Best tasting apples

[mamuang]

My Hooples’ Antique Gold dropped. Honey Crisp has been dropping. I picked my only one King of Pippins and Rubinette. They came off easily. I picked a Fuji/Rising Sun for size comparison. King of Pippins is huge. It weighed 11.36 oz.

Here’s the line up.

Left to right :King of Pippins, Honey Crisp, Fuji, All American , Hooples and Rubinette.

[Auburn]

Had a great tasting Arkansas Black today. Some years it taste better than others. Got to let it hang longer to get the deep color and sweet/tart taste. It is also not rock hard. Good overall but not as good to me as Pink Lady or Goldrush.

[Auburn]

Looks like perfect apples. Hope they taste as good as they look.

[mamuang]

The only time I ate AB was to PYO. It almost broke my teeth. Hard like rock. But our climate is quite different. That could contribute to the taste and texture of the same apple. I grafted AB to my tree. I consider it a storage apple.

[mamuang]

I have not tried them yet. Hopefully, taste test with a friend who has quite a refined taste. He can detect several tastes in a fruit and is good at describing them. I only know, sweet, tart, like, don’t like etc :)

[northwoodswis4]

I tried my first snowsweet yesterday from a tree I planted in 2015. It had a couple apples in 2017, but the critters got them. It is a winner! Very hardy and precocious, too.

[alan]

So far the best tasting apples to my palate this season are Ashmead’s Kernel and Spitz and Spitz is a much prettier more grower friendly variety that keeps much better than AK. I’m surprised it is not more highly acclaimed on this forum- I’ve read of a small commercial grower in Washington state that specializes in this variety, so it must do well in a reasonably wide range of conditions. Every apple enthusiast that likes tarts around here has been thrilled when I let them sample my Spitz and when they are customers they order trees of this variety.

However, someone wrote on this forum that Thomas Jefferson procured his stash of Spitzs from growers in NYS suggesting he couldn’t get the same quality from trees in Monticello.

[mamuang]

Had a taste testing this afternoon right in my front yard. My husband, his friend, my brother-in- law and I were testers.

From left to right: King of Pippins, Honey Crisp, Fuji, Hoople’s Antique Gold and Rubinette.

King of Pippins. - texture simlilar to Golden Delicious. Comments included sweet, apple sauce flavor

Honey Crisp : crunchy, juicy, sweet, most pleasing taste.

Fuji ( not fully ripe) :texture semi- crisp, sweet, rose water flavor

Hoople’s Antique Gold: texture- Golden Delicious type, chaulky(our friend said) a little tangy, apple flavor. Hubby likes the texture of its russet skin.

Rubinette (a little rot, may affected taste). Crisp texture. Tangy. Nothing to write home about.

Honey Crisp is the tastiest. Rubinette is the least favorite.

This are apple from my yard. They got too much water from the summer to now.

[joleneakamama]

I got to sample Spitz for the first time this year. The flavor was wonderfully rich and complex. Granny Smith was larger and had less bug damage, but I’m with the bugs in preferring the Spitzenburg.

[scottfsmith]

The Hooples Fuji and Rubinette are probably not fully ripe yet so I wouldn’t put too much stock in how those tasted. I am still picking my Hooples and Rubinette here, and Fuji is even later. Rubinette also might need a few more years before its any good.

[mamuang]

Those Hoople’s dropped yesterday (3 of 4 dropped). One remaining. Last year, they were very good.

Rubinette came off quite easily when I picked it this morning. Fuji definitely was not fully ripe.

I saw your post on Rubinette. What a temperamental apple!!!

[MikeC]

Nice apple lineup. Thank you for doing a taste test and inviting a few people to taste them as well. I can be biased at times when I taste them knowing what varieties they are.
That KOP is a nice size apple. Are the rest of them about that size and color?
I have two KOP trees planted, first greening this year. I also have a Sunrise Fuji. I had some nice smaller sized fruit from it this year. We had a 6 week drought though. Maybe they will be bigger next year. Plus some critters helped themselves to a lot of the unripened fruit.

[mamuang]

KoP had only one fruit (I thinned). It was grafted last year and fruited this year for the first time. I did not realize that it’d be that huge.

None of the apples tasted as good as it should be. I had Hooples and HC before so I know they could be better than this year. When your Fuji tasted worse than a store bought, that was a bad sign

My Rising Sun Fuji is supposed to be an earlier ripening variety. It probably would not ripen for a ouple more weeks. I have about 10 Fuji for the first time from the tree planted in 2016. Most fruit are almost as large as a HC.
( I thinned to about 2 per cluster).

[alan]

I’ve eaten a couple of ripe Sept. Fujis off of nursery trees and they did get up adequate sugar to be tasty. I’ve also had some good old-strain Yellow Delicious that I was told would be fully russeted but are not- they’re russeted enough to prove they haven’t been a commercial strain for a long time though. The newer strains tend to be relatively bland and seem to have sacrificed brix in exchange for a reliably clear complexion. They also don’t seem as resistant to insect damage.

For folks who use a lot of apples for culinary purposes, I think it is a mistake not to grow some form of old Yellow Delicious, they are remarkably productive and quite a tasty sweet. If you mix sweet and tart high brix apples in some recipes you get the best of both worlds without needing much added sugar.

[Lodidian]

In two recent posted pictures, a King of the Pippins was the largest apple in the line-up. That seemed odd to me, since ours (from Cummins) have never been king-sized, and multiple sources I’ve read describe KoP as small or small to medium. More evidence that there are a lot of strains of KoP and RdR around?

[mamuang]

It is a graft. So, it depends on whether or not the sender sent me the correct variety. That apple was huge.

Size depends on several factor. @alan said Pink Lady has a good size. My first year Pink Lady are small even though I thinned to two from 10+ fruit.

[alan]

Wait, when did I say PL had good size? I thought I gave up smoking herb! PL is one of my smallest apples although it can get reasonable size when thinned enough.

[mamuang]

I thought you said so. Need to look up.

[applefarmer]

Seriously good looking apples. Care to share your secrets? Fertilizer? Spray schedule? Thanks.

[mamuang]

Thanks. No secret.

Spray: copper at dormant twice in late fall and early spring ( sometimes mid spring before bud break). Not really for apples. Copper is intended to lessen bacterial and fungal issues of stone fruit but apples could benefit for fire blight prevention.

Immunox twice at (flower) petal fall and 10-14 days after that. For Apple Cedar Rust, scab, sooty blotch and fly speck, etc.

BT after leaf out. I had too many leaf rollers and tons oftent caterpillars this year. This year with BT. I sprayed twice because of rain.

Bagging. Apples about a nickle size. Ziplock plastic bags.

That’s it. Before this year. I did not use BT. Sometimes, I could only spray copper once.

All in all, I could grow apples without spray if I chose the right varieties.

For fertilizer, either 10-10-10 or Plant Tone/Tree Tone in early spring following a direction.