You can see the improved kieffer on this thread Here comes the 2016 apple and Pear harvest!
Flavor is fine but nothing outstanding. They taste like a store bought bartlett more for cooking, canning, etc. .There is really very little outstanding about improved kieffer pears but That they consistently produce huge crops! The pears are large but not as large as some such as Duchess. The size makes them very easy to work with and I nearly always wind up with more than I can use. We should appreciate them more because they never seem to take a year off like some pears do. We pick them when we start to get a few windfalls then they ripen inside to a yellow and sometimes have a red blush. The small yellow pear was sold to me and mislabeled by the arbor society as fashioned kieffer. It produced repulsive fruit the first year or two barely better than a green walnut husk and then everything changed and I realized the fruit was remarkable. It’s a wonder I did not graft that tree over. The red blushing bartlett is another possible mislabel but for now that’s what I call it and it ripens in July. It’s a nice pear but like any bartlett it’s ok but lacks any exceptional pear flavor. They are pleasant and pleasing but lack the hint of real flavor you get from those such as harrow sweet. Harrow sweet provokes you with its flavor almost saying it’s exceptional but only very good. Harrow sweet for speed of production, taste, growth habit etc. is a great pear. I would peel harrow sweet because I detect a bitterness in the skin but not the flesh. It may not be that way everywhere or even here because the one I ate was not grown locally.
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