Crabapple ID

[dmf38]

Can anyone tell me what kind of crabapples these are? I found the trees growing wild on the side of the road. I can get a small amount of juice from them, and I might add it to a cider. They're only about a half-inch in diameter. So I wondered if these might be a native American wild crabapple. I live in MA.

 

[gratus fermentatio]

At 1st glance they look like small Dolgos, but it's entirely possible they're an ornamental variety. Your best bet would be to take a sample of the fruit & leaves to you local county extension agent, they'll be able to ID it for you & it won't cost you anything more than time. Regards, GF.

 

[Lefou]

Nothing like being proactive when getting ingredients, especially the natural ones. I've found my "radar" peeps in the vicinity of interesting fermentables since picking up the hobby.

Same with my wife. She's dragged me along to harvest ginkgo biloba, cherries, and disregarded walnuts people have left unclaimed.

 

[Vinegaroon]

The color and size are about right for Dolgo but Dolgo tends to be a bit more elongated. Last year I used a bushel of crabs that looked almost exactly like your sample. The trees I harvested are landscape plantings around a nearby Target, the trees behind the store were just loaded and I had them to myself. Crabs are usually nice because the ph tends to be a bit lower than dessert apples and a way better skin to pulp ratio. Tiresome picking though, maybe you
could spread some old sheets and shake some free or if you can find a big rubber mallet beat the tree to knock them loose. I mention these harvest methods 'cause a ladder on a roadside witha slope or a fence or whatever can be a recipe for a fall. However you harvest them I'd bet your cider will be all the better with them rather than without. Have fun.

 

[dmf38]

Thanks for the help everyone. When I'm driving on country roads I'm always looking for apple trees, or wild mushrooms. People probably think I'm a drunk driver with all the swerving around.

 

[OleBrewing]

use them. there are crab apples that get bigger which make for easier picking, the little ones will also work. crab apples in cider is a must in my opinion they add tannins and a lot more character to a cider.

 

[Scrumpy!]

Hey DMF,

I live in MA and like to gather mushrooms, fly fish for bass in the salt marshes, discover lost apple trees, and make cider. I know exactly what those little cherry bombs are.

I harvest them in a couple of places on the South Shore each year and ferment them. My best patch is an unlikely looking old railroad grade. It is lined with over a dozen scrubby little apple trees which produce buckets of miniature apples in colors ranging from yellow through deep red.

Last year it was dry here and most of these trees didn't produce, but the ones that did topped out at 1.080 or so. Lots of sugar but lots of tannins too. Most were real "spitters". One bite and your mouth was dry as a bone or bitter as the devil. The colors of some of the juice was nearly as deep red as cranberry juice.

These apples weren't planted by Johnny Appleseed but they came from seeds no different than his. Each seed, a cross between two parents, produced trees as genetically unique as any human child. Someone probably threw an apple core out of a train window and one or two seeds sprouted. It must have happened again and even more seeds sprouted. These wild apples have been having an orgy along this abandoned railroad right of way every Spring and their children are a pretty diverse group.

Every apple in this grove ripens at a different time, has a highly variable but relatively high acid content, tannin balance, and sugar content. I use them in moderation, blending them into my larger batches of Baldwin, Northern Spy, and Winter Banana.

 

[gregbathurst]

Scrumpy is dead right, they are probably wildling seedlings, high in acid, tannin and sugar. Excellent to use to add flavour to cider but you need to mill them and press them. Get claude jolicoeur's book on making cider.

 

[chevalcider]

I harvested some boulevard apples a few years ago. Planted for the blossoms and nothing is done with the fruit. The yield after crushing is quite low and I'm thinking of doing it again for some body to this year's cider. This time I'm thinking of letting it sit for a while after crushing and mixing pectic enzyme to get it to release a little more juice

 

[rlmiller10]

use them. there are crab apples that get bigger which make for easier picking, the little ones will also work. crab apples in cider is a must in my opinion they add tannins and a lot more character to a cider.

What percentage crab apple juice do you use? I used 25% last year (no apples this year due to late frost) and it was too tart for my taste.

