I have tons of gooseberry at the moment and looking to add some other berries. Also, have some current and service berry, but are to new to fruit. Could someone please put these in order of least astringent/tart to most at dead ripe. Along with your favorite and why.
Gooseberry
Current
Goumi
Autumn Olive
Service Berry
Honeyberry
Sorry Robert…
Cant help you with personal experience on that yet. I do have honeyberry, jostaberry, goumi berry and currents planted… and expect to get some fruit from the last 3 for the first time this year.
My honeyberry location proved to be too sunny… one died and the other is not happy. I will have to try those again in a partial shade location.
I have heard that peak ripeness is key on those…
I do expect that location grown may change the results some… for example in southern middle TN… honeyberry cant take a full sun location… but in Maine that may work great.
I hear that goumi and honeyberry ripen early… perhaps earlier than any other berries I currently grow. That made them very appealing to me.
Good luck with your berry quest…
Ps Blackberry is one of my favorites… and raspbery blueberry strawberry. Peak ripeness is not so difficult on those.
TNHunter
Hi Robert! I’m not speaking from firsthand experience, but I’d say based on other threads that Currant and Gooseberry will probably be the most tart of your choices. I’m not sure what area you are in, but in Pennsylvania Autumn Olive is an invasive and I try to eradicate it on all of my job sites whenever possible. Goumi is in the same family but is less invasive and stays a smaller size. I haven’t seen anyone who was very fond of eating either off the tree. I will be planting Honeybee, Aurora, Indigo Gem, Blizzard, Beauty and Beast honeyberries this year along with Jeanne and Hinnomaki Yellow Gooseberry, and a few blight resistant Currants. I plan to use all of them in jams, crumbles, pies and other baked goods as they are supposed to be very tart when fresh.
I would say your best bet for fresh eating would be serviceberry if you can protect them from the birds. Are you looking for particular bushes for planting or do you already have these in the ground? There are a few other great lower maintenance fruit bushes I could suggest from others and my research.
I have heard (Nursery catalog descriptions) and growers stating the same on youtube…
that the sweetest currents are white, then pink then reds then blacks…
OGW Catalog says that ORUS 8 a hybrid between black current and red goosberry… is considered the best for fresh eating of any goosberry… now of course they are selling them.
I have Red Gem and Sweet Scarlet goumi growing now… Sweet Scarlet has “sweet” in the name… that has to help right ? well they do describe it as large, sweet, and tasty fruit… again selling it.
I have one… and we will see hopefully this year.
TNHunter
I found a six foot service berry at the nursery, but birds stripped it before I had a taste. Have several different gooseberry. Those have a wide array of different flavors between varieties. Also have josta which I liked. The two white currents have not fruited yet. I’m just looking to add some others just to have it. The less astringent the better.
If you have white currents already… you might try adding some pinks next…
I started off with a couple of red currents myself… in the first year planted one of them had a few blooms and produced a few berries in year 1 planted. Thay tasted pretty good to me.
They grew nicely last year in a partial shade area… hope they bloom and give me several more to try this year.
There are videos of kids trying black currents on youtuve… making awful faces. But you also see some adults saying they love them…
I think it is Ross Raddi ?? on youtube that doed a good job of telling about goumi berries… best i remember… he said you really have to wait until they are sort of drying out on the bush… perhaps falling off… b4 the flavor gets really good and sweetness is there.
TNHunter
Check out this vid from Ross… on Goumi.
I think he is growing in Pennsylvania.
Notice he said - Gummy Bear stage… and dehydrating…
I am using my Goumi bushes for Nitrogen Fixing… I have them planted in between apple trees.
If I can get a few berries off them to eat, and figure out exactly when to pick them… plus, plus.
Before Ross figured out exactly when to pick them… he had them rated a 6… but after he increased that to an 8.
