Wow. Weird when something on HN hits this close to home. I work in AgTech (automated irrigation) in Washington State. I can attest to the love-hate boom-bust relationship this variety is having with the Washington apple farmer.
The article leaves a key point out. This fruit tree is really temperamental to water correctly. Irrigators love and hate this thing. Some fruit bears overwatering gracefully. But with this tree, it begs for water, but if you overwater it even a little, the fruit fails easily. I've watched some big players (Pytech) dump millions of dollars into closed (fully automated), open (just telemetry and recommendation, human then waters) and hybrid loop irrigation methods to try and get this right. It remains a real pain to get right.
(edit: the cosmic crisp is also difficult to grow Just Right(tm))
I actually live in MN so am spoiled by the easy access to quality varieties. Honeycrisp are so "common" here (grown here) that I definitely avoid WA grown stock that seeps into grocery stores more quickly than ever.
I currently have 4 apple trees on the property but have only lived with apple trees for about the last 4 years now. I can't even imagine getting the conditions for a Honeycrisp tree right given the trees I have seem very temperamental. Last year (summer of '23) was a horrible year for our trees due to the summer long drought. Some of my trees are in irrigation zones so they did get decent water, but still failed to yield much.
This year was bonkers. I clocked 34" of rain in my backyard and all 4 trees had the highest yield so far. While these varieties aren't as delicious as a freshly picked, ripe Honeycrisp, they're still 1000x better than any mealy, soft apple from the store that was picked 6+ months ago. The other thing with Honeycrisp is that all of the local orchards have netting protecting all the Honeycrisp because, since the skin is so thin, they're highly susceptible to hail damage. They just seem like too much work given I can buy them grown here.
Curious how long it will be before the automation is perfected? Is this a normal cycle with a new breed of apple?
A property with apple trees (and space to grow more) is seriously enviable. Hands in earth is one of my favorite therapies. I've been contemplating a move for a few years and this additional inspiration may just be the tipping point.
If you have some space but not a lot, look up "Backyard Orchard Culture".
Practitioners have amazing yields with tiny 5' tall fruit trees. I've seen some people do things that seem crazy like 4 different trees in one planting hole and it works fine.
I have a potted miniature lime tree that spends 8 months of the year outdoors and the NYC winter indoors. It's easy to maintain and every year it produces more limes. This year I got at least 30. They taste unbelievable especially versus store purchased. Highly recommended.
the problem with trees is that it takes several years before the first fruit,
and the slightest problem with weather will easily kill off all the season's batch... otherwise even more than tempting than an orchard would be an "edible forest"/"forest garden"
On a small plot especially you want lots of diversity. Plant many different species and varieties of fruit so you have something to harvest all year long. (Trying to preserve excess harvest can be fun at first but quickly becomes a time consuming chore). Different shapes and sizes of trees also allow you to partition the sunlight and soil resource more efficiently.
We (the industry) paid (barely) an army of immigrant labor to run around turn valves on/off on 4 wheelers. The (automated) irrigation systems are (primarily) to reduce labor costs. There are some plusses to precision watering as well. But the industry is about labor cost reduction.
"We" only grew varieties that were less finicky, or only grew them in climates to which they were adapted. We also had less consolidation so failures were less systemic.
This rankings site [1] was shared on HN a couple years ago [2], and since then I’ve switched to Honeycrisp.
While I agree they aren’t always the most tasty, they are almost always (like 98%) crisp and never mealy to the point I want to stop eating it, unlike nearly every other breed I’ve tried (which admittedly is only about 7-8 or the most common ones).
I will take a less flavorful crisp apple 100% of the time over a mealy apple.
So even a mediocre Honeycrisp is, to me, still way better than nearly all the other ones.
If you get a chance, try WineCrisp. Loads of flavor and stubbornly crisp. The things keep for months, even in less than ideal storage (such as a fridge), and even after losing a great deal of moisture retain a snappy bite.
Only real downside is that the appearance isn't very flashy; they're the russet potato of modern apples.
I used to always get Pink Lady, but in the past couple of years I've found Kanzi to be better. And somehow my partner gets less allergic from Kanzi as well.
Their green skin can help with inflammation as it contains enzymes that protect T-cells. They're helpful to prevent diabetes and are recommended for diabetics to eat. They're high in phytonutrients and are apparently have the best antimutagenic potential of apple breeds. I think most of their benefits are shared with other green apples.
They've got high fibre content whilst being lower in sugar than other varieties and are good for gut bacteria.
However, the best apple to eat is one that you like as it's better to eat any type of apple than none.
I find that at my local grocery store in NJ, Cosmic Crisps to be more consistently good than Honeycrisps, despite being less crispy. But the best Honeycrisps are better.
Sweetango is also consistently flavorful and crispy and normally better than Cosmic, but the availability is what's inconsistent.
(And a Fuji apple I had in Japan was as good as the best Honeycrisps)
Cosmic crisp is amazing. I also like a good Fuji, though they're not as consistently good. Jazz and Ambrosia can be good as well. It's nice that we have so many varieties to choose from now. When I was a kid it was either Red|Golden "Delicious" or Granny Smith.
This is the way... there's research already at WSU for when the Cosmic Crip runs its course and the world is ready for the next apple with the same basic characteristics.
Don't wait too long though! Because then they get a soft jammy texture that some people absolutely hate. Transitioning into full goo eventually. (Yes that's the case for fuyu too, not just hachiya).
Also some fuyu can still be astringent when very firm / underripe.
Put it in a blender. Lemon juice optional. This will destroy the slimy texture. Fill a glass with the mix and then add cream on the top and you will have a spectacular dessert.
Persimmons are three (four?) totally different fruits in one.
SweeTango's #1 fault, which the site calls out, is that they do not store well. The recent bags I've taken home are notably less crisp and hardy than earlier in the fall.
That said, they'll still be absolutely delicious for another few weeks, highly recommend buying a bag. Trader Joe's usually carries.
SweeTango is a cross between Honeycrisp and Zestar. It would be interesting to know how many highly ranked apples are also crossed with a Honeycrisp on the top of the list.
I’ve gotten SweeTangos twice (in season, from Washington) and found them totally unappealing. No sourness to add interest to the flavor, not very crispy, just intense sweetness with a tiny bit of a mealy feeling.
Even if I just got duds, they fail the consistency test that honeycrisps pass.
The SweeTango I had was cloyingly, almost artificially sweet. Can’t tell if it was an unlucky pick or I just have different preferences—I like an Ambrosia.
I just bought a bag from Trader Joe's and it was absolutely disgusting. Completely mealy and flavorless. My family agrees and will probably never trust my apple picking skills again.
A childhood friend's dad is one of the people who developed the Honeycrisp and SweeTango (and Rave/First Kiss, Zestar, etc). We always had access to the latest and zaniest variants, but the Honeycrisp was just consistently very good. Yeah, sometimes you'd find an incredible fruit punch thing, but the next day you'd try another and it was gross and mealy. Honeycrisp was always reliable.
SweeTango is also excellent and reliable but it's harder to find and more expensive.
Yeah, I find the idea of using a rating site like this extremely bizarre. And after clicking on the link, that opinion is only further cemented by what seems to be a deliberate opinionated and sarcastic tone. I can only assume they want to court controversy for the sake of clicks.
For what it's worth, the only apples I buy, when they're local and in season, are McIntosh, which this site helpfully puts in the "pure shit" bin. That's just, well, wrong? Apples can be good without being bred for flavorless crispness like so many are today. And there's a difference between "soft" and "mealy", and good McIntosh apples are firmly (ha) on the soft side.
I like pink lady apples too, which this site rates "excellent", and honeycrisp are consistently acceptable - the Starbucks of apples - so it's not that they're making things up, but I think they are only rating apples along one axis and seem to have a thing for recent cultivars over classics and heirloom varieties.
It's the personal opinions of a comedian, and he does explain his rankings. I don't agree with all of his takes, but there's no such thing as an objective review, anyway.
The site has SugarBee sweetness of 3 out of 5...The author of the site is a comedian, so I guess one can't anything on that site seriously, at all.
"SugarBee® apples emit a sweet aroma and have high sugar content, generally reaching 14.6 Brix, compared to their parent variety honeycrisp, that reaches 13.8 Brix. "
I lived for some time in eastern Canada and I have very fond memories of freshly picked McIntoshes and I even dare to say they were my favorites. Fresh and crisp with a good amount of acidity that balances the sweetness beautifully. That being said, they don't age super well.
> Brian Frange is a comedian and writer who has been yelling about apples for years. He started yelling about apples professionally in 2016 while working on Comedy Central’s Not Safe with Nikki Glaser while serving as co-host on the Not Safe Podcast. [...] What started as a bit revolving around his love of apples has now become a full-time job where Brian makes $700,000,000,000 per week providing apple advice for wealthy fruit enthusiasts. Brian is not in the pocket of big apple and all reviews are inarguably accurate and not corrupted by corporate influence.
>Obviously if you prefer Red Delicious you're free to [strikethrough]have terrible taste[/strikethrough] disagree.
I made the mistake of purchasing that variety once, and learned from that experience. Fuji apples, on the other hand, do not deserve a score of 56 FFS.
Red Delicious are the canonical example of a product that was optimized for looks (and storage) over flavor and texture.
I'm told that the original Red Delicious are in fact very good. So good that we made them our Platonic ideal of "apple". And then... we targeted the wrong metric.
The slight sweet-bitterness to a real fresh red delicious apple is completely unmatched by any other apple variety I've ever had. It tastes like apple. It is satisfying and juicy and doesn't overwhelm your stomach with sourness or sweetness.
I think people just don't realize how fast Red Delicious apples go mediocre and have rarely tasted the real thing.
I don‘t care much for Kanzi and Fuji and Pink Lady. To me, Braeburn is good, Boskoop is great, and Berlepsch is amazing, but sometimes hard to get outside the apple grow regions.
Growing conditions really matter. We really like Gold Rush apples and our farmers market has three orchards who grow them but the ones from one of those vendors consistently aren’t as good, even though it’s clearly the same variety. Something about Pennsylvania vs. northern Maryland made more of a difference than I thought.
