Pacific Rose is my favorite of these - it doesn’t have that insipid crunch of the Crisp clones
Supermarket apples in my area are unpredictable and vary a lot in flavor and texture. They always look good, but often taste bad.
I have tried many varieties grown in different locations like, Washington, NY, Va or in my home state of NC and apples sold by many different supermarkets.
Can’t explain why the taste is so unpredictable, but I expect how long the apples were held in CA storage may explain part of the difference.
Some apples go directly from normal refrigerated storage to the supermarket, but I don’t know if its possible to distinguish between these “fresh” apples and apples from long term Controlled Atmosphere (CA) storage.
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Supermarket apples are to fill in the void created by crop failure. Nothing is as good as own grown apples- once you are growing varieties you love.
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It would be nice to have CA storage on a small scale
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Homegrown apples direct from the tree or from storage are much better than apples from the supermarket, but I don’t believe its possible to have homegrown apples for 12 months.
No, but 10 months is possible here- Goldrush is pretty good out of refrigeration into May if you keep it from dehydrating. Personally, I don’t need apples for 12 months and only tend to focus on them in Fall and Winter. Apple lovers can always extend the season by drying them or canning sauce. Home made apple sauce is a completely different thing than what is commercially available. The big trade-off is time.
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Me too! I would love to try some some type of CA or perhaps modified atmosphere storage for apples.
We experimented with placing blueberry flats into 50 gallon contractor bags and displacing some of the oxygen with CO2 many years ago.
The blueberries stored well, but without a control group of blueberries we could not say for sure how well the CO2 worked.
The same process with Nitrogen in a large sealed bag of apples might help retard ripening, but I don’t have any way to measure the concentration of N.
Is there an age-related divide in apple preference? I’m 65 and do not like the sweet apples from Gala and Honeycrisp to the newer ultra- sweet ones. Most of my age peers and I much prefer the apples that used to be called sub-acid instead. My daughter and her friends and children go for the sweet ones. I don’t know which generation you Envy lovers are in.
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I’m 66 and love me some Envy
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I’ve eaten a Snapdragon. It was nice and crunchy but too sweet for me. Ditto for Honeycrisp. I bet Envy would be the same for me. I would take a GoldRush any day over these really sweet apples. But to each his/her own!
SnapDragon tasted intensely sweet to me, too.
I tried Envy. Don’t know how long it was in storage. It tasted like another good apple, nothing more.
I like Envy, Opal, Ambrosia, Pacific Rose… but I also like Karmijn deS, Wh Winter Pearmain, Pomme Gris, and other older types.
I am perplexed about Gold Rush, though. I finally got hold of a couple at the farmer’s market from an organic grower in Watsonville (nearby). They looked beautiful! Yellow with pink blush. I was expecting great things, and kept trying to taste what everyone on this forum is tasting. It was not only fairly boring, flavor-wise, but the skin was very thick, and very hard to chew. It seemed to break off in sharp flakes and had a very unpleasant effect.
Could this be a local effect? The guy from the farm who sold them to me seemed to think I’d love them. Was it just a bad year? It would be weird if my opinion of this apple were THAT far off from everyone else’s, when I can usually relate at least to a degree, to what the apple aficionados are saying here…
He did mention that they didn’t have as many this year, due to late rains, and a heat wave in late spring/early summer. Could that be the culprit?
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Lizzy, you are not the only one. I also got ahold of a bag of local-to-me GoldRush this weekend, some were very well colored like yours. Your description dovetails very closely with some of my thoughts. I did see why the local cidery is growing a ton of GoldRush to make into cider though; there is quite a bit of tannin to the skin in the ones I had. They are fairly acid but balanced by quite a bit of sweetness, which I do think is at least a good mark.
I took my remaining 4 apples and put them in a plastic bag and put them in my storage fridge. I guess I will try to forget about them for a couple months and see if they are better after significant storage. For now, GoldRush to me is a bummer.
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Good to know I’m not absolutely alone on this, Drew!
If and when I travel to the east coast, though, I will try some Gold Rush there to see if there is a big taste difference.
Today I picked up a Peck of Goldrush from a local Orchard and was able to sample it for the first time. Wow! Its my kind of apple. Crisp, flavorful, tart, and sweet at the same time. A lot of the apples don’t have stems so not sure how well they will store but they probably won’t last that long. They are top notch for my palate.
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I ate a second apple it is was much different. Very hard and more tart and stronger flavor. Rediculous amount of flavor. I think this is an example of gold rush apples that need to be stored to mellow a bit. In actually still liked it but my wife didn’t.
I’ve experienced similar things from Goodrush when I’ve bought a half bushel from the farmers market. Most of the Goldrush were fantastic, but every once in a while I’d get one that was kind of bland. They didn’t look any different from the rest in size or color, they just didn’t have the great taste.
I would give them another try later on. They do improve in flavor in storage so maybe that will do it, or maybe you just need to sample another batch.
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I’ve also had some duds on GoldRush. This year several of mine were not as good as usual and I’m not sure why - the tree didn’t set many as it had too many the previous year but they were more consistently good last year.
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I have gold rush,never liked them ,however I have never stored them,
I am picking some now to store to see if the flavor improves.
Off the tree they have never been good ,for me
They do yield very heavy almost every year…
Have had them freeze solid on the tree, and you could still eat them end of November off the tree, no other apples left out side, so that is worth something.
Usually I leave them for the deer.
And I Allways harvest 100s of pounds of fresh meat off that row
Which is pretty good for an apple tree
Who would have thought , meat from trees !
For me ,that is what they have been worth so far.
Hoping the flavor improves with storage,
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I should add that I have never properly thinned them.
They all ways have too many apples on the tree.
No doubt , proper thinning would improve flavor, size,better ripening
Also ,I should add that gold rush fed deer has a wonder full flavor
Or…ate the most delicious deer today !
Season starts Monday !
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