The best old-fashioned applejack came from farm-cider, which always had wild crabapples added to it. Wild crabapples, native to North America, made the cider more acidic, more tannic, and sweeter, which improved fermentation and storage. These qualities are still great for making the best applejack.

Nowadays, local farmers provide most of our cider. The farmers are our partners, and have helped us develop unique sweet cider, freshly pressed from a blend of apples chosen for the qualities we want in our applejack. Their hard work allows Tom’s Foolery to distill enough applejack so that we can share it with our friends.

Alan Grobe, of Grobe Fruit Farms in Elyria, Ohio, has been a great friend and partner, even delivering up to 9 totes of cider at a time.  He made our 2012 Applejack Distilling season the biggest one yet!

 

Throughout the season, the cider will be made from about 25 different apple types. Some of the apple types you would recognize, such as honey crisp, gala and jonagold. But other varieties, some of which make the best cider, are not common. We source heritage apples specifically for making the cider from family farms, where some of the varieties, which have been cultivated for generations, do not even have names.

 

We still add wild crabapples to our cider, partly out of tradition. We hand pick apples from wild crabapple trees each fall, and make cider with a small wooden press. Every bottle of our applejack contains our handmade cider.