Honeygold also have dark brown seeds. Geez
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The frostbite that I’ve eaten are drops as it seems a bit early for them but one description I’d use for the taste is apple cider. It very much reminds me of the taste of those powder packets that you add hot water to. My apples do need to ripen more so I hope that the flavors develop even more.
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I picked the rest of my Frostbite yesterday. Any with damage will go into a batch of sweet cider to be made this weekend/early next week. The undamaged fruit went into the crisper in the fridge. They’re good now, they’ll only get better with a few weeks in cold storage.
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I’ve really been on a journey with Frostbite this year. Overall from first apple till now it has stayed juicy and crisp. Early on the apple’s flavor reminded me of a watered down/less sweet powder cider drink with the tannic mouth feel you get after drinking the bottom of the cup. Fast forward to yesterday and I cut up a few that had dropped and the sugary flavors (sugarcane, molasses, maple syrup) were becoming much more prominent. My family and I were chomping them down with smiles and head scratches. I’m was getting the “malty” notes which were also described as “similar mouth feel to protein powder drinks” from the family. I found myself really trying to pick out a peculiar flavor from one specific apple and racking my brain as to savory flavor descriptions when it slapped me right in the face. I started laughing out loud and my wife asked me what was so funny. I said “ITS SWEET SEAFOOD, kind of like imitation crab meat”. Her repy was “you’re going to ruin the apple for me saying that” but she did confess to tasting that same flavor afterwards. Overall a great apple, though very confusing/interesting, that I will continue to enjoy and look forward to year after year.
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yep
The green olive taste comes through (or at least it seems to in my mind) in another month or so.
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Can’t say that I’d be looking forward to that as I don’t really care for olives much at all.
I was thinking the same thing. My family doesn’t like the taste of olives. So that apple is out.
As far as olive tasting, I think its an individual perception. My wife doesn’t get the olive taste. If you’re looking for an appley tasting apple, Frostbite isn’t what you’re looking for. Fedco’s description is the best I’ve seen for Frostbite.
Frostbite Apple
Malus spp. Fall-Winter. MN 447. Unknown parentage. First fruited in 1921; named and introduced by the U Minn in 2008.
A massively flavored dessert apple, one of our favorites that we most look forward to each fall. Likely the most distinctive, complex and unusually flavored apple you’ll ever try. Astonished eaters have described it as tasting like molasses, olives, sugar cane, cheap whisky, yogurt, tobacco juice, and so on. We love it. The aromatic crisp crystalline apricot-orange flesh, with its occasional red staining, is so juicy it might run down your hand. The roundish fruit is medium-sized and entirely covered with dark bluish-purple stripes. Lost in the dustbin of weird apples for nearly 90 years before it was finally named and released.
Extremely hardy, productive and reliable; at its best in colder districts. A parent of the popular Sweet Sixteen and Keepsake, and grandparent to Honeycrisp. Blooms midseason. Z3.
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Malt? As an avid ale brewer I think Frostbite needs be tried on a branch, especially since HighandDry weighed in on how well it does in Reno, NV. (I once brewed a wild yeast batch of ale: green olives was the principal flavor overtone. Not my favorite, but interesting.)
You all make my life so full of wonder…
I’d say malt is the most forward flavor in our Frostbites out of the fridge right now. The malt is beginning to move towards more molasses than when I put the fruit in the crisper. In another week or so, I’d guess the molasses flavor will be the most prominent.
Frostbite is an apple that I personally would want to try before going ahead and growing a tree. I’ve got a buddy about 40 minutes southeast of here who grows Frostbite and does not like the fruit. His either go to the deer or into cider.
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I just got my hands on Haralson, first time, which comes from MN. Several of them have serious water core, one rotting from it. Is that a concern with Frostbite?
I lost my first Frostbite tree after three or four years of fruiting. My new tree produced a few fruit for the first time this year. I don’t recall ever seeing water core in any of the fruit. The only issue is cracking around the stem, but that doesn’t seem to greatly impact its keeping ability, at least out here in our dry conditions. Cracked fruit barely rot in the fridge.
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Similar to HighandDry I have experienced the cracking around the stem but none have shown any watercore. I still have mine hanging on the tree and eating the ones that drop but thinking I should soon pick whatever is left as they seen to be reaching peak ripeness.
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Yep. I just ate two out of the crisper and had to stop myself from eating another one. They are starting to get a few red stains throughout the flesh. Incredibly juicy and sweet. We really love this apple
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got a few scions of these grafted on my sargents crab. hopefully next year they will fruit. also got sweet 16 on it as well.