Best Crab Apple Varieties to Add Tannins
- Thread starter Raptor99
- Start date
Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:
The favorite here, ,,, up north is Prairie Fire.
It has small 5/8” fruit which is a pain
It will start the season with bitter notes and as the fruit gets less green transitions into a smooth tannin (astringent/ not bitter) and trying to pick after frost transitioned into no flavor.
It is low moisture, I crush them and steep this in apple juice in the fridge, then press that juice out. ~1:1 by weight.
It is concentrated, to get target flavor I use about 1% in a wine.
However !!! the city plants them under power lines so I have a row of twelve to pick.
what I did is taste them, I have checked the arborateum collection ,, about 20% tasted interesting. I also walk the neighborhood and taste or visit the nursery in fall and taste. ,,, The trait is fairly easy to find even in wild apples
Practically speaking I would plant a astringent flavor cider apple and get actual juice, but the crab route let me have something without waiting five years to see traditional fruit. I wouLD not plant spitters, i don’t like bitter flavors.
It has small 5/8” fruit which is a pain
It will start the season with bitter notes and as the fruit gets less green transitions into a smooth tannin (astringent/ not bitter) and trying to pick after frost transitioned into no flavor.
It is low moisture, I crush them and steep this in apple juice in the fridge, then press that juice out. ~1:1 by weight.
It is concentrated, to get target flavor I use about 1% in a wine.
However !!! the city plants them under power lines so I have a row of twelve to pick.
what I did is taste them, I have checked the arborateum collection ,, about 20% tasted interesting. I also walk the neighborhood and taste or visit the nursery in fall and taste. ,,, The trait is fairly easy to find even in wild apples
Practically speaking I would plant a astringent flavor cider apple and get actual juice, but the crab route let me have something without waiting five years to see traditional fruit. I wouLD not plant spitters, i don’t like bitter flavors.
Last edited:
another thought, this year I planted five Geneva dwarfing rootstocks. One could pick a rootstock that fits their yard and then graft several interesting varieties on it. Practically speaking an apple is a five plus year project. By starting the process now you get a year ahead in when fruiting starts.
Similar to prairie fire, I’ve used plumleaf crabapple. Shake the hell out of the tree over a tarp and harvest that way (from any one of your random neighbors that planted one of these trees for the blossoms). I used a steam juicer to extract the juice since they are so dense and low juice but the juice is spectacular. Almost like a grapefruit flavor. I added it to pure apple and some of my apple/grape blends. It was a fan favorite. I’ve never used it strictly for added tannins in wine but it’s worth a shot.
I think next year I’m going to try carbonic maceration on these little guys to see what flavors I get since I find them basically impossible to crush and juice.
I think next year I’m going to try carbonic maceration on these little guys to see what flavors I get since I find them basically impossible to crush and juice.
What dosage level?
Yes neighbors have interesting flavor fruit too, and one of the ten crabs planted at church. ,,,
Just remember soft tannin is astringent, hard tannins are bitter. ,,, One could modify the hard tannin with a yeast that has metabolism that glycolates the polyphenols. Apple is neat stuff.
For my Cider, it was at about 5% total volume, so not very much to add quite a bit of depth. For my grape/apple blend it was even lower at about 1%. Steam juicing makes a really concentrated juice.