Its worse offense is not even mentioning many very good European apples like Cox Pippin or Mingan. Is just a list of commercial apples, many of then unknown or ignored in Europe.
Not her offense, "its" offense, The worst offense from the "list of best apples" is that is clearly biased and omits some very good varieties that are well known.
Yeah, it goes completely against my taste (and maybe against how apples are over here)? I had only delicious Fuji apples for example, from consistency to taste (if you like sweet at least), which the site describes as utterly awful. Especially the local ones are awesome. Incomprehensible ranking for me.
More like the radio edit of your favorite track: was great, got diluted by assholes pushing it on the masses, is still great if you can find the original version you fell in love with.
I live in MN and my preferred apple depends on the time of year, I try to get locally grown apples whenever possible by visiting orchards, or Lunds if I can’t get to an orchard.
I like First Kiss (Rave) apples in August and early September, SweeTango in September and October, and Honeycrisp at any other time. SweeTango is my favorite, you can still get them as flavorful tennis/baseball size apples in MN vs the monstrous grapefruit sized flavorless Honeycrisp apples that seem to be everywhere these days.
There are still fantastic Honeycrisp apples available with lots of flavor, just ignore the gigantic ones.
This site has come up in conversation multiple times as if it's some sort of serious resource, but iiuc this is just one guy's opinion, and if you read the reviews, it's clear he's mostly just writing these for entertainment. Also, it's not clear how many times he's even tasted these apples and when those tastings occurred. Sometimes an apple just has a bad year!
Anyway, I'm mostly just salty that he panned the cosmic crisp. They're good this year!
To be clear (to respond to a few people panning the legitimacy of applerankings.com), I didn’t actually take the site super seriously, it just made me take more notice of the Honeycrisp and try it out.
That’s when I realized that they were very rarely mealy, something I’d been in search of for years.
But agree that the site is mostly intended to be a more humorous take on apples. (And, to be fair, it is quite funny.)
Granny Smiths are probably the most tart generally available apple, but any cooking apple in general is usually sharper. You might also like McIntosh or even Pink Lady.
You could also go down the cider apple route or even crabapples if you really want, though they often tend to be more bitter than tart.
Granny Smith is ubiquitous. It's often difficult to get a more sour apple than a Granny Smith. Pink Lady is less sour IIRC. McIntosh or Braeburn are definitely less sour.
If you're in the Midwest (especially MN, WI, Iowa, etc) you can get Haralson, which are kinda like Granny Smith but more just straight sour.
Haralson is probably my favorite. But disclaimer, I also like eating straight lemons, so ... yea. Many people will use Haralson only for baking.
I hear that in Europe they have a few types that are more sour, idk.
When I grew up, we had several crabapple trees in the yard. They very frequently bore fruit. My mom always told me these were toxic to eat, so I stayed away from them. Honeysuckle and blackberries, on the other hand...
As raw fruit they are perfectly edible when mature. The flavor is a mild apple flavor, a little bland an can be sour also. As in all apples, the seeds have cyanide, but as long as you don't eat them or filter the seeds after cooking it, it will not be a problem. Just don't eat it whole.
The immature fruits are hard as a steel ball, so there is a risk of suffocation with children, but apart if this, if you discard the seeds they are perfectly edible. I ate them many times, even if I prefer to let most in the tree for the birds.
> It just means wild apple trees, not a cultivated variety.
"Wild" apples are Malus sylvestris or just feral domestic apples Malus domestica.
Crabapples comprise the rest (>30 different species) of apples and its hybrids. Malus florida from Japan is famous for its glorious blossom for example. Malus sieboldi from China or Malus bacatta from Siberia are also crabapples. Some are true to seed, but other aren't and there are many cultivars selected by blossom or fruit display.
There are some crabapples cultured specifically for culinary purposes, like Golden Hornet that bear heavy amounts of small yellow fruits. Very good for compote and jelly.
Weird, there’s a variety at my local farm market called Crimson Crisp that is my new favorite because it is tasty and extremely crisp. But it’s not even listed on that ranking site… maybe it’s regional?
And I’ve never heard of the Cosmic Crisp, which is showing up in a lot of comments. Again, maybe regional?
It also depends on when you get them. Here in the PNW, Honeycrisp apples in the fall are delicious because they're grown locally and not stored long. Just eat it as seasonal fruit and it lives up to its promise.
Empire has this problem. Fresh off the tree they are some of the ideal apples. After a couple weeks of storage though, they lose all that crispness and become a sad experience.
I’ve eaten many mealy honeycrisp apples. Just let it sit on your counter for 2 months then try it. Discount grocery stores are often selling many-months old apples.
This is the same story for every new variety of apple. It becomes popular because of its positive characteristics (sweetness, tanginess, juicyness, crispness), but then slowly over time it gets cultivated for mass market appeal (uniform color, shape, shelf life) and the variety loses what made it good.
The best apple variety is generally the new one. The market is strewn with the discarded remains of formerly good apples like Fuji and Gala.
My preferred apple is Mutsu, available from a few growers in the late season at my southern Ontario farmers market. According to Wikipedia it's been around since 1949, but perhaps it simply never got popular enough to face these pressures— either way, I find it consistently to be in the right place for me as far as a balance of sweet, tangy, and crispy.
+1 here -- Mutsu are fantastic, readily available at NYC greenmarkets in the fall and into the winter, though there are pretty large differences in flavor and texture between various orchards too. Samascot is my fav.
I can imagine growers don’t like them as much though, despite the lack of patents and trademarks. In Europe they were abundant and amazing quality last year, lasting into February. This harvest their flavour wasn’t there, many were mealy, and they were unavailable within a month. Their worst year as far as I can remember.
Cox is a very good apple that is infamously prone to pick every apple disease known. Golden Delicious has the same problem, good flavor, disappointing as tree without using chemicals.
Rubinette is a medium sized yellow apple, streaked in reddish brown. Not particularly eye-catching and also prone to fungal diseases. But Rubinette has a secret, is a seedling of Cox x Golden delicious, and its flavor is fantastic.
Modern apples with not so sophisticated flavor but better resistance can be much more satisfactory.
This is a thing I love about living in WA, I get the apples a few years before everyone else. Lets me send them to friends across the US before they hit their supermarkets.
And yes really the interesting thing is they're different and new. Tho I do really like cosmics. Especially if you dry them in a food dehydrator and then powder them into whipped cream.
Same with Western NY - proximity to Cornell’s apple research and lots of orchards is really great. If you’re an apple fanatic WA and WNY are the places to be.
I wonder what the incentives are that make mass market qualities more attractive to growers than what consumers want. Like, I can imagine a sorta-demand curve with "sweetness etc" to "uniform color etc" along the x axis and "clearing price" or something on the y axis, and I really wonder if the most efficient price is really so far to the mass market appeal side of the curve. Or to put it another way, why can't they just grow things people want?
What people want, judging by their market behavior, is reliability. A lot of the best-tasting apples are inconsistent in quality, ship or store poorly, or have a short growing season. I love eating fresh heirloom apples, but Honeycrisps are 10% great, 80% good, and 10% disappointing, which I prefer to 30% good, 30% disappointing, and 40% unavailable.
The idea of a year-round fruit crop is a modern supermarket creation. Most food is seasonal. If a consumer are unaware of its seasonality, that’s because someone is working hard to hide that fact.
I try to enjoy asparagus when it is in season, new potatoes when they are in season, etc. Just because some crops are bred for months and months of storage doesn’t mean they actually taste great.
No, of course it is not from cold storage; instead the produce is flying around the world so that you can have them whenever you want.
Cold storage, jets, and long-haul trucking are particularly bad for some types of produce, not so bad for others.
Anyway, I’m not fighting the modern world, I like having tomatoes in January. But this article and discussion is about how you can have good apples, or you can have year-round apples at scale, but you can’t have both. And a lot of that comes down to the supermarket training consumers to expect the same produce every week.
The clearing price probably actually rises with improved color and shape, and the overhead declines with greater shelf stability. It’s not until years later that consumers slowly realize the texture and taste have gone downhill (as result of these developments) that clearing price begins to decline. So the market has a lag in response; it resembles a high value brand being sucked dry.
What people want when you sit them down and have them try apples side by side is different from what they want when they are in a supermarket, tired from working all day, and starring out at a sea of apples and not quite remembering which one it was they liked.
Enshitification. I’ve been buying honeycrisp for a while and noticed more mushiness and flat flavor recently but I didn’t realize there was a whole apple-buying meta to keep up with if you don’t want to buy garbage fruit.
Edit: All the honeycrisp in my area right now are oversized. I’m guessing because of a supplier change due to the season change?
If you live within a few hours of apple country, do yourself a favor next fall and go discover some new varietals. There are hundreds produced commercially (read: some farm grows them) that will never see a supermarket. Try a bunch and use your favorites for fun dishes you rarely make: pies, tarts, cider, butter, cut them into oatmeal, sandwiches, salads. They can taste so amazing and different that it's a fun adventure. (Plus then you can pretend you're a fancy food person, saying to your friends "Ooh, the Macoun had a good season this year!")
And if you have a bit of land, start some trees! They are a wonderful gift for future generations. Plant a bunch and leave them alone, let the survivors flourish. Worst case they die and you have some good firewood for a bbq.
I used to have an orchard with c. 35 apple trees, 2 of which were honeycrisp. I can confirm that they are tricky trees to manage. I was theoretically in a good area for honeycrisps. But the trees were prone to all sorts of maladies that didn’t affect my other varietals, including antique varietals that are traditionally thought of as “difficult”. And when they did grow fruit it was usually small and misshapen.
Apples are interesting and this is a great example of the unexpected challenges you can face growing them. Every honeycrisp tree is a perfect clone of the very first one, but the environment of each is not a perfect clone of their original environment. And the interplay of genetics and growing conditions can have very unpredictable results.
I think it's less about strict hardiness and more about suitability for mass growing in Washington. The Honey crisp has declined because it's getting grown in places it doesn't really do well. The Cosmic Crisp is bred for those very places.
So it may not be as good at peak (or it might, here in WA the peak of the Cosmic Crisp can be pretty high indeed) but it should stay strong over the years.
