Apple tastings from the cellar

General Fruit Growing
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I have more apples stored this year than usual and I am trying to pay more attention to how they are tasting. If you just had a good (or bad) taste out of your cellar this winter, tack it on here! I am keeping all my apples in the fridge in ziplock bags.

Yesterday I had a Blenheim Orange. This is more a mid-season apple and it was a little over-ripe but still wonderful in flavor. I think it was optimal about a month ago; it does benefit from time in storage to mellow out the acids a bit and to deepen the flavors. It has a unique herbal flavor, its in my desert island apples list for that reason.

I also had a Keener Seedling. This year the apples came out differently than other years, more red in the flesh and less russet. They are also not quite as flavorful. The flesh is also dry so modern apple eaters will probably not like it very much. But this apple has really good tannins and I am now thinking it could be a great cider apple as it has low acid and good low acid cider apples are hard to come by. This apple picks very late but is not a super good storage apple, it probably has another good month on it. If it were not for the cider potential I would be removing this guy but plan to keep and maybe even expand for cider.

I have been really impressed with Mutsu in storage, it gets much richer and more aromatic in storage. It needs about a month to get to peak after which it levels off.

Hubbardston Nonesuch is losing some of the delicate flavors. It is not a long-term storage apple.

Rubinette are still tasting good but they are a mid-season apple and are getting a bit rubbery now as well as losing flavor.

Pomme Gris are still good, they are also prone to rubbery but the flavors get even better so its a trade-off.

I am not eating my GoldRush yet, I have a lot of them and since they store better I am going through the less long-term ones now.

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I picked 20lbs gold rush from a U-pick farm on Oct. 28. I am sampling 2 of them every week. So far flavour doesn’t change much, still quite tart. The complexity is not showing up yet. On August 1 this year I bought 10 lbs gold rush which is 2015 crop, they taste wonderful.

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Good to hear about Mutsu

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My apples are all stored in plastic in the refrigerator.

Orlean’s Reinette - Texture is still great: firm, crunchy but not crisp (this is a dryish apple). The flavor went off about four weeks ago. It’s still very sweet with some acid, though that has mellowed quite a bit, but developed a musky flavor that was not present last season. I had the same flavor issue earlier this season with Sweet Sixteen and last year with Newtown Pippin. It may have something to do with storing in plastic. In a recent video by Skillcult, one of the commenters stated that an experienced apple identifier/taster at Salt Springs Nursery refused to taste apples stored in plastic because that method produced a “cheesy” tasting apple. I wonder if what I’m dealing with is that cheesy taste. It’s pungent, musty and maybe even mildew-like to my taste, but I’m thinking it might be the same problem this person describes. He suggests storing in paper bags in the fridge. I’ll experiment with that next year.

PS - I’ll finish the apples, as I they are still better than what’s available from the store, but this has been the best flavored apple in my orchard the past two seasons when right, and I can’t bear to toss them into the compost heap. Good thing only a handful remain.

Pixie Crunch - Starting to lose some of it’s sweetness and complexity (it’s not a super complex apple to begin with, but does have a bit of acid along with its sweets), but remains crisp and juicy. It’s best in late October through mid-November, but still a decent apple right now.

Claygate Pearmain - Remains excellent. It’s crisp, fairly juicy, complex, sweet with a good kick of acid and has not mellowed all that much in storage, though it is noticably sweeter now than at the beginning of October. I’ll attempt to stretch my remaining six or seven apples through the end of December to see if it continues to store well that late in the season. This apple is in my top five and is my most consistently productive variety.

Stayman - I had a total of five apples from this tree (first fruiting). It was great a week after I picked it in mid-October, but the two I’ve eaten in the past 10 days are clearly inferior, having lost flavor all around (sweetness, acidity and complexity). It is also noticeably less crisp. This is a bit surprising to me, as Stayman is reported to be an excellent keeper. The three apples above are all supposed to be middling keepers but have performed better.

Spitzenburg - I dipped into this bag for the first time last week. It’s fantastic: crisp, complex, juicy and more. This season’s Spitz are the best I’ve produced.

I still have Tydeman’s Late Orange and Newtown Pippin to taste, but I’ll wait until I’ve finished my poorer storers before dipping into them.

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Give it a couple more months and if it behaves for you as it has for me it will start blanding out. Hang onto those Goldrush and be generous with the Mutsus, I say.

