Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With This Week’s Cocktail, The Jersey!

How you like dem apples?

Masthead Brewery in CLE lovers their cider. Can you tell?

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. It’s finally fall, and in Ohio that means apple season. I’ve struggled to find a good apple-flavored cocktail in the past, but this recipe, dating back to 1862, fits the bill nicely. My wife and I both prefer hard cider over beer as a fizzy canned alcoholic beverage. A recipe that celebrates this lovely drink is well worth your time. Let’s make a Jersey. Here’s the recipe.

Jersey Cocktail

1 oz Tom Foolery Applejack

2-3 dashes Angostura bitters

¼ oz Demerara syrup

Hard cider

Stir all ingredients except for the cider in a mixing vessel with ice. Strain into a Collins glass. Add chilled hard cider and serve.

“Professor” Jerry Thomas was the first great American bartender. A wanderer, a bon vivant, and an impeccable showman, Jerry worked at some of America’s finest hotels, wowing crowds with his diamond-studded bar tools and flaming cocktails. He also wrote the first American cocktail book, How to Mix Drinks: Or, The Bon Vivant’s Companion. (Wonkette affiliate link!) Jerry first recorded the Jersey recipe in this volume. Decades later, David Wondrich wrote a companion book to the “Professor’s” Bible called Imbibe! In that volume, Mr. Wondrich had little to say about the drink: “It’s an honest, straightforward drink. Let that be its recommendation.”

Mr. Wondrich’s book was the first cocktail book to win a James Beard award, and it takes a bit of chutzpah on my part to critique him. But Imbibe! was written in 2007, and hard cider quality in America has improved drastically since then. I can get Angry Orchard anywhere, and it’s pretty darn tasty. Your local craft brewery probably has a nice hard cider on the menu. I asked the bartender at Masthead Brewing Company to whip up this version of the Jersey using their house-made semi-dry cider, and it was absolutely delicious.

Apple brandy and apple cider are profoundly American, dating back to Colonial times. Turning your apple crop into a high-value product with a long shelf life was a smart move for any farmer; the Founding Fathers made plenty of cider. John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, was in the cider business as much as the apple-tree business. German beer makers eventually stole the fizzy-beverage market from American cider, but the modern craft beer movement has welcomed hard cider with open arms.

I’d view this cocktail as a template, not a final destination. It’s fundamentally an Old Fashioned made with cider instead of bourbon. There are a ton of classic drinks built using this core recipe. The Sherry Cobbler and Champagne cocktail are simply sherry or champagne, bitters, and soda. The recipe immediately following the Jersey in Jerry Thomas’s book is a “Soda Cocktail,” which is simply seltzer, bitters, and sugar. We can take the Jersey’s apple-forward recipe and play with it to our liking. If you want to lower the proof, there’s no reason not to omit the applejack and just pour cider, bitters, and sugar. It’d be a great way to take an average cider — like Angry Orchard — and make it even better. You can also use another spirit, like rye whiskey, bourbon, or dark rum, instead of applejack to enhance the drink. Or make this drink almost entirely non-alcoholic by using fresh cider instead of hard cider. The bitters add a small amount of alcohol, but it’s not enough to notice. As always, there are no rules. Drink what you like.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Ingredient shot. Thanks for the help with this drink, Scott.

Tom Foolery Apple Jack: Real talk: This is the only applejack I’ve ever tasted that was worth pouring. Watershed here in Ohio makes an apple brandy. It’s awful — musty, dry, and zero apple flavor. If you are lucky enough to live in a state that has Clavados, please use it here and tell me how good it is. I’ll be jealous.

Angostura Bitters: The “Professor” didn’t specify what sort of bitters to use. Angostura is the default, but try spiced cherry bitters or dandelion bitters and see how it tastes.

Demerara syrup: 2:1 Sugar in the Raw/water, heated on the stovetop until the sugar has melted. Sugar is the tricky part of this cocktail. If the cider is sweet, don’t add much sugar. You might want to omit this entirely depending on the drink.

Cider: A semi-dry cider is the best choice by far. Use what you like, but adjust the bitters-to-sugar ratio to suit your taste.

My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by, and I’ll make this drink for you… or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette. We’ll make it through this together.

OPEN THREAD!