Early season apples - useful for cider or feed to the chickens and goats

[OffbeatBrew]

So after a terrible apple year last year, my area has apples trees that are LOADED with apple and will probably break a lot of branches on local trees. If I pick some early apples now to help prevent tree damage, how useful are these early apple for hard cider? I'd love some feedback.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Can you check juice gravity? If it's 1.050+ I'd say go for it.
I guess the later apples are typically more flavorful, so if you have limited production capability/time or whatever I'd wait for later harvest.

 

[madscientist451]

The term "early apples" usually refers to the first varieties of the season that get ripe. There are also mid-season and late varieties.
Around here, some early varieties are Yellow Transparent and Lodi. I've used them for cider, but it was kind of bland and I ended up blending it with cider from later varieties.
These days I only make cider from mid and late season apples.
Perhaps some folks call the unripe fruit "early apples", I've never heard that.
Most commercial orchards pick apples before they are fully ripened to avoid damage to the crop during handling and transport. From my experience, tree ripened fruit makes a better cider.
But experimenting with what you have is a good thing. You can let the unripe apples sit in onions bags in a cool place to allow them to ripen somewhat.
Keep checking them and if you start noticing any rot, go ahead and grind and press. If you have the freezer space, you can freeze the juice to add to later season cider or go ahead and ferment it and maybe use it to blend with other cider if it needs some help.

 

[RPh_Guy]

"Choose apples from late midseason or later-maturing varieties. Summer and early midseason varieties generally do not possess the qualities required for good cider."
"early-maturing varieties contain much more nitrogen, and their juices ferment very quickly. And in general we may observe that the latest-maturing varieties are the ones that ferment the slowest, thus indicating that these varieties contain less nitrogen."
From new cider makers handbook by claude jolicoeur

 

[mwilcox]

I agree generally with what has been said. However, at times I've been really impressed with the aroma of some early/summer apples. So I'll press and freeze a bit to mix into other batches or even to backsweeten with.

 

[OffbeatBrew]

Thanks for your replies. I should have used the term "unripe apples" as that is what I meant. Anyway, it looks like a bumper crop coming this year after a total dud last year due to late frosts. Just hoping to prevent tree damage!

 

[madscientist451]

Interesting bit of information here:
From "Cider Making on the Farm" (revised 1934)
http://www.cider.org.uk/farm.htm

the question of harvesting and storing the fruit is deserving of consideration. Fruit used straight from the tree is rarely (except in the case of the earliest varieties) sufficiently ripe from a cidermaking point of view to give the best results. It is not sufficiently understood by the farmer cidermaker that the optimum stage of ripeness immensely affects the quality of the cider as well as simplifies the processes of fermentation. Green, unripe fruit contains a large amount of starch which. is prejudicial to a satisfactory type of fermentation, and, when fermented, produces an alcohol which is often indigestible and therefore harmful. It cannot be too clearly stated, also, that black apples are very detrimental to the quality of the cider and that every black apple going through the mill increases the risk of acetification. While it is possible to make cider from over-ripe, or even partly rotten fruit, yet in the first place the quantity of juice is less than that obtained from fruit in prime condition, and secondly the result is a thin, rapidly fermenting cider, lacking flavour, body and keeping quality. Apples may be said to be in prime milling condition when they are sufficiently ripe for the thumb to be pushed easily into the fruit.

 

[Jhoss]

The topic seems to be "thinning apple trees". This topic I am no stranger to. The problems with turning the little green apples into Chicken food is unless they rot on the ground or get broken open, my chickens ingnore...also, dumping buckets and buckets into the chicken run could make them sick...a little at a time is fine. I chop them up with a flat shovel.

Goats I dont know about. But be careful with little green apples...too much will sicken.

Best to be buried or otherwise disposed of, that's my take.