Get Ready for Cosmic Crisp Apples

I was thinking about picking up an Enterprise or William’s Pride for a second apple tree to accompany my Liberty. Interesting seeing the Enterprise as part of the lineage for this variety. Y’all think they will change the Washington only selling guidelines for this tree in the near future?

They were selling for $3 a pound, and 3 apples cost $9.37 Normal price here is $2/lb, or $2.5/lb for club apples.

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Well, hopefully these will make normal sized apples when I fail to thin them very well on my tree :slight_smile:

I don’t need a pound of apple at a time.

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@murky
Please do not worry. All the apples I see at the store, like Fuji, Honey Crisp etc., are huge this year. The Pink Lady from my tree are only one third of their size. Mine are just started ripening and they taste very good, so size doesn’t matter.
Edit:
The apples we bought at the farmer markets in Morro Bay twice last month, were of normal size and tasted very good, nothing like the one at the supermarket. It changed our mind about apples, and we will plant a few new varieties in spring.

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I hate huge apples and one local supermarket here only sells the huge apples. Its really hard for me to to eat all of an apple that weighs almost a pound.

Apples are packed by size. The largest standard size is “48” which are packed 48 to a box. The most common size is “100” or 100 to a box. I’m not sure if the largest size commands a higher wholesale price per pound so its going to be interesting to see if smaller Cosmic Crisp show up later.

Washington State has some of the most strict grade standards described here:

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I think they picked all the same large size in the boxes on the market for now . Sooner or later will have smaller size available for customers choices.

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NY state Fuji apples this year were the biggest I’ve ever seen. As large as that Cosmic Crisp. Also bought some very large Honeycrisp over 1lb. Also they were cheap at 79 and 99 cents/lb. Don’t know how the commercial grows managed such a good crop this year.

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I can’t agree more. I love Honeycrisp, but I don’t buy the giant apples. There is just something about a medium to medium small sized apple that is more satisfying. The texture and skin are different, not to mention the quantity of apple like you mention. I have always figured if and when I can ever get mine to bearing size I will probably over-crop it to some degree to keep the fruits smaller.

It has been a few days since the public release of Cosmic Crisp. Has the public spoken yet?

One west coast friend really liked the ones she bought at Costco: Definitely crisp and tart; rich notes of honey, caramel, and maybe smoke; sweet hints of pineapple and tangerine. It has a bit of everything. A big apple.

Agreed - these huge apples take pretty pics but i only like my cookers big. Too much to eat at once

Well it sounds pretty delicious and actually worthy of the hype.

I asked my produce lady if she could find any organic (They only do organic) ones of these available right now, I hope so i checked at costco and no such luck in colorado.

Well, I just bought two Cosmic Crisp apples at the neighborhood Safeway, $3.99 a pound, they were nearly a pound each.

To my taste, these were the juiciest apples I’ve ever eaten. The had crispness like Honeycrisp. They were very sweet, like Fuji. Flavor wise… I didn’t think they were much like apple. Maybe like an apple version of 7-Up or Sprite. Kind of overwhelming sweetness and juiciness.

Compared to a home orchard apple, Cosmic Crisp has less apple-ness than some of the ones I really like. I would take a home grown Gravenstein, Pristine, Liberty, Jonathan, Jonagold, Porter, NorthPole, Akane, GoldRush, Queen Cox, over the Cosmic Crisp I tasted. Those are just ones I grow. I just tried one of my stored GoldRush - not as sweet or crisp or juicy, but more like a real apple.
I like it better.

I did like it better than my WineCrisp, Milo Gibson, or Granite Beauty.

I think Cosmic Crisp will be a winner. It’s about time they replaced all those Red Delicious. However, I don’t think it will replace home grown apples from one’s own yard. I think most people like really sweet stuff these days (even salad dressings and tomato sauce) and Cosmic Crisp will fit right in with that.

I think these are grown as trellised spindle trees, almost more like vineyards than what I used to think of as an orchard. The article also mentions bi-spindle trees, which sound interesting. This is also their debut - I wonder if they are especially coddled and selected for the best possible product at the outset, to make a big splash. Maybe home grown ones will be different from the commercial apples.

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A co-worker bought me one at Chuck’s, the same place from which I got the great Lucy Glo. It was medium or even medium-small.

It was super juicy, very crisp, pretty sweet with some tartness, no special flavor. Hopefully it was a below average sample, otherwise I was a little underwhelmed. Definitely worth eating, but this sample didn’t justify the hype.

There are several other varieties I’d seek out at the supermarket first if this one is representative. I look forward to trying more.

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I liked my second one significantly better. It was firmer/harder and had more acid and sugar. Also bigger, to which I’m indifferent.

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I had my second Cosmic Crisp today. Neither were particularly memorable. Better than Honeycrisp, but not as good as Envy or Lucyglo. Maybe slightly better than Snapdragon. Not even in the same ballpark as Arkansas Black or Orin.

The CC apples here were not very large. That’s CC on the left and Arkansas Black on the right.

Orin

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There seems to be a lot of variability with the CC apples. The ones I’ve tried here were extremely good. I would rank them higher than Envy or any of the other club apples which were also very good.

Maybe they need to do a better job of controlling the quality in distribution. The club apples seem to do very well in that department.

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Its very surprising the quality of the apples is not more consistent especially since these are apples from cold storage rather than CA storage. If they are unable to manage the quality of apples in cold storage for 3 months, how can they hope to manage quality of apples held in CA storage for 9 months or longer?

Consistent quality is one of the major objectives for this new apple. A 10 million dollar marketing budget will not overcome shortcomings in quality. After the constant hype about this apple is very disappointing to hear that the quality is variable.

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I’ve tried 5 so far from 2 different stores. Two were super huge and 3 were normal apple size. I would completely agree with the idea that inconsistency Seems to be an issue. 2 were phenomenal, 2 were fine and one wasn’t very good. It seems like more variability than I am used to seeing within a variety, although it may just be that I’m paying more attention since it’s a new variety with all the hype.

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I don’t think its just storage. This is a new variety on young trees in enormous plantings. The growers are new to the variety and the apples are highly anticipated.

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My exact feelings.

Tacoma, WA