My Goldrush usually comes off the tree a little too tart and ripens to a good sugar/acid balance in cold strorage, which is the expected trait of a good storage apple. Last year I bagged them and put them straight into storage without trying any. When I went into storage for Suncrisp I realized I made a mistake. I didn’t label the Suncrisp or Goldrush bags. I couldn’t tell the difference by visual appearance, so I sampled one from each bag. To my surprise, they all tasted the same and the texture seemed very similar. I was very confused because I didn’t think Goldrush would be at peak ripeness so early, possibly right off the tree. However, I did notice the some seemed slightly harder than others, so I labeled those Goldrush. Later on, toward the end of storage life, I think that proved correct as the ones I suspected of being Goldrush did last at least a month longer in storage.
Seeing your post, I went out and picked some Crunch a Bunch. In past years, I think I ignored them too long. This time they were very good. 15 brix, good crunch
But, I didn’t think it was much like Honeycrisp. I like Honeycrisp, at least when well ripened, and would be happy if CaB was a yellow version. But, I tasted the same lemony goodness that I’ve seen in Goldrush in the past. Maybe not quite as sharp, but there was a resemblance to me. And while good, the texture doesn’t match up to Honeycrisp or Evercrisp. Those are explosive, while this CaB just had a good crisp crunch.
I know it is a bit early, but I wanted to compare to Goldrush, so I found a couple damaged fruit on my Goldrush: Damaged fruit often ripens quicker, so I figured it was worth a shot.
The cracked one was 15 brix (same as the CaB I picked), very dense and a bit tart. It didn’t have the full lemony flavor, as I guess it needs to ripen longer. The half rotted one was only 12-13 brix and while dense, didn’t have much flavor at all. While both had black seeds, it was clear they needed more time.
So, other than getting that GR has denser flesh than CaB (as several have already said), I didn’t get too much info for my comparison in terms of flavor. But relying on my past memory of Goldrush, I don’t think CaB is too dissimilar. Of course, it has been several years since I’ve had a good Goldrush. My tree was very very under-thinned 2 years ago (producing a large amount of worthless fruit) and took last year mostly off. This year, I thinned much more, though I’m not sure if it was enough. The tree still looks to be carrying quite a load, but it seems better than it was 2 years ago.
@BobVance
I have some Gold Rush (an off year) and Crunch A Bunch this year. I will try to compare them again but it is not likely from off the trees because Gold Rush is later. Gold Rush may need to be in storage before it is good to eat.
I also have Honey Crisp. The quality depends on how much rain I get with 2 weeks of ripening. A lot of rain, it tasted so bland. This year, it should taste good. It definitely has cracking crunchiness.
There are many good eating rootstocks grown from seed. Also Polish P-series rootstocks have tastier apples thanks to their parents. Some sweet though dry-ish. Some good cookers. Mostly medium to large apples.
Wow. did I say anything about posters here? Where did I exaggerate informationally. You completely misread my comment (through a warped lens, perhaps?). So you turn in a kind of joke about the release of this apple under a false description into some kind of attack on anyone here who maybe said they like this apple- hell, I like this apple, but it ain’t the least bit like Goldrush, besides its color, and I assume people come here for genuine information. .
I try to submit comments that have a bit of zing, especially the headline. Do you prefer low-acid fruit? Anyway, the acid was about false advertising… I don’t recall anyone ever comparing this apple to Goldrush here, so my liar remark was certainly not directed at a soul on this forum.
The breeders of this one were trying to find Honeycrisp type apples less prone to rot and rejected this one as a commercial apple. If you want the selected ones like Evercrisp, you have to join their organization for $100 and sign a non-propagation agreement. This one they released to be sold to hobbyists and preferred to use false advertising rather than a legitimate description of the apple- a green Honeycrisp. It was obviously an intentional ruse.
I can only comment on its disease resistance based on its first year- single tree- single site. The apples were really big and the biggest ones mostly rotted before becoming ripe. Around the rot they have been delicious apples tasting exactly like Honeycrisp to my palate and ripening in its window. .
Incidentally, I just learned that Adams stopped selling their early Goldrush because they don’t believe it tastes enough like the original… it’s sweeter at harvest.
Before it is good for you to eat? There are those of us who actually like it as much off the tree when it is most tart, but fully yellow ripe- I mean people I know personally who have tasted Goldrush both ways. I have customers that do not like much acid in their apples and didn’t even bother to harvest Goldrush for that reason…when I give these people samples in mid-winter they find the apple delicious. People’s tastes vary a great deal, of course. What we all tend to agree on are things like color and texture, and Honeycrips’s texture is its most distinctive feature. CB originally came from a block of Honeycrisp apple trees and its pollen source is not known.
Here is something from CHAT
Regional conditions: In the Northeast’s humidity (like what you see in your orchards), this susceptibility shows up more severely than in drier climates. Reports from Ohio and Minnesota note the same — Crunch-A-Bunch rots early and doesn’t keep.
Why it isn’t commercially viable
Poor storability: Unlike GoldRush, which can sit for months and still improve, Crunch-A-Bunch doesn’t hold well post-harvest.
Disease pressure: Commercial growers can’t afford the extra sprays and losses when other Honeycrisp-types (e.g. EverCrisp) at least store and ship better.
Redundancy: If it rots like Honeycrisp but ripens earlier and without more flavor complexity, it doesn’t give commercial orchards any advantage.