Same. People kept telling me it was a Pink Lady with a honeycrisp texture. I tried it a few times, it was neither. Not terrible or anything, but not the holy grail it was made out to be.
Same here, Envy is my main apple (I typically eat 2 apples a day, one each for morning and afternoon snack). ~80% of the time Envy apples blow my socks off, Maybe 2% of the time they're just ok. I'll get a SweeTango or Cosmic Crisp if Envy are not available, but I've just never had one that I thought was better than Envy.
I went through a big Honeycrisp phase and really enjoy them, but I have thin enamel on my teeth and frequent eating of uncooked Honeycrisp leads me to a lot of tooth pain, they're just a little too tart. They are my go-to baking apple though.
From the sound of it, they lowered our standards for the Honeycrisp and made way for an inferior but more robust apple that’s better than the lowered standards. While it’s likely they did this unintentionally it seems like the Cosmic Crisp is not as well-liked as the early Honeycrisp.
Agreed, the experience the author describes with a Honeycrisp at the beginning of the article is something I recently had with a Cosmic. Let’s hope it lasts.
My own experience is that Honeycrisp is the most consistently sweet and crisp apple you can buy (contrary to the claims made in TFA -- maybe it's a regional thing?). Cosmic Crisp is decent but I'm not a fan of the flavor.
It's likely that the best apple will be whatever of the "honeycrisp-like" varieties you can acquire on with the shortest time between tree and your mouth.
Meh. Cosmic crisp is just hyped up marketing. It was obvious in how heavily they advertised. It’s not actually better. Honey crisp remains the sweetest and tastiest.
But they are consistent and reliable, for now. I know if I go to the store and I've got the option of 6 different types of apples (I live in WA, we've got apple choices...) I know cosmic crips (grown barely an hour drive from where I live) will be consistent in texture and flavor.
That must be on media I don’t use, as I didn’t even know they advertised. I independently settled on cosmic crisp (and the nearly identical crimson crisp) as my standard.
I never did like honeycrisp all that much, though. It’s a little too sweet and something about the flavor is just a little bit wrong. It’s hard to describe but it’s like they tried a little too hard to make the ideal apple. It’s alright and I’d be happy to eat one but I don’t buy them.
Apple grower here. I still don't understand Honeycrisps. I'm on the younger side, so I haven't seen that many years of Honeycrisp, but I feel I have never had a good one. My experience of Honeycrisp is that it is super crunchy, almost too much so, but completely devoid of flavor. To me, it's like eating crunchy water.
As others have pointed out, this article doesn't actually explain why (or even if) Honeycrisp has gotten worse. One thing I will add to this discussion, though I don't know if it is true in the case of Honeycrisp, is that it is definitely not a matter of breeding (nor selective breeding, breeding for storage, etc): in order to produce more apple trees, Honeycrisps (or any other variety) aren't bred, they are asexually propagated through grafting. That means all Honeycrisp trees are more-or-less genetically identical.
That said, just like any organism, as trees grow and produce new cells at the tips of branches, there is always a chance for a mutation. Sometimes these branch mutations (called "sports") have visible genetic differences: stronger coloration, earlier ripening, or perhaps earlier storage (though this is harder to notice). This is how Red Delicious went from a wonderful apple to tasteless, mealy cardboard: sports were selected over time that prioritized storage and color over texture and flavor.
As an apple grower, I have had the opportunity to taste Honeycrisps straight off the tree, and to me, they taste just as flavorless as the ones I get from the store. I grow almost all heirloom varieties, and I can tell you there is one that for me is head-and-shoulders above the rest: Wickson Crab. If you are in California, I recommend marking your calendar for September to search this variety out at the farmers markets (or better, plant a tree yourself!). There are many other wonderful varieties that stand out from grocery store apples. In a pinch, I'll get a Pink Lady from the store, as I find it's the most flavorful of the commonly available apples, but I find they sit heavy in my stomach in a way that homegrown or farmer's market apples don't. I believe this is to do with the fact that apples available at the grocery store are picked early, before the starches have converted into sugars, so the higher starch content may be harder to digest.
Hint: any apple with an "apple green" undercoat is underripe; to pick a ripe apple, wait for that bright green to mellow out or change colors. For redder apples, it can be harder to see, but most apples have some green visible under the red (Pink Lady is again a great example of this). And yes, Granny Smith apples are so sour precisely because they are picked and sold underripe; a ripe Granny Smith is yellow and sweet.
> I find [Pink Lady to be] the most flavorful of the commonly available apples, but I find they sit heavy in my stomach in a way that homegrown or farmer's market apples don't. I believe this is to do with the fact that apples available at the grocery store are picked early, before the starches have converted into sugars.
I’m not an apple expert, but I’m pretty sure that a lot of “supermarket varieties” like Pink Lady have higher cellulose which helps them withstand relatively rough handling. (For those who don’t know: Apples are extremely easy to bruise, you should handle them carefully and never ever press on them to test for ripeness!)
Please tell me that people don't actually do this. If you have seen it, let me know and I'll reach out to some of the major grocers to maybe add some signage in their produce section about evaluating apple ripeness.
I will, maybe, spin the apple in my hand lightly to determine if there's some notable damage, but I'd never press into the flesh and dent it on purpose. Maybe that's what you're seen people do?
Then again, in our zero consequences society, I wouldn't be surprised if people took the IDGAF attitude about damaging produce they don't intend on purchasing.
I wonder if your "taste" for an apple is just so completely drowned out by your experience and exposure to the apple industry. Like, if I had the opportunity to taste every apple variety all the time, maybe the Honeycrisp starts to trend towards crispy water (amusing analogy by the way).
But for the average consumer, maybe a strong tasting apple is a put off. I personally choose and eat Honeycrisp consistently every time and I'm completely 100% satisfied with every apple I've had of it. There have been some better than others, of course, but still satisfied with the quality, taste and crispness regardless.
I have no doubt that maybe Honeycrisp just has such a mass appeal that apple experts might not actually prefer its taste. Maybe I'm just a "boring" white bread kind of apple consumer. I'm fine with this, honestly, because Honeycrisps make me happy. And when they are on sale for $1 / pound, they make me even happier.
It's possibly like wine this way too, where the very best wines are those that only the experts can really taste and appreciate. For me, the differences between varieties of wine is completely lost.
I can tell you there is one that for me is head-and-shoulders above the rest: Wickson Crab.
+1 to Wickson Crab. It's my favorite apple as well. I grew them in California, but my tree here in Vermont isn't bearing yet, so I'm not sure they'll be the same.
Dmitri, where are you growing them? And who is selling them at Farmer's Markets in California? I worked a lot of markets in the Bay Area, and I don't remember ever seeing them for sale (although that was 10 years ago).
> this article doesn't actually explain why (or even if) Honeycrisp has gotten worse
Is no mystery at all what is happening here.
One of the things that I loved from plant physiology is how futuristic it is. Bordering black magic sometimes. For example. Do you knew that potions of eternal youth exist... for apples?.
You just need to apply some commercial product and this apple will kept brilliant skin, no wrinkles, and bright color for weeks. Fantastic, right? The sellers and the supermarkets will love that.
The only problem is that it cost sugar to keep it alive in this state of white-snow suspended animation. As long as there is sugar remaining it works. After a while you have a good-looking apple with a disappointing bland watery taste.
This is half of the explanation that the writer was looking for. The other half is a camera storage time too extended.
This is interesting. Could you provide any information about this commercial product? As far as I understand, the most sophisticated treatment happening is low oxygen storage. But neither of these things explain why apples straight off the tree are also bland.
Storage is the key culprit. One solution for that in the US is to buy New Zealand apples when it's nowhere near apple season in the northern hemisphere. Crazy to ship apples half-way round the world but they are delicious. I mostly see Envy apples from NZ in California.
Garlic is another item ruined by long storage. Christopher Ranch is reportedly storing garlic for 2+ years in refrigeration. That's why it doesn't taste like garlic anymore.
Basically, they are being stored too long, because Honeycrisp season is only in September, and the apple industry in Washington state is trying to provide them year round.
This is compounded by the subtle effect of the trees being adapted for Minnesota, whereas Washington’s climate is much warmer.
I used to live in the area around where the red delicious was first developed, and they are indeed very different from what people became used to. The original red delicious - assuming the local orchards have something closer to the original - is/was much smaller, rounder, and closer to something like a macintosh. If you had one you wouldn't recognize it as red delicious unless someone told you and then you'd be confused.
I worry a bit the same thing is happening with honeycrisp. In addition to the the out-of-season sales (some of the dates people are talking about with honeycrisp are ridiculous), there's genetic drift. The University of Minnesota has always been worried about this happening, speaking to staff with their apple program. The problem is clones get propagated from clones of clones, some of which are fraudulently hybrids with other varieties, and eventually you end up with something that's not really the same anymore. Big growers choose ancestors that produce fruit with the characteristics that benefit them, and by that point buyers don't remember the original anymore.
The problem, as people are pointing out, is largely what large-scale agriculture does to plant varieties in terms of breeding, as well as the problems with freshness. What the growers and distributors want from fruit is not what you want as a consumer. There's probably some important lessons there for capitalism or markets in general.
SnapDragon is a vastly improved version of Honeycrisp anyway. The only real issue with it is that only growers within New York State are allowed to grow it, so it's not nearly as available.
Apple trees aren’t grown from seed because the offspring will have huge genetic variability and won’t resemble the parent. Instead they take a hardy rootstock species and graft scionwood from the fruit producing trees on to it. Once the apple variety is grown, repeating it without the graft is impractical and you can't just save seed from store bought apples and expect to get the same thing. An entire variety might be cloned from a single tree that produced the best fruit out of hundreds.
For new designer varieties getting commercial access to the grafts usually requires signing contract that you won’t create and sell your own grafts so the creator can control who gets it.
Yeah, as a resident of NY apple country (I'm ~20 minutes from Beak & Skiff, frequently voted one of the best orchards in the country), SnapDragon is the way to go.
I'm with all the folks who say they've swapped Honeycrisp for Cosmic Crisp. The Honeycrisp I get now is a poor shadow of what it used to be. This article is very interesting. I suspected the quality shift had to do with mass market selling, but it's nice to see the long form version of what I suspected.
