I’m rooting for you. I knocked myself out a couple years ago trying to get a result from Kasandra, without success. That was using ethanol. A lot of wasted vodka. 
2 Likes
You’re right, I should have a control. I didn’t have any more obviously astringent fruit! I’ll dig through my stash tonight and see if I can find one more. It’ll probably be closer to ripe, but better than nothing.
I think one would need at least couple dozen fruit from each of several cultivars/hybrids/etc to really design a thorough test.
3 Likes
We all do the best we can, so I appreciate any effort. And I don’t want to be a buzzkill. I just hope to head off any premature victory celebrations.
1 Like
I think it would be great to do a control, but for me I’m not sure it is really necessary when we are talking about removing astringency with alcohol from fruit that is still hard, since it is more of a known process with kaki fruit. The main question for me is will it work with a particular type of hybrid and if it does, how long will it take.
The process isn’t actually so much about ripening the fruit as it is about removing the astringency. So while they will ripen some due to the passage of time, if I can get them non-astringent while they are still hard, then I can chose to eat them at any ripeness I prefer as they continue to ripen after the treatment. With Hachiya I tend to do a half dozen or so then eat them over the course of a week and every day they ripen a little more until the last ones I eat start to be getting soft. Each one is a bit of a different eating experience in terms of texture and flavor. I hope to be able to do the same with many hybrids, but each one will need to be tested.
It is disappointing that Kasandra wouldn’t give up the astringency, but since the alcohol treatment doesn’t seem to work with regular American persimmons, at least from what I’ve seen so far, we should probably expect some hybrids to have inherited more of that trait than others. Someday it would be great to have a column added to @Richard 's great hybrid spreadsheet that includes the number of days to remove astringency, using infinity for those that won’t give it up.
1 Like
That’s an interesting point regarding processing. I’m sure your state officials would be happy to help you navigate that. I think the problem with a single dish of vodka, etc, is the limited evaporation rate from a low surface area. It takes longer to reach the necessary concentration of alcohol vapors. In a “perfect” situation, I think you’d have the alcohol spread out so that evaporates quickly, and the persimmons filling up as much of the container as possible to minimize the air volume.
I think a good way to do a bulk batch would be to fill a cooler with persimmons and 120-130 degree water, and use a sous-vide circulator to keep the temp up. With kakis, should be ready in 5 hours or less if the results in the literature hold up in reality. I have yet to see any reports of folks trying elevated temperature water baths with Americans or hybrids. My gut says it should work, but maybe take longer than kakis.
1 Like
FWIW, with Kasandra I also tried both (1) spraying the fruit with vodka, and (2) dunking the fruit in vodka. All I got was a fruit that tastes like vodka.
Yeah, this is a fair point. I prefer the texture to be soft but not gooey, more or less like ripe mango. Thus I have no interest in hard PCNAs. IMO, a fully ripe, soft but not gooey PCNA is ideal.
For this reason, when I turn to astringent varieties my attention is focused mostly on finishing the process of removing astringency in fruit that are almost ripe. For example, I have ~500 (guesstimate) Kasandra fruits on my tree right now. On average, they are bright orange (not yet red), somewhat soft near the bottom but hard near the top. Correspondingly, the bottom 1/3 is non astringent, while the top 1/3 is astringent. All I want to do is remove the astringency from the upper half. A little extra ripening / softening would be a bonus.
2 Likes
Why not just keep the fruit in a sealed container with a few apples?
I’ve never failed to remove astringency that way.
Of course this presumes you want normal tasting fruit, not some crunchy textured thing that bears only slight resemblance to a persimmon.
1 Like
For me it has to do with a fear of astringency as well as texture preferences.
A tale of 2 Hachiya from my local market…
This first one was ripened normally on the counter and was quite soft. I was hoping it was ripe enough to be fully non-astringent, but when I ate it there was an annoying little bit of astringency. I find some persimmons keep a nice consistency when ripe, like Nakitas Gift, American persimmons, etc., but Hachiya often have to be practically a bag of water before they are fully non-astringent, which isn’t a texture I enjoy as much, so I often wind up eating them a little too early and getting stung.