**However, there really isn’t a lot of research on CB characteristics, this is the only legitimate source of research listed. |Source|What it says / relevance|Quotes or data|
| — | — | — |
|Ohio / Pennsylvania fruit rots study (OSU / Penn State)|Compares several MAIA varieties including Crunch-a-Bunch vs others in terms of bitter rot and white rot susceptibility.|In “Managing Apple Fruit Rots in Ohio” there’s a table showing Crunch-a-bunch has ~12.53% infected fruit from bitter rot under certain conditions; Honeycrisp is ~6.43%. Bpb Us W2|. **
Yes, a lot of people hate CHAT, but as long as I check sources it is much better than the search engines I used before- it helps me find out which university guidelines are essentially BS and which are rooted in genuine research along with helping me solve many mysteries, as long as I don’t take first responses at face value and double check sources, or make the typical mistake of over rating my logical leaps based on partial info. It did guide me to the true history of CaB, I believe. For anecdotal information, commercial growers are much more reliable than the guys who spend most of their time indoors. So are the observant folks on this forum… I mean, you set me straight on fake Valor… I’m pretty sure, but I did use CHAT to double check the matter. I’m constantly sorting out fruit tree information from misinformation, for some of which I was the unconscious fabricator.
Thank you for the apology… I did get annoyed, but it’s now erased.
@alan A bit of an aside, but have you tried perplexity, claude, or research rabbit? If you are into scholarship, those are all AI engines that are better at providing cited sources. I find they “hallucinate” less frequently than chat GPT and you might enjoy them.
I use AI regularly so I’m not against it - but the funny bit is when I ask it fruit questions and it cites “growingfruit.org” as the source! I might has well have just done a forum search!
Have you tried that? I don’t find it very efficient or even adequate.
I chose CHAT because that is what my son uses for his Netflix gig, and he’s my advisor on such matters. His ability to use it has certainly fast tracked his career, even if it has damaged a lot more engineers careers than it has helped. simply by allowing a few to do the work of many.
Here’s how CHAT compares itself with others.
What ChatGPT is Best At
Code Understanding & Debugging
Explaining snippets, APIs, error messages.
Quickly scaffolding working examples.
Refactoring or rewriting in different styles/languages. Much faster than search + StackOverflow when you just want context or a “why.”
Brainstorming & Design Help
Architecture trade-offs (“Should I shard this DB by tenant or by region?”).
Generating edge cases or test scenarios.
Thinking through pros/cons of algorithms, patterns, data structures.
Summarization & Learning
Making dense API docs, RFCs, or research papers digestible.
Creating tutorials from raw documentation.
Translating between skill levels (e.g. “Explain to a junior dev vs a senior dev”).
Rapid Prototyping / Boilerplate
Generating “starter” code, configs, tests.
Filling in repetitive scaffolding so engineers can focus on higher-level logic.
Conversational Problem Solving
Keeping context across multiple turns (“Okay, but now add OAuth…”).
Acting like a “rubber duck” that pushes you to clarify thinking.
Where ChatGPT Isn’t the Best
Up-to-the-Minute Facts (Real-Time Search)
ChatGPT’s knowledge cutoff + sometimes stale data means it’s weaker for:
Latest library versions
Breaking security advisories
Cutting-edge research released this month
Better option:Perplexity AI (search + citations, live web).
Code Execution & Validation
Chat can generate plausible code, but doesn’t always run/test it.
Better option: GitHub Copilot (live in IDE, runs with compiler) or unit testing frameworks.
I don’t place too much confidence in it, but am interested in checking it out to see what I may have missed.
Just yesterday, my wife was asked by a friend why a house they were considering buying had sat on the market so long. Rather than look into it, she handed the question to me. After I finished, I decided to check Google’s AI and see if it had any ideas that I hadn’t. It came up with some (but not the most important one) of the same ideas I had, but what really impressed me was when it said “it has carpets and people won’t like them”. The listing doesn’t mention the carpets anywhere and I didn’t see it in the gis or field-card. So, it had to look at the pictures and notice the carpet in them and then join that info with potential buyers not liking carpets. Much more impressive than the conclusions it reached based on reading the description, though those were generally correct as well. The thing it missed was that the property has a long gravel/dirt driveway which goes through a wetland area. Maybe it missed it because the FEMA site didn’t have it as a flood zone, even though other online mapping resources had it as wetlands.
I wouldn’t rely on it, but I can see how it would be helpful in suggesting ideas to already knowledgably people. And that is just the free Google AI. I haven’t played around with any of the other engines.
They say a little knowledge is dangerous and when you use CHAT and don’t have background on the subject you question it about it is very clumsy with the facts because most of the information is correct but it can be like negotiating land mines through the errors that may pop-up. So you double check its sources when something seems suspicious. I correct it every day, but it corrects me more.
I just asked it if there was any research on apple variety relative susceptibility to Marsonnina leaf blotch, only I called it apple leaf blotch. Even though I had explained a month previously that in the U.S. Cornell and others have renamed the disease apple leaf blotch, it had not put that info in its system as a default, even in regard to me, and interpreted the words as a description of symptoms and not a specific disease.
It also tends to focus on information that supports your own notions if you don’t steer it objectively- you have to be like both a DA and defense attorney interrogating a witness, sometimes. You can even specifically ask it to seek information that contradicts an opinion you are trying to clarify as true or false. That is what I had to do to get the issue of our false Valor straightened out in my own head. I finally decided that either my memory of the strain I used to grow at the site in Bedford was faulty, or it was a different strain of Mount Royal that was less round and a much more consistent cropper whose heavy crops reduced the quality of the fruit. That, or the nursery I got the trees from got its wood from a fake Mt. Royal.
Why it isn’t commercially viable
Much faster than search + StackOverflow when you just want context or a “why.”
Where ChatGPT Isn’t the Best
How Senior Engineers Tend to Mix Tools