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Good point. I was over-excited in that description, it already maxed out. They greatly improved for a month. I am going to edit the above to fix.

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Stayman is among my top 3 favorite October apples, when eaten in October. But I agree with you: They do not keep well beyond October.

I have a single Arkansas Black left in the fridge. I ate one about a month ago, and was not pleased with it. It looked sound, but the flavor and texture was kinda “bleehhh.”

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I have about 40 Arkansas Black in my fridge. I’m gonna give them another month to see if I like them. If not this tree will be a good grafting project. It’s a shame because they really do well for a low spray program.

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Nice to hear about Esopus Spitzenburg I grafted some limbs over to that.

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I also have some Fuji and Goldrush in the fridge. Those are usually the best keepers for me so far.

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And for most others- both are famous for holding their texture in plain storage well into spring.

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For being a “popular” Southern Heirloom apple, I’ve never met or heard anyone who really loved Arkansas Black.

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I just ate another Ark Black. Not impressed. Had a straw-like Red Delicious taste. Like Baldwin but with no redeeming qualities. Maybe I got a bad batch.

On the other hand, I just had my first Goldrush of the year, out of the fridge. It was very good.

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I like Ark Black as it performs here. Nice hard, tart apple. But this is NY.

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I just tasted a few more from my storage pile…

Shizuka - Aging well, pretty much at peak now I would say, nice and crisp and aromatic. I thought I had more Mutsu, its sister, but no more of those left…

Razor Russet - smilar to Shizuka.

Reinette Clochard - this apple is prone to rotting as it ages, but at the same time the flavor is immensely improved - very rich. This is a really special apple in spite of major flaws.

Reine des Reinettes - It seems to need more aging, it is more at the level you want to cook with now.

Pomme Gris - I had another one of these and remembered the rubbery ones I was aging in a box. Thats not a good idea, they dried out too much. This one in the plastic bag is not rubbery at all and is tasting really great. In general I would not age apples in paper bags in a normal fridge as I think they would dry out too much.

Yates - better than before but still starchy, needs another month. It is starting to develop a really nice flavor though. I may have picked these a bit too early, the deer were after them. The deer also later cleared out all the ones I didn’t pick at this point.

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Scott, maybe you should use a cheap freezer with no auto-defrost and a thermostat- at least when your storage harvest warrants it. The small cheap refrigerators are also superior for storing apples as they also require manual defrosting.

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My vague long-term plan is to have a real fruit cellar. I have a tiny room in the basement I insulated to not get heat from the house, and plan to install a vent to the outside with a fan and thermostat to keep things cold. If I bail on that I will probably get one of those cheap freezers like Axel was using for his apple storage.

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@chikn - I just ate the last Chieftain I had. I found one rolling around with the other apples in the crisper drawer. It was a small apple, but still had quite a bit of flavor and was still crisp. Picked it at a U-Pick on 10/8, I think.

:wink:

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Neither rare nor highly esteemed, my Golden Delicious apples that we picked the first two weeks of September are still superb, even though some have skin that is shriveling. We bought this house last year with two mature apple trees. This year I pruned, thinned and bagged fruit, and sprayed. These apples have lived up to the name. They are sweet and juicy, and they have a kick that I can only describe as a twang (Spicy , maybe? Could they be Grimes Golden?). I have eaten dozens and dozens, averaging about four a day, and I still remark to my wife that I’ve never tasted a better apple.

The Jonathans are also doing well in storage. Unfortunately, I picked most of them about two weeks overripe–good taste but a little too mealy for my comfort. They make great sweet cider when put in our electric juicer. Next year, I’ll pick them on time.

I’m excited about the five varieties I’ve just planted. Lord willing, I’ll be eating fruit from them in the next 2-5 years.

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Golden Delicious is vastly under-appreciated these days due to bad store versions and bad sports. I have had many awesome ones and would grow it except I am already growing two (good) sports of it and many children.

Speaking of GD children, my wife wanted to make a pie today and so I pulled out a bag of GoldRush for her. I had a taste to see how they are doing, they are sharp and better for cooking but still are good eating. They didn’t seem to ripen as fully this year as usual, not sure why. I still prefer a dead-ripe GR straight off the tree more than any cellared version, they are super acidic but also have an amazing anise flavor which I have not found in the cellared ones.

Oh, the pie is excellent!

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