TNHunter
I am excited to try Aurora honeyberry (supposed to be the best fresh/sweetest) and serviceberry. Saskatoons (a type of bush serviceberry) were brought to my attention as a shade tolerant wet loving option in the honeyberry thread. I may try to include them on my north face. Have you looked into huckleberries at all?
i have all of them growing here and for fresh eating it would be serviceberry, honeyberry . gooseberry , goumi/ autumn olive and black currant. i love to eat all of them fresh but i like tarter berries. gooseberry, currants and honeyberries vary alot from one cultivar to the next. jeanne gooseberry, tiben black currant and aurora honeyberry are my favorites so far. black currant may be the lowest on the list but its worth growing for the jam and juice. its taste processed is phenominal! ive heard honeyberry is good processed as well but mine never last long enough to be processed. 
the birds, bugs and deer dont touch it here either.
Huckleberry is not one that is sold very often. A quick search says they taste similar to blueberry and in the same family.
Most of the berries I listed are like that. They need to be dead ripe to have any sugar.
Thanks. Maybe I should look more at honeyberry. The honeyberry thread made it sound like only two varieties were any good though.
It seems like you make the consolation growing 2 plants - one is the really good pollinator and the other is the good tasting fruit. Both edible, just having different purposes. That’s why I am planning on indigo gem and honeybee to pollinate my Auroras, and Beauty/Blizzard I believe are pollinated by Beast? I also want to track down Strawberry Sensation but it wasn’t available at floramaxx yet.
Of the ones I’ve tried, serviceberries are by far the least tart and best fresh eating.
I have Saskatoons and they are very mild but tasty with a hint of almond. Almost no acid, even underripe, they are dry and mealy, not acidic.
I’ve found them very easy trees or shrubs but bird pressure can be high. Gangs of cedar waxwings may show up and clear you out.
Haskap are pretty variable by type. I have older varieties and while they are much better when netted and allowed to fully ripen, they are still tart and pretty acid. We love them in smoothies.
Black currents are strongly flavoured with light acid when fully ripe, White are dull, in my experience and red are tart and a bit acidic.
Ripe gooseberries can also be variable on the acid, some are much higher than others but all have some, in my experiance. More than black currents but less than red.
Are we talking about astringency or tartness? These are two different tastes/mouthfeels.
I had the same reaction as LarryGene.
I consider tartness a synonym for sourness and correlates with low pH.
Astringent is the mouth-drying effect. They often come in tandom, as well as with bitterness, and people seem to conflate them.
Robert, in the original post, didn’t say why he wanted the ranking with respect to astringency, but it seems some interpreted that as a call for which are best fresh.
I personally, don’t mind some astringency in strong-flavored fruits, and I think to some extent it is a cultivated taste that one can come to crave, like the spicy heat of capsaicin in peppers.
And for those who like chocolate, or black tea, you may have a taste for some astringency as well, and not even realize it.
So back to the original post, of those listed, I have little experience with Service Berry. I think the Eleagnus are probably the most astringent - the Goumi and Autumn Olive. I’ve tried more Goumi, and have 2 I really like. Next probably Black Currant, and the other currants.
For preference for fresh eating I’d rank them:
For me, sugar is an important component (I don’t drink lemon juice, but love lemonade).
Black currants, allowed to ripen until dull, and soft, have a lot of sugar and most of the astringency is gone. Red and White currants just don’t have that much flavor, don’t get nearly as much sugar, and are pretty one-note sour flavor, like citric acid. They are pretty though, and make very pretty jelly.
Goumi have a unique, and good sweet/tart flavor, and again need to hang long past full color to get the sweetest, least astringent fresh-eating goodness. My daughter and I eat handfuls from the bush.
I have not had that experience, pinks seem the sweetest to me.
Again, I wonder if people are using the terms to mean the same things.
It seems sometimes sweet is used to reflect the balance of sugar to sour being imbalanced towards sweet. It doesn’t speak to intensity. Watermelons are sweet in this sense, even the relatively watery ones.
Others, which I generally prefer, use sweet to reflect how strongly it tastes of sugar, independent of sour/bitter/salty and other flavors. Brix is a good proxy for sweetness in this sense.
I’m pretty confident that black currants have the most sugar of the currants that I’ve experienced. Obviously cultivar and conditions will have a big influence, but I find the table in the following link useful for generalities:
Let me restate as best fresh eating quality with little astringency or tartness. You are right there is a difference.
Not sure I can go with their ratings in the chart. They have crabapple with higher brix than most fruits. Someone on here should do a chart like that from their own fruit. Would be an interesting guideline.