I do this with store bought hachiya and my coffee cakes. Just put the fruit into a large tupperware with a small saucer filled with some alcohol, and seal the tupperware. I use an awful “whiskey blend” that I bought from a gas station because it was the cheapest alcohol I could find, but any hard liquor would work fine. It takes about 72 hours to fully remove the astringency.
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Interesting. Do you have a ratio re. How many pounds of persimmons per how many oz or a cup of hard liquor?
I’ve been ripening mine by placing a ripening apple or banana in a plastic bag along with the persimmons. That ripens them perfectly in 3-4 days.
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Thanks for this.
Does this mean that if they’re not ripe, they will ripen in 72 hours?
@fruitnut: That has never worked for me. I wonder if a lot of the persimmons I buy were picked too early? Last year with my coffeecakes, I put them in a bag for weeks and they were still hard as a rock. Is there anything I might be doing wrong?
@mamuang: I use a couple of tablespoon of liquor for about 5 pounds of persimmons, but I think that amount of alcohol would cure a lot more than 5 pounds. The limiting factor for me is the size of my tupperware.
@Sas: Often, after 72 hours they aren’t actually “ripe” from alcohol curing. They are just no longer astringent. For hachiyas, this might mean they aren’t as sweet as they could be. For maximum sweetness, they still should be pretty soft. But they don’t have to be water balloon soft… aslo, I do find that they seem to “ripen” faster after alcohol treatment, though.
The claim of ripening them with alcohol is that it takes the astringency away while fruit is still firm.
Doesn’t matter how you ripen the astringent types. They will be soft when they are ripe. At least that’s how mine have been. I like to leave them a couple of days after they start to soften. That assures that all the astringency is gone and they reach max sweetness.
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There’s also a description in this post in another thread. I cannot comment on whether that works with Saijo.
I misunderstood by thinking that this was the method used to remove astringency while maintaining firmness. I believe there may be such a method used by Israeli commercial growers.
I found some Fuyu at the grocery last week that were soft.The lady at the checkout wandered if I really wanted such soft fruit, and I told her they were best that way. I didn’t realize they were a non-astringent type and could be eaten firm. However, at that stage of ripeness they were much inferior to the flavor of the Yates I had a month ago at the same level of turning soft.
The Fuyu, however, were seedless, so they had that going for them.
If this is the case, then I’m all in on D. virginiana and won’t even attempt zone stretching on some of the hybrids.
Acetaldehyde is the nasty stuff that is a by-product of alcohol processing in our bodies, that disulfiram (Antabuse) blocks the processing of, so it builds up and makes the consumer deathly ill. Do people ever have bad reactions consuming alcohol and persimmons together?
Also, interesting comment, Richard, about the D. Digyna in the mix…or not.
I am just now picking my first of the 2 chocolate persimmons I have. The tree has had leaves all along and the fruit has been hard until the last few days, so I left them to ripen.
As you can see, mine got extremely dark- more so than any of the photos in this pic. In fact, some of you may say it was rotten but I assure you 100% that it wasn’t. It was actually really good. It had 6 seeds in it. I’m not sure if that is from its own male flowers as @Richard mentioned or if it was from another tree. I have a wild persimmon, a fuyu, a saijo, and an unknown tree that is whatever rootstock edible landscape uses (I had the top die on one of their hachiyas and just let the rootstock become a tree. Probably going to be same as my wild tree?)
The taste was really good, but also a bit different from hachiya. Very hard to explain the taste, but it also had a different texture in the dark brown area. That area stayed someone firm and dense, eve
n though the entire rest of the fruit-even the very top- was very soft (spoon edible only, like jelly). and not a trace of astringency anywhere at all. The brown part was maybe a tiny bit less sweet, but tasted a little like brown sugar. I know that’s a contradiction but its all I know to say.
Overall, I really liked these a lot, but I personally prefer hachiya just slightly more- mostly because I prefer the gooey soft, jelly-like texture and the brown part of this one was just a little firmer than that. When I piick the other one we’ll see if it changes my mind. Having 2 tastings is immeasurably better for forming an opinion of a tree’s fruit, IMHO.
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Mine were even darker than that one yr. I prefer the taste, texture, and certainly the look of my Eureka.
The Eureka are excellent this yr despite a huge crop load.
Your chocolates look so much different from mine and others I’ve seen photos of that I can’t help but wonder if maybe your tree was mislabled? Either way, I also must say that yours look more delicious and perfect than mine. That photo of them cut open just makes my mouth water! They just look perfectly ripe and tasty! Beautiful.
The brown color is from the seeds (I used to know more about why but can’t recall now). There are no seeds in @Sas’ persimmons so no brown!
ahhhh. There we go! I guess because I’ve had so many mislabeled trees I jumped to that conclusion too quickly! Thanks
So when or how do I get the seeds and the chocolate color?
I have Tamopan , Hachia and Fuyu next to it but all are small.
Like Fruitnut, my chocolates were pitch black; & while they tasted good, I preferred Giombo & Saijo
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Thank you. I was beginning to think I was the only one, lol.
I think your Chocolate should eventually start producing male flowers. I don’t know what triggers male flowers; for several years I had the opposite problem that all of the flowers were male and I was getting no fruits.
Another thing I have found on Chocolate is variability in quality. Some years it is delightful nectar and other years it doesn’t have so much flavor.
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