She doesn't really explain why the honeycrisps she gets at the farmer's market are hit-or-miss now, which would have been a more interesting story to unwind.
If its anything like our farmers market I'd bet they aren't actually locally grown.
It's really hard to unpack which of our vendors are truly local; and which just buy produce from wholesalers, slap a "Name's Family Farm" sign on the table, and pretend to be locally grown.
You'd be a lot better off going to the actual orchard, but those are often 1+ hours away.
I'm in Seattle. You would think I could reliably find good apples here.
I can not. Even at farmer's markets, it's obvious some of the offerings have been stored... which makes me question the stuff that isn't obvious. At least it's better than the supermarkets, which have been selling New Zealand apples... in Washington... in September... yeah no thanks!
They also sell apples on their website for local delivery in the Seattle area (in semi-large quantities only). Their honeycrisps are very good in my opinion, I usually buy 40 pounds a couple times a year. They also have other good fruit in season (e.g. peaches, nectarines; cherries are okay).
Just did a CTRL-F and I am shocked nobody is talking about the magnificent McIntosh. Does the rest of the world (outside of Canada) not get them? The fruit has red and green skin, a tart flavour, and tender white flesh, which ripens in late September. They've converted many, many people from other variants...
Macoun and Mcintosh define apples for me- from a pic-ur-own stand in new england. I would eat so many that my teeth started to feel sensitive from the acidity.
I like McIntosh apples they are a favorite of mine but I've been having them since I was a kid and I'm pretty sure it's nostalgia and familiarity that makes me always pick it
A great variety that we can get in season where I live in the US. I think they don’t keep or transport well, and they’re mostly only available at farm stands around here.
They are so mealy. The flavor is nice, but I hate the texture. Empire apples have a similar tart flavor, but with a crisp flesh similar to a golden or red delicious.
If it was mealy, it was probably improperly stored or grown in too warm weather. They aren't normally mealy. They're more tender and less crisp than Honeycrisp and have a pleasant texture.
You're likely not getting good McIntosh apples in your area. The texture should be similar to a typical apple, but not as crisp as Honeycrisp. A slice of McIntosh should snap if you try to bend it.
I eat apples almost every day and have found that some growers are just simply better than others.
Have you ever looked at the sticker brand on your apples? If not, pay attention next time. Rainier has the best Honeycrisps. They're phenomenal. All others pale in comparison.
This realization made my wife and I pay more attention across all of our produce. We'll choose to buy produce based on the brand that's currently in stock. It feels absurdly picky, but I find it refreshing to at least know why a batch of brussel sprouts, apples, oranges, etc. tasted more bitter or less flavorful than normal.
It makes sense when you think about it. People care where their coffee beans come from, with flavor preferences of one region versus another. Why shouldn't we have flavor preferences based on who grows our produce?
I would normally only buy apples around september/october in the Netherlands, trying to get them fresh from local orchards when possible. Elstar is amazing when plucked right from the tree, but becomes mealy before the end of the year IMO.
My new go to is the Magic Star variety, which has been sold as "Sprank" for the last 3 years at least in the Netherlands. These apples keep amazingly well; they ran out of stock around the summer in the last two years, but I found them delicious year round. I hope that this cultivar does not befall the same fate as the Honeycrisp, which I had the pleasure of tasting 5 years ago.
The first couple of years I found Honeycrisp at my local market, which would have been 2001 and 2002 (because I'll never forget a lot of things from September 2001), the apples were HUGE. More like a large grapefruit than an apple in size. They still had the great flavor and texture of later Honeycrisps, it was a huge shock compared to normal apples at the time. It may have been something with the weather that produced them like that, but man would I love to see those things pop up again.
I was told by a grower that a large factor in apple size is the number of apples on the tree. Growers thin the fruit to control fruit size. Kinda like the tree is going to make some set tonnage of apple and if you thin them, it loads that tonnage into the remaining apples.
Apparently we like larger apples in the US while smaller apples are preferred in China.
I was buying them for my daughter to eat at lunch at school and she sent me a picture of her honercrisp compared to her friends' apples. It was like midgets versus Giants... Giants for the win
So it seems that we get different apples in Europe and the US? I'm from Spain and haven't even heard of Honeycrisp or Cosmic Crisp.
Here, the common apples you can see in supermarkets are Golden Delicious (called just Golden here), Royal Gala, Pink Lady, Fuji, Pippin, Granny Smith, Red "Delicious", Kanzi, maybe a few more than I'm forgetting, but no Honeycrisp or Cosmic Crisp as far as I know.
I feel that the choice is also limited in Britain, perhaps even more so than in Spain. Independent greengrocers might have some more unusual varieties than supermarkets, but I have never seen Honeycrisp anywhere. Seems there could be a killing to be made in importing them here, providing of course that they are the 'marvel' and not the 'mediocre' ones!
If Honeycrisp are supposed to grow properly only in climates like Minnesota's, then it doesn't seem likely that they will ever actually be grown in Britain (or Spain for that matter).
True - my parents wax lyrical about a cultivar called Howgate Wonder, which they used to buy from a local orchard long before I was born. I have never seen them for sale myself and consequently haven't had the opportunity to taste them. The orchard still exists, reportedly...
I have departed British shores as of a few years back now, but I understand that a lot of the varieties really only exist in various national collections these days rather than having much commercial growth. There are significant growers of less usual cider apples, not that they'd be great for eating. So how you actually get your hands on them ... ?
There do seem to be online shops that'll sell you a tree from many different strains though.
As with many things, the supermarket optimises for storage, shipping, uniformity etc, and in the end we all miss out on variety. It's even worse for that here in Australia - there are precisely three types of potato - red, white and purple skinned, and they're all much the same and pretty bland. There's a fourth 'gourmet' type (kipfler) allowed at really fancy stores.
I never particularly liked Honeycrisp apples and never understood the hype, but seeing this #1 on HN I feel like one of the cool kids ahead of the curve on a niche topic. Jokes aside about 5 years ago I began reading about the industry side of all these new trendy apple varieties, much of it is industry driven and interesting for those into that sort of thing.
The best in my opinion is Fuji followed closely by Gala.
I used to love Galas but ultimately realized about 50% of the time they were mealy.
Since swapping to Honeycrisp, I’ve yet to have a mealy one. Maybe occasionally (about 1 out of 20-30) there’s one that has a hint of mealiness, but far from what half of the Galas were.
I do agree that not all of them are super sweet/flavorful, but still most of them are, and I’d take a less sweet but still crisp apple any day over a sweet but mealy one.
I never tried Fuji much, but don’t remember them being anything special. This site [1] (shared at least once on HN) has Fuji even below Gala.
Something really off imho with a food writer that manages to insert foul matter vulgarity into food reviews. It's moved beyond cute into the 'wonder what ails this guy' territory.
That site is a single person's opinion. He acknowledges that Fuji is many (most?) people's favorite variety among people who have a favorite variety but then rates it poorly to be controversial. The comment section of his review shows that his clickbait strategy was successful.
Way I’d explain it as Fuji and Gala are similar (on the sweet side). I agree with you on inconsistency of the Gala, which is why I have it below Fuji, and Fuji’s being consistently crisp.
I’m firmly in your camp, I don’t care for mealy apples - I hear those people exist but don’t think I know any.
That’s my experience as well, at least at my local store I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gotten a mealy Fuji over many years.
Also laughing because I perform the same apple analysis - this new variety looks good and admittedly the names are pretty effective marketing (honeycrisp, cosmic, etc…), but they tend to be comparatively expensive and after being let down some many times I just grab the Fuji
I will go out of my way to avoid Fuji and Gala, FWIW. I used to like Honeyscrisp but they have been disappointing lately indeed. Didn't know this was a thing, but my takeaway is I should be on the lookout for weirdly named ones next time I'm shopping.
While defining x/0 = 0 is sound, it has tradeoffs, as OP acknowledges. In "Papers with computer-checked proofs" (2024), D. J. Bernstien wrote:
> There is a claim ... that “dividing by 0 is not allowed in mathematics, and hence this cannot be relevant to their work”, but in fact a mathematician is permitted to deduce b ≠ 0 from c = a/b, since a/b is undefined for b = 0. Redefining the notation to allow b = 0 breaks this. Unless it occurs to the author to state a conclusion c = a/b and a conclusion b ≠ 0, the proof assistant won’t check that b ≠ 0, whereas the reader will think that this has been checked.
I suspect that D.J. Bernstein's preferred apples are of the silicon variety, but I could be mistaken. He is from New York, one of the early states where Honeycrisps were grown, but Long Island, which doesn't have much agriculture.
Maybe I missed it in that massive article, but did they ever actually come to a conclusion why the apples taste worse today? Except maybe long term storage?
It was a really long article about the history of the apple and difficult growing it, but I didn't see the title answered anywhere. It ended taking about surplus and storage requirements.
Because nowadays many fruits and veggies are bread for storability and transportability. Then sugariness. Taste is an afterthought. Let alone smell.
I got a tiny lot and started growing some berries, fruits and veggies. There's a masive selection for pretty much any given species. Do you want eat-off-the-plant or make a jam? Do you prefer more or less sugary taste? How much are you willing to maintain and defend them? If you're looking for analysis paralysis, gardening is the way to go.
Yes. But the general tendency in Apple breeding is the same. Transportability and storability above all. With then getting more sugary, save granny smith.
Personally I’m after historical apples. I’ve two local classics. One breed is from 19th century, the other is probably older, but I don’t buy claims it’s coming from medieval era. Taste is nice and they survive pretty well with very little upkeep with no modern chemistry.
I also just planted few less-known modern colon style breeds. Fingers crossed few years later it will pay off.
That was it, yes. Long term storage under refrigeration is harming the quality of the apples at market in the interest of making the apple available year round.
The actionable information is in the beginning: honey crisp apples are not worth it anymore buy whatever instead. For me this keeps it from being insufferable. The stuff in the middle demonstrates what the conditions were like before it went mass market, which supports the conclusion that something changed and that it was likely related to the logistics of growing and distributing the apple.
