By Henry M. Holden 

In the early days of New Jersey’s development there were three major industries: Milling, Mining and Farming. One of the products of farming was apples. Apples were the mainstay of pioneer life because they could be used and preserved in so many ways. A favorite method of preservation was processing the apples into cider and applejack the “Jersey Lightning” of countless legends. From the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries the production of applejack brandy helped sustain New Jersey’s agricultural economy. Morris County became the largest applejack -producing county in the state.

By 1805, when Randolph Township formed there were six distilleries in the Township: Millbrook, Center Grove, Coombs Hollow, Ironia, Mt. Freedom and Randolph. The best known was Bryant’s located on Sussex Turnpike and Route 10.

In 1901, Dorastus Bryant published an advertising pamphlet relating the history of the family’s applejack business. It was a classic stab at self-promotion. Excerpts of that pamphlet are found within as quotations.

When the Ice Age glaciers melted away 15,000 years ago, they left huge rocks, caves, and verdant fields, just waiting for “Johnny Apple Seed” and Dorastus Logan Bryant (1840-1914). 

Johnny Appleseed was a mythical itinerant farmer, and when his work was done, he moved on. But not so Dorastus Bryant. 

Dorastus and his younger brother Alonzo (1842-1878) attended school and were raised as farm boys. When their father, Samuel, died in 1866, the brothers inherited equally, the home with a small apple orchard behind it. Included was a small distillery, and some iron mine properties. Dorastus bought his brother’s half interest in the distillery with a mortgage of $3,500.  In 1872, Dorastus paid off the mortgage on the distillery, which including the house was valued at $10, 500.

Dorastus was schooled in the rudiments of farming and fruit crop culture and early on learned the technical and financial requirements of the distilling business.

“At a very early age I was introduced to the business and made “Boss” of the motive power, and a good old horse…After graduating through all the departments and unloading apples long after dark I was all the time thinking how to do the work without working. In 1869, when I succeeded to the business, I already had the problem solved. The two old buildings were torn down, and on the site, I erected two of the most compact and complete cider mill, vinegar factory and apple distillery in the state.”

In his second year of distilling, Bryant produced 850 gallons of 100-150 proof liquor. He advertised his product with claims it promoted good health, strength and “good old age.”

“Everybody drank pure old ‘apple’ in those times when everything required manual labor. Even the good wife had her private bottle to prolong the pastoral call, and to prevent that ‘tired feeling’ so prevalent at the present day.”

Bryant briefly describes the distilling process. “After an elevator brings your fruit up to a large hopper and then through a large grater, the pulp is deposited between layers of cloth which are pressed under continuous stream press. The liquid that has been squeezed out will be distilled in copper kettles by furnace heat.”

Like all apple distilleries in those days, it had two large low buildings, where the apples were received and crushed by two corrugated cylinders revolving together, and the pumice is laid up in cribs between layers of straw.

“By the time you can drive around to the front, and back up your wagon, your cider is ready. You then put the hose in the bunghole and while the barrel is filling, you sample the cider with a little “old apple,” and you go your way rejoicing.” 

 The distilling is done the old way by furnace heat and copper kettles, but in a much larger and cleaner way. 

“The distilling is now done under government supervision, and as soon as produced, it is gauged, branded, and stamped by the U.S. Gauger and shipped to a special bonded warehouse to age. Your barreled cider can remain in the warehouse for up to eight years. When the fermentation is complete you pay the warehouse for rent. Your bottled cider is then shipped all over the United States and sold for about a dollar a gallon. Made from your selected fruits, this cider can be found under the name Bryant’s Pure Old Cider Brandy or Applejack, the most agreeable stimulant known. Satisfied customers have regained their strength, retained their health and prolonged their lives by knowing a good thing when they see it.”

“Ever since the flood most mankind has craved a stimulant. Noah got very tired of water and changed his beverage at the first opportunity. Later they all made merry at a marriage feast. Now a good many use good liquor while others less wise use nicotine, morphine, quinine and other deadly drugs to reach the same result. How much better off are the Bryant’s benefactors, when they drink from nature’s first and healthiest fruit, the most agreeable stimulant known to man, and therefore replaced to that extent the chemical compounds of whiskey, gin, and rum, doctored and drugged to please the pallet.”

Not afraid of self-promotion, Bryant said, “To those to whom “all liquors alike, “we would say that pure rum is made from molasses, whiskey from grain, brandy from fruit, apple brandy from pulp or pomace, cider brandy from juice or cider. Bryant’s cider brandy is made from cider strained through cloth and double distilled by the most approved methods, by a distiller born in the business. It contains none of the fusil oil inherent in all grain whiskies. Notwithstanding, some people in the absence of pure ‘apple’ have acquired an abnormal taste for other liquors. To satisfy this demand we have exchanged with the best-known distillers we have in grain, for their oldest in bond and can supply consumers and dealers with all kinds of liquors, wholesale and retail at distiller’s prices.  That’s Applejack, carelessly spoken of at times as Jersey Lightning and known as a side of brandy or apple whiskey, the latter being a palatable misnomer.”

In summary Bryant said, “Apple brandy makes weeding, mowing, and haying seem easier and, in the fall, it takes part in harvesting the crops. It is in the barn, in the house, in the market wagon and everywhere except perhaps in the church. This only goes to prove that good apple brandy is one of the most wholesome liquors in the country. Steady drinkers in New Jersey live and retain their strength and health to a good old age. Some of them likely attribute their rugged condition to the fact that they have been drinking apple for 50 years or more.”

The Bryant distillery continued making applejack until Prohibition closed it down in 1920. It then became a mill producing non-alcoholic cider. It closed permanently in 1934, and, like the rest of the industry never fully recovered from America’s experiment with legislated Puritanism.