperance advocates were mixed in their views. Many opposed William Henry Harrison because he did not condemn the distribution of free cider at Whig rallies. Others believed that Harrison, who did not drink cider, rose above the cider-infused campaign that his supporters conducted on his behalf. Those supporting Harrison “had high hopes that the President-elect would lend his moral authority to the cause [of temperance].”⁴⁶

Cider helped elect William Henry Harrison president, but his campaign may have swayed temperance advocates to expand their prohibitions beyond ardent beverages to all alcohol—beer, wine, and cider included. Virtually every temperance organization specifically opposed cider in their pledges after 1840. This had an immediate effect: the American Temperance Union reported in 1841 that cider mills had “vanished from the premises of almost every reputable New England farmer.”⁴⁷

In addition to the evangelical religious groups that supported temperance, new religious groups joined the anti-cider bandwagon as well. The Mormons loved apples and soft cider, but hard cider was prohibited. An American seaman named Joseph Bates—a follower of William Miller, who believed that the second coming of Jesus Christ would be coming soon—gave up “ardent spirits” in 1821. Over the following few years, he came to abstain from other alcoholic beverages as well, including cider. Bates, along with Ellen G. White, later helped found the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Bates may have influenced White on the subject of cider: “So gradually does Satan lead away from the strongholds of temperance, so insidiously do wine and cider exert their influence upon the taste, that the highway to drunkenness is entered upon all unsuspectingly.” White was even opposed to sweet or nonalcoholic cider:

I have often heard people say, “Oh! this is only sweet cider. It is perfectly harmless, and even healthful.” Several quarts, perhaps gallons, are carried home. For a few days it is sweet; then fermentation begins. The sharp taste makes it all the more acceptable to many palates, and the lover of sweet wine and cider is loath to admit that his favorite beverage ever becomes hard and sour.⁴⁸

Unfermented cider was manufactured by boiling down fresh apple juice to a concentrate and bottling the nonalcoholic beverage. Gail Borden, who developed the process for canning concentrated milk in 1858, had begun marketing apple juice by 1864.⁴⁹ But temperance advocates argued against its consumption and sale; although not intoxicating, unfermented apple juice was basically the raw material for hard cider, and as such its availability would lead America’s youth astray.

Russell T. Hall, one of the leaders of the homeopathic movement, was none too happy with sweet cider either:

Cider consumption had been declining well before the temperance movement called for its total prohibition. This was partly because of two insect pests—codling moths (Cydia pomonella) and apple scab insects (Venturia inaequalis)—which destroyed whole orchards throughout the country. Orchards were abandoned as New Englanders and New Yorkers moved to the Midwest, where other crops were more profitable.

Although cider remained somewhat popular throughout the United States, especially in apple-growing areas, its consumption waned as the nineteenth century progressed. It was not just the temperance movement, religious groups, and insect pests that contributed to this decline—the rise of other beverages, particularly beer, also undermined cider’s position as America’s favorite alcoholic beverage. The industrial revolution took its toll as well, as apple growers and cider makers flocked to the cities, leaving few in the countryside to maintain cider production.

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, cider production dropped dramatically. Much of the cider sold commercially was homemade; being unfiltered and unpasteurized, it was susceptible to developing molds and bacteria that often led to health problems, damaging the product’s reputation. Homemade cider also was often adulterated with contaminated water. As cities and states began passing pure food laws, it became increasingly difficult for home cider-making operations to meet the new regulations, especially after the U.S. Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. In addition, because of the temperance movement, some cities and states passed laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol, including cider. When national Prohibition went into effect in 1920, commercial hard cider production stopped, but several New York cider manufacturers shifted to making sweet apple juice. However, the federal prohibition commissioner in New York refused to give the companies licenses to make sweet cider because it could easily be converted into hard cider. The Hildick Apple Juice Company and the Duffy-Mott Company brought suit against the commissioner and others. In 1922, the United States District Court held that the sale of sweet cider was not a violation of the Volstead Act.⁵¹ Sweet cider production increased throughout Prohibition—the main reason being that purchasers converted it into hard cider.

When Prohibition ended, the demand for alcoholic hard cider did not recover. Nonalcoholic cider, however, found a receptive market during Prohibition, and sales of this benign beverage continued to grow during the twentieth century. Pediatricians highly recommended it for infants and children as a healthy source of vitamins. During the 1950s, apple juice became the most common fruit juice given to infants and children younger than twelve years.

Hard cider was all but forgotten, except for a few orchardists who continued to make it. The home-brewing movement took off in the late 1970s, which encouraged those interested in making cider. Apple growers began investigating heirloom varieties and traditional uses for apples, and many new cideries opened on the East and West coasts and in the Upper Midwest. Hard cider reemerged as a gourmet drink, and consumption in the United States increased twenty-fold between 1987 and 1997. Today, the United States produces about 6.5 million gallons of cider annually, and the field is “experiencing rapid growth, especially among small, craft producers, who are producing such a diverse array of products, from hard ciders to applejack and apple brandy, that it feels a bit like a colonial American renaissance,” according to Erika Janik, author of Apple: A Global History.⁵²

William Henry Harrison may have won the presidential election in 1840, but his victory was short lived. His inaugural address, one of the longest on record, was delivered on a cold, rainy day, and Harrison refused to wear an overcoat or a hat. A few weeks later, he came down with a cold, which turned into pneumonia. President Harrison died just thirty-one days after his inauguration.