This other one spent 3 days in a bag with a dish of alcohol and was just starting to get soft, almost the consistency of a nice ripe mango. I knew I could just bite right in and enjoy. I enjoy them at this texture and a little softer, like the texture of the first one that still had astringency, so it is just nice to know that if I use the alcohol treatment I can dig right in at any time.
5 Likes
This is also true in my experience with Hachiya.
2 Likes
The water balloon stage, as I call it. I kind of like the texture, but I can see why some don’t.
1 Like
Thank you for all of your responses. It seems removing astringency artificially is still elusive for american and hybrid persimmons.
I found this resource informative. HS1483/HS1483: Alleviating Astringency in Persimmon Fruit for Enhanced Palatability and Consumer Acceptability
3 Likes
I found out the hard way that counter ripening hybrid persimmons doesn’t seem to work well to remove astringency 
I cut off three mostly orange fruit from my Nikita’s Gift and let them counter ripen next to my bananas and apples for almost a month, and while they softened considerably they were still unpleasantly astringent! It’s good to know that the usual advice for ripening Asian persimmons doesn’t apply to hybrids. It’s a shame because I was hoping I could pick them early before the deer got to them!
I forgot to post the results here, but I did let these two sit for a week on the counter. Not great results.
The banana test didnt do much ripening at all, and was still very astringent.
The vodka examples aquired kind of brownish tint to both the flesh and skin that didnt appear appetizing. The astringency seemed reduced, but wasn’t totally gone. Also, the fruit just kind of tasted weird as a result of the vodka. Some chemical taste going on, maybe.
1 Like
Thanks. Similar to my past results with American persimmons. Disappointing.
I am in southern middle Tennessee so have a long hot season. Still no frost in my 10 day forecast.
I have only tried this with wild americans so far… from 7-8 different trees… but it works on all of them.
5-7 days of just sitting in that semi air tight space with a few other wild americans and they fully ripen and have no astringency.
I have not tried adding a apple or banana in there with them… have not needed to.
I pick the wild americans when they are orange and at least partially soft. If they are orange but still quite hard… i leave them on the tree longer.
Hope some of my hybrids fruit next year so I can try this on them.
TNHunter
1 Like
Is it possible to know without destructive testing - aka cutting into the fruit and tasting, whether astringency has been removed fully? Do I wait until it gets soft like a mango under alcohol treatment and that should do it?
I would like to try this approach on Jiro which still maintains some astringency in my climate. Typically I let it get soft and it gets very sweet and fully non astringent as a result. But I wanted to see if I could get a decent result without letting it actually ripen.
1 Like
If you start the process early enough you shouldn’t need to wait until the fruit is soft. For Kaki fruit that is fully colored and still hard I’ve found it takes about 3 days, but I usually wait until the 4th day just to be sure. The hybrids I tested took 5 days. There are really no visual cues, so you need to try one to know if the astringency is gone. Depending on how ripe they are when I get them, they are usually firm when all the astringency is gone.
I think of this as a separate, parallel process to the natural ripening of the fruit that just targets the astringency. So I don’t believe it is actually speeding up the other parts or ripening like the formation of sugars, the color of the fruit, the softening, etc. Those continue at their normal rate during the process, but don’t seem to be speeded up in my experience. Once astringency is gone I can eat them while firm or let them continue to ripen, soften and sweeten. I actually sort of enjoy doing a big batch and eating them over a week at different stages of ripeness, but either way you can eat them at the stage you prefer and not worry about getting a mouth full of astringency.
I would expect your Jiro to be good in 3 days and as long as they aren’t so far along that they would naturally ripen to soft anyway, they’ll still be firm, possibly even crisp depending on how ripe they are when you start the process.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.
1 Like