If you don't like reading these articles, you could try using an LLM to extract a summary before choosing to dive in. I'm sure there are browser extensions for that.
Yeah, having the read the article, my conclusion was that you should avoid honeycrisps from like February through ~August. i.e. only buy them when they're vaguely in season, or not too long afterward.
Anecdotally, I had some pretty delicious honeycrisps last night (in WA).
If you’re in the NorthEast try and get some Macoun (pronounced Ma-cown) apples in the fall.
They spoil fast and don’t transport well because the skin is extremely thin, but those same qualities make them excellent apples to eat.
Some ratings have them ranked a little lower because they aren’t very sweet but that’s what I love about them. They taste like apple. Not sugar. And the crisp/soft balance is awesome.
Edit: I read the apple rankings site which rates them very poorly. But if you actually read the review the complaint is about shelf life.
Read the comments where people have actually tasted it fresh and most of the commenters consider it the best apple they’ve tasted. But you gotta eat it freshly picked and/or as soon as you get it.
I live in the Okanagan in British Columbia and the local honeycrisp are still good here. I think the colder climate and smaller scale farms here make for a better apple. We also have long term storage facilities where the apples are stored in nitrogen which really helps with freshness.
The local place I go to is straight from the grower and they have a 24/7 cold storage facility of apple bins operated by the honour system. All apples are $1 a pound.
Part of the issue here is that wineries have been historically more profitable than orchards so there are many fewer places to buy local fruit. In the past two years however, there has been cold snaps which have killed 50% and 90% of grape vines subsequently so people are starting to question the stability of wineries.
One thing I never realized is that apple varieties can't be grown from seeds.
"This is because seedling apples are 'extreme heterozygotes'. Rather than resembling their parents, seedlings are all different from each other and from their parents." [1]
"To propagate a cultivar [variety], material from the original tree (scion) is joined to a rootstock. The rootstock provides the roots for the new plant and the scion forms the top part of the new plant, which produces the fruit. The rootstock comes from another cultivar selected specifically for its ability to grow well in the soil and induce desirable growth habits of the scion (such as dwarfing)."
"The scion is introduced to the rootstock by either grafting or budding. In grafting, a length of dormant wood from the original tree is notched into the rootstock. In budding, small buds are notched into the rootstock. Budding produces more trees from the same amount of wood than grafting." [2]
So when you read "cultivation", it's not like breeding green beans or corn, where you can crossbreed plants and come up with a new type that will "breed true" and then you can make a bunch of seeds to distribute. Cultivation is basically growing a bunch of trees, finding the right combo, then creating a bunch of them
So commercial growers with orchards will buy trees from breeders who create that type of tree by managing the grafting/budding process.
Apparently, though we don't know when breeding started, it's been going on for thousands of years.
Also, Johnny Appleseed wasn't doing anyone favors by spreading apple seeds everywhere because the trees would produce mostly inedible apples.
> making it the state’s fourth-largest cultivar after Red Delicious, Gala, and Fuji.
Red Delicious has to be the nastiest apple cultivar in existence. Why in the world are they growing that many? Replace them with something decent like Pink Lady.
Probably historical... it wasn't that many years ago that the Red Delicious was the go-to and it wasn't the mealy, thick-skinned apple of today. If you've got hundreds or even thousands of acres planted, it's a once a generation thing to bet on a new variety or move to a different fruit. I suspect today the red delicious market is two-fold: some government programs (think food banks) and the juice market. There might also be apple sauce producers etc who really don't care about variety, they just want cheap
I really don't understand how anyone enjoys Red "Delicious". They've got a thick, tough, waxy skin and the inside is a tasteless mush with a horrible texture - how I imagine that dandelion heads would taste like if you tried to eat a load of them.
Wow I thought I was the only one who thought this? My timeline matches pretty close to the authors. I worked at a startup around 2013 that had fruit deliveries, and I ate a honeycrisp apple there for the first time in my life and I fell in love. Like the author, I started eating those apples out of desire, not because it was the only thing left.
But in the last 2 years, I didn't notice it, but I have been pretty dissatisfied with them but I never really thought about it until this article. It sheds light as to exactly why I don't like it anymore, and that's pretty sad that the industry is getting into that state.
Just a side note here... it's shocking to drive through the orchards of Washington and Oregon and see how much fruit never gets harvested because there's no commercial market for it. Acres and acres of fruit left on the trees until they fall off and rot because they aren't varieties desirable in the market any longer. Why don't farmers replace with new varieties? In some cases they do, but the capital expense is considerable to tear out trees / bushes / etc and replace and wait for mature fruit.
Just seems to happen with every apple I like, unfortunately. I think I'm currently on Cosmic Crisp or Jazz apples as my mains. I give them about five years before they start to suck.
Are Envy apples a thing in the US? They’re available here in Australia and are light years better than everything else I’ve ever had, at basically the same price point.
The wide range of preferences expressed here makes me think that the best apple is one grown near you—and different varieties are better suited for different climate regions.
Everyone is so obsessed with WA and MN apples that they miss out on the good ones grown in New York, which used to be known for its apples!
Shizukas can be grown here, which I strongly recommend. But honestly most varieties you can get direct from a farm are edible (except Red Delicious, which for some reason continues to be grown even in independent farms even though it's universally acknowledged to be trash).
The problem is people want same variety any day of the year. Stocking local apples as they come is a PITA for big supermarket chains. And most people don't care enough to go to farmer's markets or local specialty shops. Let alone that usually they ain't open on saturady 22:00 when some people find time to go shopping.
This article doesn't explain why a hudson valley grown honeycrisp would taste worse now than 10 years ago? Those are still coming from the boutique farms where you can pick them off the tree. It only explains why big apple in Washington is ruining the national honeycrisp market. Or did I miss something?
60 years ago Cox's was by far my favorite apple for flavor but they could get soft and mealy in storage. Gala is the closest descendant that is much crisper and still has a lot of the Cox's flavor. I've never liked crisp or acidic apples, except in crumbles or pies where Granny Smith is my goto.
Honeycrisp apples are still great if you can find a local orchard that sells them direct. From the grocery store they are a bit more inconsistent and merely an upper tier Apple.
I suspect the popularity of honeycrisp will eventually lead it to the same fate as Red Delicious, but only time will tell.
Cosmic Crisp is a new varietal that seems like a solid successor to honey crisp. It seems like they started in a cooler climate (I first encountered them in northern Oregon), and they're fantastic.
I went through this just yesterday. Bought a bunch of Honeycrisps, and was underwhelmed compared to my memory of them. I also don't like Cosmic Crisps anymore.
Side note: Those new jumbo blueberries are insane.
I’m curious if incorporating technology, like image analysis apps (size, colour, quality), could help address some of these issues. Any thoughts from any of the growers out there?
TLDR: The Honeycrisp apple, developed by the University of Minnesota in the 1980s, was initially celebrated for its crisp texture and balanced flavor, quickly becoming a consumer favorite. However, its delicate nature and susceptibility to disorders like bitter pit made it challenging to cultivate, particularly in warmer regions such as Washington State, a major hub for apple production. Despite these challenges, growers planted Honeycrisp trees extensively to meet high demand, storing the apples for prolonged periods to ensure year-round availability. This mass production and extended storage compromised the apple’s quality, leading to an oversupply and reduced consumer satisfaction. Consequently, the Honeycrisp has become a commoditized apple, losing the exceptional qualities that once distinguished it.
It’s not just apples, dear. Mass market capitalism does this to *everything*. Everything just becomes so bland. When I moved from my native Canada to a poor backwater Eastern European country (not in the EU) I suddenly noticed how different the experience is with everything, from your local coffee shop to the tech coworking spaces. The experience was just so much more personal, rich, and boutique, and lovely. Now I can’t stand Starbucks and WeWork, and most Western consumer brands anymore. Sure, being in a poor country you also get a lot of rotten apples as well, but the variety is just so invigorating.
I did not say they were nice. That’s my entire point. These are examples of the most popular Western brands though. Same goes for any popular Western brand of anything. I even prefer Ukrainian local toothpaste to Colgate. Tastes better
Where can I find Red Delicious varieties from back when they were considered good? I remembered them being fine/decent/whatever when I was a kid, and recently just out of curiosity bought some Red Delicious from a local grocery store and was surprised to find they were completely inedible and totally disgusting. Like not just less sweet or less tangy, but super gross and almost like eating mushy plastic-wax wrapped in leather, and nothing like what I remembered. It sounds like they actually have been bred to be different now, so are there places that still have the older variety?
Pretty sure they were always mealy and disgusting. I never liked apples growing up because the only two options were basically Red Delicious and Granny Smith. Maybe some Braeburn, Fuji, and Galas now and then, none of which are particularly good either. Honeycrisps really saved the fruit!
Which vegetables taste noticeabley worse? Whenever I travel abroad I try to eat as much fruit as possible because of how terrible nearly all of it is in the US. Melons and mangoes are basically a totally different fruit. My cousin from Kenya refuses to even try his favorite fruit in the US. But vegetables, especially after cooking, seem ok. Only thing I can think of are maybe out of season fresh tomatoes.
Now do chicken. Here in the USA chickens are getting bigger (I saw a 6.5 pound chicken in the store the other day) and blander. The tissue to me seems very spongy. What is going on with chickens?
Recently I've resolved to buy only Silkie chicken*
from stores. They are moderately sized and still taste good. They are easy to tell due to their black skin.
Yeah it's pretty crazy. The ones the supermarket uses for the whole roasted chickens seem to be smaller, so you might ask if they sell them uncooked.
Or check for local farms that sell free-range birds. They will have a more varied diet including insects, grubs, and not just corn or whatever they feed the birds at the big factory farms. They won't be cheap however.
I feel like this has happened to most apples, even most fruit, forcing fruit to become all-year fruit in general has made those fruits worse off in the long term in terms of quality due to the necessity to make them long lasting. I used to personally dislike all apples until I started getting them from farmers markets that only sold them seasonally as opposed to supermarkets or costco, suddenly they started to taste like something and not just water.
