JELLYBEAN CIDER

SKILLCULT APPLE BREEDING PROJECT

THIS PAGE IS FOR INFORMATION AND NOTES ON MY SEEDLING APPLE JELLYBEAN CIDER.

Jellybean cider is a dwarf seedling of Maypole Crab x Chestnut Crab, with an amazing fruit candy flavor and great potential for making apple juice and cider.

I’ve grown out quite a few seedlings from an apple called Maypole, a red fleshed columnar variety. Columnar apples are a type of dwarf that have few side branches and take up a very small footprint. About half of the seedlings turn out to have the dwarf trait. Unfortunately, most are very crabby and not a lot of fun to eat, much like Maypole. But little Jellybean here turned out pretty good.

Jellybean Cider is something between a columnar dwarf and a regular dwarf. It sends out quite a few side shoots, but they do grow up and don’t in turn branch a lot. I would guess that if you let it grow without pruning, it would top out below 10 or 12 feet and take up maximum 4 feet in diameter of space. I’m just guessing though based on maypole’s growth. It is hard to say for sure what size it will be if left to grow, but cetainly not very tall or wide, and it will be very easy to size control with pruning regardless. I think the best scenario for this tree is to grow it on its own roots by rooting the shoots to make new trees. They could also be produced on their own shoots using an old technique called root grafting where a small piece of root is grafted to the base of the shoot and the shoot is partly buried to encourage rooting. Rooting them might be easier than average, because it has a fair amount of burr knot (clusters of dormant root tissue on the stem). Most apple varieties do not root readily.

The fruits are quite small, smaller than a golf ball for sure, and extremely flavorful. The texture is not horrible, but not good either and the main use for this apple will be juice and cider. The first year I bit into this one I was blown away by the strong fruit candy flavor. This year, I juiced a few and the juice retained a lot of that delicious fruity taste. I then hot packed some juice (pasturized and poured into a sanitized jar). I left it sitting for a week or so, opened it and the flavor had not noticeably diminished! I fed the apple and the cooked juice to a my friend Jasmine to get a second opinion. I didn’t tell her anything about it. The first thing she said after biting it was “It tastes like candy.” She was also very enthusiastic about the juice. The juice is just extremely well balanced and refreshing in general, regardless of the flavor. Not all apples make good juice, this seemed to make excellent juice, with unique flavor on top. I also juiced some Hard Candy Cider this year. It is one of my seedlings with similar flavor. It was also delicious and tastes very similar, but I think Jellybean has it beat out slightly for flavor intensity.

In spite of having one red fleshed parent, the apple has no red flesh. You can bet I will be breeding it with red fleshed apples though. Although the texture is not great, the flavor is so amazing that I’m sure people will eat them. Texture may also improve or be better in another climate.

This apple, or this style of apple, seems to have great potential for making uniquely and strongly flavored apple juice and cider. I can envision an industry around these types of apples, where we can breed flavors strong enough that there could be “flavored” apple juices made by just using the diverse natural flavors of apples and even stronger than this one. In the case of Jellybean Cider, it is also a dwarf, so picking and maintenance could be very easy. I can see closely spaced plants in closely spaced rows producing gobs of juice apples, very easy to harvest and requiring little pruning or maintenance. If I had the resources, I would like to test this proposal and see if I could produce them on their own roots efficiently and test spacing, and yield. I’m telling you, this product would slay the traditional monoflavored apple juices widely available and this is just the beginning. I also have an idea for how to manage these trees on their own roots for long life and to keep them fresh and productive, but that will have to wait for another time.

Another really great potential use is in growing small apples for fresh juicing. Why bother to cut up a big flavorless apple and juice it, when you could have a box of small, super delicious apples that you toss in the juicer whole? Again, as more are developed, there could be a range of extremely flavorful fresh juicing apples. Breed an apple like Jellybean Cider, but with red flesh and some punch and berry-like red fleshed flavor, and that is going to be a whole new level to apple juice. Fresh juicing is very popular and will probably continue to grow. I think direct marketing to juice bars could be a very successful model.

I will be using this apple to pursue new cider and juice apples, the high flavor phenomenon in general, and of course more dwarfs and columnars. Jellybean Cider is yet another example of the broad, unrealized potential in the apple gene pool. It is just going to take someone that has vision and is willing to take a small risk to start a small business and see how it goes, then grow from there. If anyone out there is interested in working with me to develop this idea, give me a shout. I’m knee deep in too many projects and don’t have time to be an actual farmer lol. But I think there is a good chance this could turn into an industry that would improve apple juice and provide jobs. I will not be surprised if I and others will add more similar apples within 10 to 20 years.

As far as cider goes, or hard cider as it is sometimes called here in the states, there is also very high potential. Like it or not, many consumers want a consistent, clean, soda like cider. If the very strong flavors in this and similar apples can persist through fermentation, again, you have a remarkable potential for a unique niche in the market. Hey, I’d try it. Leave a little residual sugar and that stuff could go down pretty easy! The wine cooler of cider lol. It will probably result in many vomiting teenagers who haven’t learned their limit yet, but hey, live and learn :)

As with all my apples so far, I’m releasing this one into the public domain. That essentially means that I have no control over propagation or selling of trees, fruit and scionwood. If I did not do that, I would not release anything, because it is too complicated and expensive to pursue anything except trademark names, which I’m not inclined to do. Then where would we be? How that will play out if one of them really takes off is unknown. Hopefully enough people benefiting from one of my varieties will choose to do the right thing and not just exploit them within the limits of the law (or beyond) and at least support my work in some way. What I would like to see is a movement of sorts around small scale and home plant breeding that obtains some power in numbers where pressure can be brought to bear on large interests that are of a mind to be douchebags. Social media and all the communication potential we have make that actually possible. I’ve already been approached by some nursery people offering to grow my stuff and retain a voluntary royalty for me. I think this is great and more along the lines of what I would like to see happen. I would of course like to see these varieties spread. I would also like to see them used in other breeding projects, even large commerical ones if it will result in improved apples for consumers. New industries, jobs, more people breeding and eating better apples are all good ripple effects. It would be nice if enough of those ripples to bounce back to shore so I can keep doing this and other impactful projects.

I hope to see armies of Jellybean Cider or maybe its offspring lined out across fields cranking out that delicious tasty juice. This thing is a flavor factory. I think it will blow some minds. It blew mine and has me pursuing some new breeding goals. I will not be surprised if we can eventually double the flavor level of this apple in future generations.