Hard cider (sometimes mixed with rum ) was a very common drink at this time ,in the early-mid 1800's. It was comparatively easy for the frontier settlers to produce: plant some apple trees ( perhaps buying them from John Chapmann, AKA Johnny Appleseed) , tend them, collect apples, chop and press the apples, let the juice ferment. Cider is not dead easy to make, but passable cider is perhaps simpler to produce than growing and malting barley for beer, or cultivating grapes and fermenting wine. It became associated with the frontier. And rural life, generally, especially in New York and New England where there were many fine apple varieties developed, with fine names like Westfield Seek No Further.

More specifically, when the Whigs faced the populist Jacksonian Democrats in W. H. Harrison's presidential election campaign, they went to great lengths to try to portray Harrison as more of a man of the people, especially in the newer western states that were Jackson's base -trying to disguise that the Whig party was actually dominated by wealthy landowners. To this end they famously used log cabins and hard cider as campaign symbols.

Kerrigan : Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard

Proulx and Nichols: Cider