A significant number of the "farmers" at farmer's markets arent. Some even buy thier stock from costco and the like. A commercially productive farmer does not have the time to spend a day selling a few apples in the city center. The safer bet is to drive out to roadside stands at the actual farms, then of course then you can only buy the one or two products currently being harvested at that paticular farm. The upside is that, as you are driving rather than walking, you can load up on 50+lbs of corn for friends and family without worry.
In California certified farmers markets are not allowed to re-sell produce.
Not sure if it's enforced. And it's hard to look up non-existing laws in other states. When I don't find something I assume I'm not searching correctly, but in this case there might just not be a law to find.
People rave about bio produce. Ie we keep buying only bio carrots, they are not much more expensive than regular ones. I like the taste.
But when I come home and taste some carrots my parents grow in their garden, oh my god - this is extreme premium in taste world. I understand its a different type, not created for maximal yield as quickly as possible. And so it goes with everything.
If you like various berries you can buy in stores, just don't ever taste wild ones in the forest, it will ruin them for you.
Yup. Incentive to use brand recognition for a lower quality, cheaper to produce in more volume substitution is too strong for a large business to ignore.
>I feel like this has happened to most apples, even most fruit, forcing fruit to become all-year fruit in general has made those fruits worse off in the long term in terms of quality due to the necessity to make them long lasting.
Feel like the same can be said about just all industrial revolution related inventions. The consumer culture caters to the wimp of convenience instead of the whole ecosystem.
I love garden grown tomatoes but am frequently disappointed by the flavorless, watery, mushy ones that show up in my sandwiches and salads when I eat out. Seasonality is a factor, maybe.
Interesting! I specifically remember wondering "why is the skin so tough on this?" before, when trying to take a bite of a sandwich and ending up with a whole slice of tomato pulling out.
It's not just seasonality per se — it's that produce is simply not bred to taste good anymore. It's designed to be hardy enough to ship, growable all year round, free of blemishes, but not to actually taste good.
I'm not an organic/"local" produce snob, but garden tomatoes are tough to beat for flavor. Campari have the best flavor I've found from grocery stores.
The article leaves a key point out. This fruit tree is really temperamental to water correctly. Irrigators love and hate this thing. Some fruit bears overwatering gracefully. But with this tree, it begs for water, but if you overwater it even a little, the fruit fails easily. I've watched some big players (Pytech) dump millions of dollars into closed (fully automated), open (just telemetry and recommendation, human then waters) and hybrid loop irrigation methods to try and get this right. It remains a real pain to get right.
(edit: the cosmic crisp is also difficult to grow Just Right(tm))
I actually live in MN so am spoiled by the easy access to quality varieties. Honeycrisp are so "common" here (grown here) that I definitely avoid WA grown stock that seeps into grocery stores more quickly than ever.
I currently have 4 apple trees on the property but have only lived with apple trees for about the last 4 years now. I can't even imagine getting the conditions for a Honeycrisp tree right given the trees I have seem very temperamental. Last year (summer of '23) was a horrible year for our trees due to the summer long drought. Some of my trees are in irrigation zones so they did get decent water, but still failed to yield much.
This year was bonkers. I clocked 34" of rain in my backyard and all 4 trees had the highest yield so far. While these varieties aren't as delicious as a freshly picked, ripe Honeycrisp, they're still 1000x better than any mealy, soft apple from the store that was picked 6+ months ago. The other thing with Honeycrisp is that all of the local orchards have netting protecting all the Honeycrisp because, since the skin is so thin, they're highly susceptible to hail damage. They just seem like too much work given I can buy them grown here.
Curious how long it will be before the automation is perfected? Is this a normal cycle with a new breed of apple?
Practitioners have amazing yields with tiny 5' tall fruit trees. I've seen some people do things that seem crazy like 4 different trees in one planting hole and it works fine.
https://www.davewilson.com/home-garden/backyard-orchard-cult...
While I agree they aren’t always the most tasty, they are almost always (like 98%) crisp and never mealy to the point I want to stop eating it, unlike nearly every other breed I’ve tried (which admittedly is only about 7-8 or the most common ones).
I will take a less flavorful crisp apple 100% of the time over a mealy apple.
So even a mediocre Honeycrisp is, to me, still way better than nearly all the other ones.
[1] https://applerankings.com/
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33639206
I’m fully aligned I eat apples for the texture above all else, with flavor being important but nothing close to how much crunch eat bite has.
https://applerankings.com/ludacrisp-apple-review/
Only real downside is that the appearance isn't very flashy; they're the russet potato of modern apples.
They've got high fibre content whilst being lower in sugar than other varieties and are good for gut bacteria.
However, the best apple to eat is one that you like as it's better to eat any type of apple than none.
https://wellintruth.com/the-healthiest-apple-variety-the-com...
Sweetango is also consistently flavorful and crispy and normally better than Cosmic, but the availability is what's inconsistent.
(And a Fuji apple I had in Japan was as good as the best Honeycrisps)
You may enjoy the Fuyu Persimmon also. Eaten with firm skin is definitely crunchy. The flavor is moderately sweet.
Also some fuyu can still be astringent when very firm / underripe.
Persimmons are three (four?) totally different fruits in one.
https://applerankings.com/sweetango-apple-review/
SweeTango's #1 fault, which the site calls out, is that they do not store well. The recent bags I've taken home are notably less crisp and hardy than earlier in the fall.
That said, they'll still be absolutely delicious for another few weeks, highly recommend buying a bag. Trader Joe's usually carries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SweeTango
Even if I just got duds, they fail the consistency test that honeycrisps pass.
A childhood friend's dad is one of the people who developed the Honeycrisp and SweeTango (and Rave/First Kiss, Zestar, etc). We always had access to the latest and zaniest variants, but the Honeycrisp was just consistently very good. Yeah, sometimes you'd find an incredible fruit punch thing, but the next day you'd try another and it was gross and mealy. Honeycrisp was always reliable.
SweeTango is also excellent and reliable but it's harder to find and more expensive.
At the same time, it is worth noting that not everybody likes crisp apples, so the ranking in that website is... daringly interpretive.
For what it's worth, the only apples I buy, when they're local and in season, are McIntosh, which this site helpfully puts in the "pure shit" bin. That's just, well, wrong? Apples can be good without being bred for flavorless crispness like so many are today. And there's a difference between "soft" and "mealy", and good McIntosh apples are firmly (ha) on the soft side.
I like pink lady apples too, which this site rates "excellent", and honeycrisp are consistently acceptable - the Starbucks of apples - so it's not that they're making things up, but I think they are only rating apples along one axis and seem to have a thing for recent cultivars over classics and heirloom varieties.
"SugarBee® apples emit a sweet aroma and have high sugar content, generally reaching 14.6 Brix, compared to their parent variety honeycrisp, that reaches 13.8 Brix. "
https://specialtyproduce.com/produce/SugarBee_Apples_18673.p...
> Brian Frange is a comedian and writer who has been yelling about apples for years. He started yelling about apples professionally in 2016 while working on Comedy Central’s Not Safe with Nikki Glaser while serving as co-host on the Not Safe Podcast. [...] What started as a bit revolving around his love of apples has now become a full-time job where Brian makes $700,000,000,000 per week providing apple advice for wealthy fruit enthusiasts. Brian is not in the pocket of big apple and all reviews are inarguably accurate and not corrupted by corporate influence.
https://applerankings.com/about/
It's all in good fun. Obviously if you prefer Red Delicious you're free to [strikethrough]have terrible taste[/strikethrough] disagree.
I made the mistake of purchasing that variety once, and learned from that experience. Fuji apples, on the other hand, do not deserve a score of 56 FFS.
I'm told that the original Red Delicious are in fact very good. So good that we made them our Platonic ideal of "apple". And then... we targeted the wrong metric.
The slight sweet-bitterness to a real fresh red delicious apple is completely unmatched by any other apple variety I've ever had. It tastes like apple. It is satisfying and juicy and doesn't overwhelm your stomach with sourness or sweetness.
I think people just don't realize how fast Red Delicious apples go mediocre and have rarely tasted the real thing.
I wouldn't put much trust in it, at least if you are in Europe.
I like First Kiss (Rave) apples in August and early September, SweeTango in September and October, and Honeycrisp at any other time. SweeTango is my favorite, you can still get them as flavorful tennis/baseball size apples in MN vs the monstrous grapefruit sized flavorless Honeycrisp apples that seem to be everywhere these days.
There are still fantastic Honeycrisp apples available with lots of flavor, just ignore the gigantic ones.
Anyway, I'm mostly just salty that he panned the cosmic crisp. They're good this year!
That’s when I realized that they were very rarely mealy, something I’d been in search of for years.
But agree that the site is mostly intended to be a more humorous take on apples. (And, to be fair, it is quite funny.)
I really like granny smith apples for the sour flavor profile, but most review websites rate it poorly.
Pink lady's texture is not great and I find it too sweet.
You could also go down the cider apple route or even crabapples if you really want, though they often tend to be more bitter than tart.
If you're in the Midwest (especially MN, WI, Iowa, etc) you can get Haralson, which are kinda like Granny Smith but more just straight sour.
Haralson is probably my favorite. But disclaimer, I also like eating straight lemons, so ... yea. Many people will use Haralson only for baking.
I hear that in Europe they have a few types that are more sour, idk.
And a lot of cider apples
When I grew up, we had several crabapple trees in the yard. They very frequently bore fruit. My mom always told me these were toxic to eat, so I stayed away from them. Honeysuckle and blackberries, on the other hand...
I just googled it. It's a common myth, I suppose?
https://www.alamy.com/home-made-crab-apple-jelly-malus-evere...
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/40275/mary-wynnes-crabappl...
https://thequietfoodie.com/my-first-ever-crab-apple-jelly-re...
As raw fruit they are perfectly edible when mature. The flavor is a mild apple flavor, a little bland an can be sour also. As in all apples, the seeds have cyanide, but as long as you don't eat them or filter the seeds after cooking it, it will not be a problem. Just don't eat it whole.
The immature fruits are hard as a steel ball, so there is a risk of suffocation with children, but apart if this, if you discard the seeds they are perfectly edible. I ate them many times, even if I prefer to let most in the tree for the birds.
