"Scott" > wrote in message
...
> Just that. Thought I'd go out to an orchard and pick up some apples for
> jelly... or maybe something more "interesting." Any have any favorite
> combinations of apple varieties for jelly?
>

I just put up 50 pounds of apples into applesauce over the last 3 weeks or
so, working away at it periodically in the evening.

I started out with just using Gala apples but the flavor of the resulting
sauce is rather disappointing.

What I ended up with is mixing 50% Gala and 50% Granny Smith.
With adjustments to the amount of water, sugar, and cinnamon I
got what I feel is a basic passable applesauce, but a somewhat
disappointing flavor for all the work put into it. The best flavor
I feel is where the sweet and tart are balanced. If you use sweet
apples you end up with the sweetness overriding the appley
flavor, if you use tart apples you can add sugar to the sauce once
it's ground up in the food mill to get the balance, but once more,
you lose a lot of the appley flavor.

The Grannies burn at the drop of a hat, they fall apart into mush
very readily, the Galas do not.

I'm going to try 20 pounds of Breyburns next and see how
they work out. The Breyburns themselves are rather balanced
so they are probably a good "Beginners" choice for applesauce
or apple butter, since you don't have to do much seasoning.

If I could find a real sour green crabapple I'd use that, I
vividly remember lots of those apples growing in trees all over
the place back East where I grew up, but unfortunately they
don't seem to be popular out West. And the commercial Apple
growers do not seem to want to grow the very sour varieties
except for a handful like Granny Smiths, they mainly seem to
grow the sweet varieties.

If you can get crab apples, do it. I doubt a commercial orchard
would have them. The best you can probably do at a commercial
orchard is Granny Smith, Red or Golden Delicious, and Breyburns.
Get all 3 and do a batch that's 75% Breyburn and 10% Granny and
15% Red Delicious, and see how you like the flavor. If you want it more
sour, then do Breyburn and Granny, if you want it more sweet
then to Breyburn and one of the Deliciouses. Try to keep the
sugar to a minimum, if you want it sweeter then change the
apple ratio.

Ted

> Might also do apple butter while I'm at it; haven't used the crock pot
> in a while.
>
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