 

[OleBrewing]

Sorry I don't really have %s, as my buddy and take what nature gives, if it is a bountiful crab season the cider will higher % and vice versa. I my self love the high acidic tartness of crab apples. another note, I have not had a store bought cider yet that is dry enough or tart for that matter, but I am from ND not many ciders coming in from the good ciderys.

 

[chevalcider]

Sorry I don't really have %s, as my buddy and take what nature gives, if it is a bountiful crab season the cider will higher % and vice versa. I my self love the high acidic tartness of crab apples. another note, I have not had a store bought cider yet that is dry enough or tart for that matter, but I am from ND not many ciders coming in from the good ciderys.

I'm in Manitoba just above you. We have the privilege of purchasing from a government monopolized marketing agency. We have a dearth of good commercial ciders available. "You make cider? I love cider! Have you tried Angry Orchard?" Ugh!!!!!

I also like my cider dry. I was just out driving around town sampling the little ornamental crabs falling on front lawns and sidewalks. I'm going to get some permissions for shaking some trees down soon. Wonderfully bitter and harsh. Should give my watery cider some body.

 

[chevalcider]

I also take what nature gives me. I haven't even taken a gravity reading this year!

 

[OleBrewing]

Here in ND there are some traditional crab apples but being a drought year there will not be a harvest. we have built a press that gets 30-35 gallons at a time.our largest batch was 185 gallons. I will post some pics using a 20 ton press squeezn the crap out of crushed apples.

 

[bembel]

They have Kazakh DNA that's for sure, the red flesh comes from genes that can all be traced to Niedzwetzkyana. Add 10% to a dessert apple blend and you will be rewarded for your efforts View attachment IMG_0690.jpg

 

[bembel]

And listen to Scrumpy. He makes wikkid pissah cidah[emoji6]

 

[dmf38]

I didn't pick any of those little red ones from the pictures yet. But I found these growing on a tree that was planted in the Walmart median strip, so I took some! Does anyone know what kind these are? They're about 2 inches in diameter. I got about a quart of juice from them and it's quite tart with a lot of tannins. And tomorrow I'm bottling a batch of cider that I made last January. I already added some potassium metabisulfite to this crabapple juice, and I plan to add that to the cider when I bottle it, for priming and flavor.

 

[Scrumpy!]

That sounds like a dicey move. That fresh juice is going to ferment in your bottles and if you blend in too much, you will be building bombs. If you are sure you want to do this, you must test the SG of your blend before you bottle.

First, know your bottles! I use champagne bottles which can handle over 100 psi internal pressure though I would never consider pumping up one of my ciders that high. Beer bottles are not nearly as strong. Your brew store might be able to give you specs on the bottles you buy. If not, there is generic information about the strength of beverage bottles on the web.

Send me a private message and i will send you a spreadsheet model to calculate the proportions of your blend. I created a simple two component blend which assumes your cider is at a final gravity of 1.0000 and your juice has an SG of 1.055. Notice that a 9% juice component will give you an SG at bottling of 1.005 which should be safe for beer bottles. This spreadsheet was created by Claude Joulicour, author of The New Cider Makers Handbook, a reference I highly recommend.

What could go wrong? Well to begin with, the yeast in your cider may have expired and the shock of blending may kill all the natural yeast in your juice. To be on the safe side, add a dose of Lalvin EC-1118 to your cider just before you blend.

If this sounds complicated, a better alternative is to ferment these apples then blend them in. Give the juice a shot of Lalvin EC-1118, hold it around 70 deg F and it will be ready to blend in a few weeks. Then, you can add priming sugar and bottle it safely.

 

[Jhoss]

Kudo's to all on this great thread and extra thanks to Scrumpy for his write up and great pics!
As a hobbyist Orchardist and beer brewer, (this cider making will probably kick into gear next year.) - I would like to point out some peculiarities with apples.

