Every apple was first grown for a particular use whether fresh eating, cooking, sauce, drying, apple butter, cider, storage for winter. Limbertwigs are no exceptions. Is there any listing of Limbertwig varieties with their intended uses?
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Good question. I have to look at multiple sources to get a huge list of Limbertwig varieties.
The two sources I have used are the Henry Morton apple list from his nursery ( it is posted here somewhere) and āOld Southern Applesā book from Lee Calhoun.
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I believe they were mainly ākeepersā to ensure you lived through winters. The ones I grew were late and hard.
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Im really interested in their culinary uses especially for apple butter.
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You might want to talk to Jason Bowen, orchard manager at Horne Creek Preservation Farm, NC: Jason.bowen@ncdcr.gov
Black Limbertwig was famous for cider, apple butter.
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Will do.
I must be mistaken, but I thought ālimbertwigā was a category based on growth habit/form not fruit type.
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The Limbertwig fruit is supposed to have a certain common flavor to each one of them. There are Limbertwig trees that do not have the typical droopy branches. Some droop more and some droop less or not at all. It is all about that particular flavor that they have in common. I have never tasted one so I cannot comment on what that taste is like.
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But having a cinnamon flavor wouldnāt be enough for it to be classed as a limbertwig otherwise āCinnamon Spiceā apple would be a limbertwig. To my knowledge it is not.
No, I do no think " cinnamon spice" would be the exact flavor description of a Limbertwig. I am not sure but I have never heard or read anywhere that a Limbertwig has a describable taste to it. All I have ver read or heard is that once you taste a Limbertwig you know if the other ones are Limbertwigs that you taste.
I have one growing now but no fruit yet. Probably not for a few more years yet.
I wish I knew more or had more useful taste comparison.
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Iām planting a limbertwig to find out what they taste like - Iāll consider it a bonus if itās a good keeper. It will be interesting to see how else it could be used.
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Which Limbertwig?
Well, they just taste differentā¦like a Limbertwig is all I might offer. Recently, the commercial cider makers down east of here (NC) are buying up in bulk bins everything, ungraded and field run.
And it puzzles me because I never took them for cider production. And we have made 100ās+++ of gallons and way more wet sticky cider late into the nights, (after grading till our fingers went numb).
Now hereās the rub, the apple doesnāt lend itself to grinding and pressing, meaning the juice yield is low because the flesh doesnāt hold the water content like a stayman, golden or red delicious. But, the taste and dryness of the juice/flesh is distinctive in texture mouth feel and aroma.
I canāt tell you where I was early one winter evening, but a friend from up the mountain offered up a jarā¦renderings clear and clean and climbing the quart glass wall. He waited smiling for a few seconds until I saidā¦damn, Limbertwig. (preacherās son too, haha)
Yep, cider, flesh or fluid, it tastesā¦like a Limbertwig.
Not all Limbertwigs are āweepingā branch structure. The local ones are, the Brushy Mtn LT, and you can spot them from space.
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