"Wild" apples are Malus sylvestris or just feral domestic apples Malus domestica.
Crabapples comprise the rest (>30 different species) of apples and its hybrids. Malus florida from Japan is famous for its glorious blossom for example. Malus sieboldi from China or Malus bacatta from Siberia are also crabapples. Some are true to seed, but other aren't and there are many cultivars selected by blossom or fruit display.
There are some crabapples cultured specifically for culinary purposes, like Golden Hornet that bear heavy amounts of small yellow fruits. Very good for compote and jelly.
And I’ve never heard of the Cosmic Crisp, which is showing up in a lot of comments. Again, maybe regional?
The best apple variety is generally the new one. The market is strewn with the discarded remains of formerly good apples like Fuji and Gala.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutsu_(apple)
I can imagine growers don’t like them as much though, despite the lack of patents and trademarks. In Europe they were abundant and amazing quality last year, lasting into February. This harvest their flavour wasn’t there, many were mealy, and they were unavailable within a month. Their worst year as far as I can remember.
Rubinette is a medium sized yellow apple, streaked in reddish brown. Not particularly eye-catching and also prone to fungal diseases. But Rubinette has a secret, is a seedling of Cox x Golden delicious, and its flavor is fantastic.
Modern apples with not so sophisticated flavor but better resistance can be much more satisfactory.
[1] https://www.scottfarmvermont.com/westfield-seeknofurther
It's not as good as a Bramley. Does anyone in the US grow those commercially? Why not?
And yes really the interesting thing is they're different and new. Tho I do really like cosmics. Especially if you dry them in a food dehydrator and then powder them into whipped cream.
Same deal with cherries.
I try to enjoy asparagus when it is in season, new potatoes when they are in season, etc. Just because some crops are bred for months and months of storage doesn’t mean they actually taste great.
Cold storage, jets, and long-haul trucking are particularly bad for some types of produce, not so bad for others.
Anyway, I’m not fighting the modern world, I like having tomatoes in January. But this article and discussion is about how you can have good apples, or you can have year-round apples at scale, but you can’t have both. And a lot of that comes down to the supermarket training consumers to expect the same produce every week.
Edit: All the honeycrisp in my area right now are oversized. I’m guessing because of a supplier change due to the season change?
And if you have a bit of land, start some trees! They are a wonderful gift for future generations. Plant a bunch and leave them alone, let the survivors flourish. Worst case they die and you have some good firewood for a bbq.
Apples are interesting and this is a great example of the unexpected challenges you can face growing them. Every honeycrisp tree is a perfect clone of the very first one, but the environment of each is not a perfect clone of their original environment. And the interplay of genetics and growing conditions can have very unpredictable results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Crisp
I think there is a newer cultivar that should be superseding the Cosmic Crisp here soon.
Edit - the Kudos Apple. https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/talking-apples-u-m-0
Maybe it was a similar issue - off-season and stored too long, but I haven't seen any around here in years (midwest).
I encourage everyone to check out https://applerankings.com, I would describe it as Pitchfork for apple breeds.
Here’s their review of the Cosmic Crisp: https://applerankings.com/cosmic-crisp-apple-review/
Their top ranked apple is the SweeTango, and I agree with their assessment: https://applerankings.com/sweetango-apple-review/
Full ranking list: https://applerankings.com/pick-an-apple/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Crisp
So it may not be as good at peak (or it might, here in WA the peak of the Cosmic Crisp can be pretty high indeed) but it should stay strong over the years.
Crisp and sweet.
I went through a big Honeycrisp phase and really enjoy them, but I have thin enamel on my teeth and frequent eating of uncooked Honeycrisp leads me to a lot of tooth pain, they're just a little too tart. They are my go-to baking apple though.
the magic of honeycrisp is that they're always about the same
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/08/24/wa-64-apple-naming-ws...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Crisp
https://treefruit.wsu.edu/web-article/apple-breeding-program...
They also have the amazing attribute of browning very slowly - you can cut one and leave it out all day it will hardly change color.
So it's enterprise-ready. But is it webscale?
I never did like honeycrisp all that much, though. It’s a little too sweet and something about the flavor is just a little bit wrong. It’s hard to describe but it’s like they tried a little too hard to make the ideal apple. It’s alright and I’d be happy to eat one but I don’t buy them.
As others have pointed out, this article doesn't actually explain why (or even if) Honeycrisp has gotten worse. One thing I will add to this discussion, though I don't know if it is true in the case of Honeycrisp, is that it is definitely not a matter of breeding (nor selective breeding, breeding for storage, etc): in order to produce more apple trees, Honeycrisps (or any other variety) aren't bred, they are asexually propagated through grafting. That means all Honeycrisp trees are more-or-less genetically identical.
That said, just like any organism, as trees grow and produce new cells at the tips of branches, there is always a chance for a mutation. Sometimes these branch mutations (called "sports") have visible genetic differences: stronger coloration, earlier ripening, or perhaps earlier storage (though this is harder to notice). This is how Red Delicious went from a wonderful apple to tasteless, mealy cardboard: sports were selected over time that prioritized storage and color over texture and flavor.
As an apple grower, I have had the opportunity to taste Honeycrisps straight off the tree, and to me, they taste just as flavorless as the ones I get from the store. I grow almost all heirloom varieties, and I can tell you there is one that for me is head-and-shoulders above the rest: Wickson Crab. If you are in California, I recommend marking your calendar for September to search this variety out at the farmers markets (or better, plant a tree yourself!). There are many other wonderful varieties that stand out from grocery store apples. In a pinch, I'll get a Pink Lady from the store, as I find it's the most flavorful of the commonly available apples, but I find they sit heavy in my stomach in a way that homegrown or farmer's market apples don't. I believe this is to do with the fact that apples available at the grocery store are picked early, before the starches have converted into sugars, so the higher starch content may be harder to digest.
Hint: any apple with an "apple green" undercoat is underripe; to pick a ripe apple, wait for that bright green to mellow out or change colors. For redder apples, it can be harder to see, but most apples have some green visible under the red (Pink Lady is again a great example of this). And yes, Granny Smith apples are so sour precisely because they are picked and sold underripe; a ripe Granny Smith is yellow and sweet.
I’m not an apple expert, but I’m pretty sure that a lot of “supermarket varieties” like Pink Lady have higher cellulose which helps them withstand relatively rough handling. (For those who don’t know: Apples are extremely easy to bruise, you should handle them carefully and never ever press on them to test for ripeness!)
Please tell me that people don't actually do this. If you have seen it, let me know and I'll reach out to some of the major grocers to maybe add some signage in their produce section about evaluating apple ripeness.
I will, maybe, spin the apple in my hand lightly to determine if there's some notable damage, but I'd never press into the flesh and dent it on purpose. Maybe that's what you're seen people do?
Then again, in our zero consequences society, I wouldn't be surprised if people took the IDGAF attitude about damaging produce they don't intend on purchasing.
But for the average consumer, maybe a strong tasting apple is a put off. I personally choose and eat Honeycrisp consistently every time and I'm completely 100% satisfied with every apple I've had of it. There have been some better than others, of course, but still satisfied with the quality, taste and crispness regardless.
I have no doubt that maybe Honeycrisp just has such a mass appeal that apple experts might not actually prefer its taste. Maybe I'm just a "boring" white bread kind of apple consumer. I'm fine with this, honestly, because Honeycrisps make me happy. And when they are on sale for $1 / pound, they make me even happier.
It's possibly like wine this way too, where the very best wines are those that only the experts can really taste and appreciate. For me, the differences between varieties of wine is completely lost.
+1 to Wickson Crab. It's my favorite apple as well. I grew them in California, but my tree here in Vermont isn't bearing yet, so I'm not sure they'll be the same.
Dmitri, where are you growing them? And who is selling them at Farmer's Markets in California? I worked a lot of markets in the Bay Area, and I don't remember ever seeing them for sale (although that was 10 years ago).
Is no mystery at all what is happening here.
One of the things that I loved from plant physiology is how futuristic it is. Bordering black magic sometimes. For example. Do you knew that potions of eternal youth exist... for apples?.
You just need to apply some commercial product and this apple will kept brilliant skin, no wrinkles, and bright color for weeks. Fantastic, right? The sellers and the supermarkets will love that.
The only problem is that it cost sugar to keep it alive in this state of white-snow suspended animation. As long as there is sugar remaining it works. After a while you have a good-looking apple with a disappointing bland watery taste.
This is half of the explanation that the writer was looking for. The other half is a camera storage time too extended.
In that case I would suspect of application of Gibberellins to make the fruit bigger and alter the maturation time.
A year without enough sun, incorrect watering or lack of boron can also affect the flavor or the firmness of the meat.
Garlic is another item ruined by long storage. Christopher Ranch is reportedly storing garlic for 2+ years in refrigeration. That's why it doesn't taste like garlic anymore.
This is compounded by the subtle effect of the trees being adapted for Minnesota, whereas Washington’s climate is much warmer.
I worry a bit the same thing is happening with honeycrisp. In addition to the the out-of-season sales (some of the dates people are talking about with honeycrisp are ridiculous), there's genetic drift. The University of Minnesota has always been worried about this happening, speaking to staff with their apple program. The problem is clones get propagated from clones of clones, some of which are fraudulently hybrids with other varieties, and eventually you end up with something that's not really the same anymore. Big growers choose ancestors that produce fruit with the characteristics that benefit them, and by that point buyers don't remember the original anymore.
The problem, as people are pointing out, is largely what large-scale agriculture does to plant varieties in terms of breeding, as well as the problems with freshness. What the growers and distributors want from fruit is not what you want as a consumer. There's probably some important lessons there for capitalism or markets in general.
Edit: found the patent https://patents.google.com/patent/USPP22228
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/08/snapdragon-and-ruby...
For new designer varieties getting commercial access to the grafts usually requires signing contract that you won’t create and sell your own grafts so the creator can control who gets it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proplifting
(I like sweetango too but it's hard to find)
It's really hard to unpack which of our vendors are truly local; and which just buy produce from wholesalers, slap a "Name's Family Farm" sign on the table, and pretend to be locally grown.
You'd be a lot better off going to the actual orchard, but those are often 1+ hours away.