A seedling is a tree grown from a seed. Simple enough, but any known variety of apple has been grafted onto a seedling or a cultured commercial rootstock like M7 or B118 (if you want to google these). So, if you ask the question, what kind of apple is this? (and Scrumpy touched on this), I would ask you back..is this a grafted tree? In most cases, "line-er" trees like ornamental crabs (or wild trees) are grown from seed. Ornamentals grow true enough to seed that corporations like Walmart can order them just to plant in a line for decoration and be reasonably assured that the trees will be mostly uniform in size and produce the same product. These are nursery grown and are predictable.

I've got some fallow property that I decided to enhance for wildlife - (turkeys, deer, pheasant, quail, song birds, even mammals - squirrels and whatnot) with ornamental crabs that are know for reliable heavy crop loads. Out of a twenty pack, 4 of these trees that are wild-offshoots. 1 produces an apple the same size and shape as a red delicious but it does not turn red. Another is a nice large-ish sized apple that is very delicious and will be squeezed eventually for juice and cider just because its of a "desert-sweet" style, I'm sure high in sugar. The other two vary somewhat in size of fruit and color much like what Scrumpy has shown.

Oh My! - I can not wait to start with combining varieties to create the best hard cider I can...Honeycrisp with Liberty and Wickson crab for example..Straight Kingston Black cider maybe...Golden Delicious and wild crab...the combinations and permutations are endless but super enthralling to me anyway. I should have plenty of my own apples to deal with in 2018. 50 trees and 30 varieties will eventually be way too much, what a great position to be in I think.

I've read a ton of books and websites and made juice and cider with others. I am really looking forward to doing it my way - which will be mostly like Claude Jolicouer's way I'm guessing..keeving has me glued as I am somewhat a fan of sweet, not totally dry ciders..although not super picky.

Color me a fan of homegrown apples, cider and this thread.

 

[Maylar]

Thanks for that. I'm curious, then if a tree is grafted does that mean it can produce more than one variety of apples? Like, can you get Winesap and Golden Delicious from the same tree?

 

[Jhoss]

Sure can. Lots of info on how to graft and when to graft on youtube. It is not hard and it is a lot of fun. I've probably been at it for 15 years or so and everytime I see new green coming on the destination scion graft or bud it makes me smile. Take a near useless ornamental crab and turn it into a good eater or a mega producing crab for the deer - it is just all good.

One caveat I've had with franken-trees is you just wont get bushels of each variety unless the tree itself grows old and huge.

 

[MtnGoatJoe]

Thanks for that. I'm curious, then if a tree is grafted does that mean it can produce more than one variety of apples? Like, can you get Winesap and Golden Delicious from the same tree?

My local Costco sells fruit trees in January with multiple grafts. I've seen some with 4 varieties of apples.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

The technical term is family tree. You've got to be a bit careful because a) syncing pollination may be a factor if there's no other trees in the vicinity and b) you get differential vigour, I know people who graft Bramley a year later in order to let the other varieties get a good start, because Bramley is such a thug.

It's OK with apples - where it really shines is with plum trees, if you're clever you can get a succession of plums through the season rather than a week where you're drowning in them.

 

[dmf38]

Today I found yet more crabapples growing on the edge of someone's yard, next to the road. Can anyone identify this kind? They're kind of sweet and not very tannic. About an inch in diameter. Central MA.

 

[gratus fermentatio]

Looks like "Golden Hornet" to me; bet they'd make a nice cider.
Regards, GF.

 

[Scrumpy!]

Probably another un-named seedling instead of a named cultivar intentionally planted by someone.

Apple identification is a fool's errand. I tried to identify many of the apples both cultivated and wild in my neighborhood and got tentative IDs on about 10% of them. Now I focus on what kind of cider they will make and ask the questions:

1. How much sugar do they have?
2. What is the acid content?
3. How tannic are they and are they soft (astringent) or hard tannins (bitter)?

If I need more tannins or (rarely) more acid, I blend in the seedling ferments with my larger single varietal batches. Red seedling apples seem to produce very deep red juice so I might add some of that to get a redder final product. The yellow ones like yours can add a touch of gold.