American Cider and how it got renamed as "hard cider"

The first recorded mention of "hard cider" was in 1786 Vermont Journal " Take a six quart jug of old hard cider, put therein one double handful of parsley roots etc", however it was not a common term for the next few decades.

The first clear reference to cider as unfermented apple juice is 1846 Ohio Repository Filter fresh cider through a layer of sand and charcoal laid on a blanket...This preserves the cider sweet longer than any other method we know of.

Sadly the terms cider and hard cider were used both to mean alcoholic cider for quite a while before it became standardised after the end of Prohibition in 1933.

During the Civil War (1861-5), women took control of the farms and businesses as their fathers, husbands, and brothers went off to fight.

When the men returned then were different. They suffered what we now know is post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many men came back violent, and they tried to forget what they saw by drinking more hard cider and other alcohol. However alcohol is not a solution to PTSD and the drinking  fuelled domestic violence.

After being independent during the Civil War, often for the first time in their lives, the women realised they had the power to change their circumstances. They rekindled the Temperance Movement to end drinking. They held rallies and protests. They chanted sayings such as “No lips that touch alcohol shall touch mine.”

The Temperance Movement, Supported and well funded by a diverse group of people strengthened after the Civil War, was the first death knell for hard cider.

The second death knell was immigration.

While hard cider was an English drink, immigrants from Europe especially Germans preferred beer.

The quick westward expansion  ( promoted as Manifest Destiny, the American version of Doctrine of Discovery) of the 13 colonies also favoured beer, despite the efforts of Johnny Appleseed ( John Chapman), as it takes only a year to clear farmland and grow the wheat, barley, and the hops needed for beer, whereas it takes up to 10 years for a standard apple tree to grow mature enough to bear apples. If you were continually moving west, there was no time to wait for the apple tree to mature. Maybe even more importantly, the Temperance Movement was largely made up of Protestants whose ancestors came from England, the primary drinkers of hard cider. Therefore, while the beer industry continued to grow as more European immigrants moved to America, hard cider consumption declined as more drinkers of hard cider joined the Temperance Movement.

Apple orchards were reportedly cut down and burned due to Prohibition by zealous FBI agents. Before Prohibition, apple orchards were largely for apple varieties selected to be used for hard cider and baking but by the end of Prohibition in 1933, the apples left were those for eating, not for making hard cider. However this appears an exaggeration. No definite evidence exits but with decreased value in cider apple crop farmers themselves would have converted some orchards to arable land or top dressed their trees to eating apple varieties

And thus, beer became the drink of choice, and the resource needed to make hard cider — cider apples — had been lost. New orchard plantings were of sweeter apples more suitable for eating which were developed and planted.

However as a footnote in history, for a fleeting few months cider reigned supreme in alcoholic drinks!

To explain, Prohibition was not achieved overnight. There were a series of Acts that the Temperance and Anti-Saloon movements caused to be enacted. There were many individual State laws until the 18th Amendment was passed, and took effect on 17th January 1920. Before the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, twenty-six of the then forty-eight states had already gone dry. The 18th Amendment was proposed on 18th Dec 1917. But knowing prohibition would not be enacted overnight the abolitionists targeted other laws in the interval. ( Congress allowed up to 7 years! Ratification actually took in the end less than one.)

Firstly, during the War period, the Lever Act or Food and Fuel Control Act of Aug 1917 prohibited the sale of grains for beer and whiskey distillation stating that food and fuel for that was better used for the war effort in other ways such as soldiers provisions. This did not directly affect cider, but set the scene for wider action.

Secondly the Wartime Prohibition Act, a temporary Senate measure of November 1918 went into effect. Passed to conserve America’s food and fuel during the war. During the interregnum of passing the Eighteenth Amendment , a rider was slipped in by the Temperance Movement and anti-Saloon Movement. The rider banned “beer, wine or other intoxicating malt or vinous liquor for beverage purposes”, thinly disguised as a contribution to the war effort. It was called the Jones rider after the Republican Senator from Washington State

This rider however created problems. For instance it never clearly defined the word “intoxicating.” Many legal challenges were made. A later ruling declared that any liquor in excess of more than one half of one percent alcohol in volume was “intoxicating”, and therefore illegal.

But with further interpretation hard cider was declared neither a “malt nor vinous liquor,” so fruit juices, such as cider, were outside the reach of Wartime Prohibition! This was because farmers and the rural population were strong supporters of the Prohibition crusade, so when legislators framed the law, they took great care to prevent any infringement on the drinking habits of their farmer constituents back home. Fearing that any prohibition law would lose the farmers backing, it was their intent to interfere as little as possible with the generally recognised right of farmers to manufacture their beloved hard cider for home use. Therefore, the manufacture and sale of pure apple cider, fermented or not, was permissible under Wartime Prohibition regulations. Cider could be sold without regard to alcohol content, ( although technically nothing could be added to raise the percentage of alcohol).

Therefore before Eighteenth became enacted, cider was not subject to the ban on alcohol, cider, whether hard or sweet, could be sold without regard to its alcohol content, until January 16, 1920, when constitutional Prohibition, finally ratified as the Eighteenth Amendment, would go into effect and replace Wartime Prohibition.

Thirdly the 18th Amendment (first introduced on 18th December 1917) was ratified by enough States on 16th January 1919, when Nebraska ratified it creating the required three quarter majority needed. It was enacted in Aug 1918. But needed another Act to enforce it. The Volstead Act

And so finally the Volstead Act ( formally known as the National Prohibition Act) was passed on 28th Oct 1919 and enforced the Wartime Prohibition Act and the 18th Amendment from 16th January 1920. Universal USA Prohibition had begun. And cider's loophole from July 1919 finally closed.

So the Civil War, the Temperance Movement, immigration, and finally Prohibition resulted in cider going from the most popular alcoholic drink in America to a special treat drunk unfermented in the autumn or 'fall' to our American friends.