I'm in Seattle. You would think I could reliably find good apples here.
I can not. Even at farmer's markets, it's obvious some of the offerings have been stored... which makes me question the stuff that isn't obvious. At least it's better than the supermarkets, which have been selling New Zealand apples... in Washington... in September... yeah no thanks!
https://applerankings.com/
Have you ever looked at the sticker brand on your apples? If not, pay attention next time. Rainier has the best Honeycrisps. They're phenomenal. All others pale in comparison.
This realization made my wife and I pay more attention across all of our produce. We'll choose to buy produce based on the brand that's currently in stock. It feels absurdly picky, but I find it refreshing to at least know why a batch of brussel sprouts, apples, oranges, etc. tasted more bitter or less flavorful than normal.
It makes sense when you think about it. People care where their coffee beans come from, with flavor preferences of one region versus another. Why shouldn't we have flavor preferences based on who grows our produce?
My new go to is the Magic Star variety, which has been sold as "Sprank" for the last 3 years at least in the Netherlands. These apples keep amazingly well; they ran out of stock around the summer in the last two years, but I found them delicious year round. I hope that this cultivar does not befall the same fate as the Honeycrisp, which I had the pleasure of tasting 5 years ago.
Apparently we like larger apples in the US while smaller apples are preferred in China.
My favorite is the kanzi, but it’s not really available year round. Most apples peak in November anyway
Here, the common apples you can see in supermarkets are Golden Delicious (called just Golden here), Royal Gala, Pink Lady, Fuji, Pippin, Granny Smith, Red "Delicious", Kanzi, maybe a few more than I'm forgetting, but no Honeycrisp or Cosmic Crisp as far as I know.
If Honeycrisp are supposed to grow properly only in climates like Minnesota's, then it doesn't seem likely that they will ever actually be grown in Britain (or Spain for that matter).
The issue is the supermarkets only carry a few types.
It would seem a shame to import a commercial variant from the US.
There do seem to be online shops that'll sell you a tree from many different strains though.
As with many things, the supermarket optimises for storage, shipping, uniformity etc, and in the end we all miss out on variety. It's even worse for that here in Australia - there are precisely three types of potato - red, white and purple skinned, and they're all much the same and pretty bland. There's a fourth 'gourmet' type (kipfler) allowed at really fancy stores.
Seriously, I hope you get honey/cosmic crisps -- they converted me to buying apples regularly.
The best in my opinion is Fuji followed closely by Gala.
I used to love Galas but ultimately realized about 50% of the time they were mealy.
Since swapping to Honeycrisp, I’ve yet to have a mealy one. Maybe occasionally (about 1 out of 20-30) there’s one that has a hint of mealiness, but far from what half of the Galas were.
I do agree that not all of them are super sweet/flavorful, but still most of them are, and I’d take a less sweet but still crisp apple any day over a sweet but mealy one.
I never tried Fuji much, but don’t remember them being anything special. This site [1] (shared at least once on HN) has Fuji even below Gala.
[1] https://applerankings.com/
I’m firmly in your camp, I don’t care for mealy apples - I hear those people exist but don’t think I know any.
Also laughing because I perform the same apple analysis - this new variety looks good and admittedly the names are pretty effective marketing (honeycrisp, cosmic, etc…), but they tend to be comparatively expensive and after being let down some many times I just grab the Fuji
> There is a claim ... that “dividing by 0 is not allowed in mathematics, and hence this cannot be relevant to their work”, but in fact a mathematician is permitted to deduce b ≠ 0 from c = a/b, since a/b is undefined for b = 0. Redefining the notation to allow b = 0 breaks this. Unless it occurs to the author to state a conclusion c = a/b and a conclusion b ≠ 0, the proof assistant won’t check that b ≠ 0, whereas the reader will think that this has been checked.
https://cr.yp.to/papers/pwccp-20240727.pdf
Maybe he'll see this and can chime in.
It was a really long article about the history of the apple and difficult growing it, but I didn't see the title answered anywhere. It ended taking about surplus and storage requirements.
I got a tiny lot and started growing some berries, fruits and veggies. There's a masive selection for pretty much any given species. Do you want eat-off-the-plant or make a jam? Do you prefer more or less sugary taste? How much are you willing to maintain and defend them? If you're looking for analysis paralysis, gardening is the way to go.
Personally I’m after historical apples. I’ve two local classics. One breed is from 19th century, the other is probably older, but I don’t buy claims it’s coming from medieval era. Taste is nice and they survive pretty well with very little upkeep with no modern chemistry.
I also just planted few less-known modern colon style breeds. Fingers crossed few years later it will pay off.
The actionable information is in the beginning: honey crisp apples are not worth it anymore buy whatever instead. For me this keeps it from being insufferable. The stuff in the middle demonstrates what the conditions were like before it went mass market, which supports the conclusion that something changed and that it was likely related to the logistics of growing and distributing the apple.
If you don't like reading these articles, you could try using an LLM to extract a summary before choosing to dive in. I'm sure there are browser extensions for that.
Anecdotally, I had some pretty delicious honeycrisps last night (in WA).
As an example, during the peak of peach season in the region, a South Carolina Sam’s Club had pallets of California peaches!
They spoil fast and don’t transport well because the skin is extremely thin, but those same qualities make them excellent apples to eat.
Some ratings have them ranked a little lower because they aren’t very sweet but that’s what I love about them. They taste like apple. Not sugar. And the crisp/soft balance is awesome.
Edit: I read the apple rankings site which rates them very poorly. But if you actually read the review the complaint is about shelf life.
Read the comments where people have actually tasted it fresh and most of the commenters consider it the best apple they’ve tasted. But you gotta eat it freshly picked and/or as soon as you get it.
The local place I go to is straight from the grower and they have a 24/7 cold storage facility of apple bins operated by the honour system. All apples are $1 a pound.
Part of the issue here is that wineries have been historically more profitable than orchards so there are many fewer places to buy local fruit. In the past two years however, there has been cold snaps which have killed 50% and 90% of grape vines subsequently so people are starting to question the stability of wineries.
"This is because seedling apples are 'extreme heterozygotes'. Rather than resembling their parents, seedlings are all different from each other and from their parents." [1]
"To propagate a cultivar [variety], material from the original tree (scion) is joined to a rootstock. The rootstock provides the roots for the new plant and the scion forms the top part of the new plant, which produces the fruit. The rootstock comes from another cultivar selected specifically for its ability to grow well in the soil and induce desirable growth habits of the scion (such as dwarfing)."
"The scion is introduced to the rootstock by either grafting or budding. In grafting, a length of dormant wood from the original tree is notched into the rootstock. In budding, small buds are notched into the rootstock. Budding produces more trees from the same amount of wood than grafting." [2]
So when you read "cultivation", it's not like breeding green beans or corn, where you can crossbreed plants and come up with a new type that will "breed true" and then you can make a bunch of seeds to distribute. Cultivation is basically growing a bunch of trees, finding the right combo, then creating a bunch of them
So commercial growers with orchards will buy trees from breeders who create that type of tree by managing the grafting/budding process.
Apparently, though we don't know when breeding started, it's been going on for thousands of years.
Also, Johnny Appleseed wasn't doing anyone favors by spreading apple seeds everywhere because the trees would produce mostly inedible apples.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple#Breeding
2. https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/844-breeding-a-new...
Red Delicious has to be the nastiest apple cultivar in existence. Why in the world are they growing that many? Replace them with something decent like Pink Lady.
But in the last 2 years, I didn't notice it, but I have been pretty dissatisfied with them but I never really thought about it until this article. It sheds light as to exactly why I don't like it anymore, and that's pretty sad that the industry is getting into that state.
Envy apples are my favorite. They tend to be more expensive than Fuji, but are about the same price now.
Shizukas can be grown here, which I strongly recommend. But honestly most varieties you can get direct from a farm are edible (except Red Delicious, which for some reason continues to be grown even in independent farms even though it's universally acknowledged to be trash).
Obviously way too many variables, but anecdotally, I haven’t been that impressed with organic apples.
Kroger's simple truth, sunkist's line of organic citruses they sell in "whole foods", etc.
the label means nothing, and when you see it in a big name grocery store it's probably a bad thing
Interview question: estimate number of pickers and number of trees.
There's the Cedar-apple rust issue, bug issues, and raccoon issues.
I planted figs.
At first, they only had 2 rows of Honeycrisp apples. Maybe 2% of the trees there...
Now more rows are 'Honeycrisp' than not. As far as I know, they didn't replace all those previously 'not Honeycrisp' trees, though.
And they taste like paint. Ugh.
I suspect the popularity of honeycrisp will eventually lead it to the same fate as Red Delicious, but only time will tell.
Just make sauce out of the mealy ones.
I’ve got an apple tree that I’ve grafted 20 varieties onto. But honeycrisp isn’t one of them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Crisp
Side note: Those new jumbo blueberries are insane.
Some tomatoes are grown in hothouses now and are ok. My son gobbles them up and in the winter lots of them are from Western NY and Ontario.
Onions are definitely pushed to have higher sugar content now. Also greens that I source from local farms seasonally usually have better flavor.
Red Astrachan ftw
(iykyk)
*: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkie
Or check for local farms that sell free-range birds. They will have a more varied diet including insects, grubs, and not just corn or whatever they feed the birds at the big factory farms. They won't be cheap however.
Not sure if it's enforced. And it's hard to look up non-existing laws in other states. When I don't find something I assume I'm not searching correctly, but in this case there might just not be a law to find.
At least not directly.
But when I come home and taste some carrots my parents grow in their garden, oh my god - this is extreme premium in taste world. I understand its a different type, not created for maximal yield as quickly as possible. And so it goes with everything.
If you like various berries you can buy in stores, just don't ever taste wild ones in the forest, it will ruin them for you.
I put brand in quotes because anyone can produce and sell honeycrisp apples. It is not trademarked.
Buying one is like buying a hammer on amazon and assuming it will have the quality of different hammer you used.
Feel like the same can be said about just all industrial revolution related inventions. The consumer culture caters to the wimp of convenience instead of the whole ecosystem.
https://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/news/how-mechanical-to...