
The Curse of the Honeycrisp Apple - eaguyhn
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/the-curse-of-the-honeycrisp-apple
======
judah
The article mentions it only in passing, but in 2019 we'll finally see Cosmic
Crisps [0] on the market. These are likely to surpass the Honeycrisp in
texture, sweetness, and tart. And unlike the otherwise excellent Honeycrisp,
Cosmic Crisps are not susceptible to sun burn nor bitter pit (brown pits on
the apple). I'm excited to try them!

[0]: [https://www.cosmiccrisp.com/the-facts/](https://www.cosmiccrisp.com/the-
facts/)

~~~
Alex3917
I got a couple Cosmic Crisp at a farmer's market this year in NYC. Can confirm
they're better than Honeycrisp in every way, albeit they're so sweet and tart
that you might not feel like eating that many per year.

I'd compare it to something like a Rebecca's Gold pawpaw, where it's like
"this is the best thing I've ever eaten" but you wouldn't really want more
than one or two per week during their short season.

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2trill2spill
So this article is about east coast orchards complaining that a plant that was
bred to grow in Minnesota doesn't grow as well on the east coast? Well duh. As
Karina Gallardo, an agricultural economist at Washington State University was
quoted in the article saying “There’s a higher investment and production cost
in places that are not Minnesota,” And yet it seems these orchard still make
money off Honeycrisp so I'm not sure why this article was written in the first
place.

~~~
travisjungroth
> I'm not sure why this article was written in the first place

It's an inside look, not really news. If you abstract it to "some competitors
face challenges meeting changing consumer demands", it's boring. But some
people might find the details of the apple market interesting.

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stcredzero
I have childhood memories of going into the woods around the park to pick
blackberries. The flavors to be found in good blackberries are pretty sublime.
The other day, I bought a container of blackberries. Somehow, they had been
reduced to bloated, flavorless bags of purple sugar water. (I suspect this is
why they were a sale item.)

Altering plants for better taste does have a place.

~~~
WillPostForFood
November is months past blackberry season, so you are probably buying
something picked far away, before it was properly ripened, then chilled and
placed in a shipping container for who knows how long.

~~~
ip26
Buying produce regularly, I've been learning exactly this. It's a mindset
shift- we're trained that anything can be had any time of year. But the
quality difference between in season and out of season is staggering. Except,
perhaps, for apples and bananas.

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iambateman
I just want to say that I spent my childhood eating terrible red delicious
apples and honey crisp apples are a revelation and I don’t care if they cost
$18/pound they’re still worth it.

~~~
chx
The apples I have eaten in my childhood behind the Iron Curtain were so bad I
have not eaten any for decades until my doctor almost forced it and then I
tasted honeycrisp and I was like "OMFG this is good!"

------
mfarris
Here in Los Angeles your typical store has 6-10 varieties of apple, almost all
of them painfully similar.

Braeburn, Jazz, Fuji, Honeycrisp, Gala, Ambrosia, Jonagold, Envy... these are
all the same basic apple: overly sweet, hard/dense, not a lot of taste outside
sugar. Envy apples are the yellow version of the same thing. Pink Ladies are
marginally better.

If anyone knows an LA area market where I can escape the tyranny of
obnoxiously "crisp" sugar bombs in favor of Cortlands, McIntosh, Jonathan, or
anything out of the ordinary... do tell.

If the Granny Smith wasn't available I don't know what I'd do.

~~~
TimesOldRoman
Aw man I love the Fuji and never tried a honeycrisp. Are they really similar?

~~~
diablerouge
I used to work at a grocery store, and actually don't feel the way OP does.
Honeycrisp are fairly different, in my opinion. A fair bit tarter, and they
have an almost fluffy light crisp texture. They even have a different cellular
structure than your average apple, IIRC.

Though I agree that more apple varieties would be good, OP is underplaying the
differences between the widely available apples. Growing conditions have a
great effect in flavor and texture as well.

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irrational
1\. Pink Lady > Honeycrisp (though Honeycrisp is very good).

2\. "The Honeycrisp variety is now so popular, consumers will spend three
times the cost of other apples to experience it." Wow, I'm thankful I live in
Oregon. Our local grocery store has about 10 varieties of apples on sale and
Honeycrisp are usually no more expensive than other varieties.

~~~
2trill2spill
Pink lady better than Honeycrisp? Pink lady's are okay but they are less
sweet, not as crunchy and much more dense then a Honeycrisp. Also Honeycrisp
are not that expensive if you buy them on sale, just got some for $1.85 a
pound in Minneapolis.

~~~
spike021
$1.85 a pound in Minneapolis? Probably cheaper near you because they're grown
closer to you.

I rarely see them for that cheap a cost in the bay area. I think I've seen
them as low as maybe 2.20/lb but that's it.

~~~
harimau777
Just be glad you're not in the Midwest where your options are "red", "yellow",
and "green"! Red delicious are truly a crime against horticulture!

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logfromblammo
> _at a certain point the consumer doesn’t want to buy an apple the size of a
> grapefruit_

Um... yes I do. Is the Honeycrisp itself not sufficient proof that apple
growers have had absolutely no clue about what consumers really wanted, for
decades? In the same vein, where have all the honkin' big seeded watermelons
gone? You remember those, back when they had big black seeds, and _actual
flavor_? Don't blame the consumer for not wanting to buy things they can't
find in the store any more. The truth is that the apple infrastructure cannot
pick and ship fruit that size, so they refuse to try, and then they blame the
consumer for their choices.

It bears repeating that the first Honeycrisp tree was _thrown away_ , without
anyone ever tasting the fruit. Even now, remedying that error has basically
led to just _one guy_ tasting _all the apples_ , to the point where he has to
use special toothpaste to save his teeth from the malic acid, and making the
clone or cut decision based on that one bite.

> _The demand for this one apple exceeds supply—it’s all consumers, and
> therefore supermarkets, want._

This is patently false. I frequently pass up Honeycrisp for other varieties
(Fuji, Gala, Pink Lady), because the latter are $1.29/# and the former is
something insane, like $3.59/# . I like Honeycrisp, but not three times more
than other firm, tart apples. And I don't want Honeycrisp to be my only option
for table fruit.

How often do we have to remind growers that monoculture is stupid? Stop
cloning Honeycrisp everywhere just because it's a sure sale, and try out some
new varieties. If it fails as a table variety, you can always make hard cider,
or applejack, and sell it to Millennial hipsters.

~~~
monetus
Do you have any idea what edible mutualists you could grow with them? I'd bet
there is a fungus meant for the rootbed. Having trouble intuiting much beyond
that though.

I agree with what you're trying to communicate, I think, but my anecdote from
yesterday disagrees with size. I looked at the massive honey crisp on my
counter (around a softball's size), but didn't want to have to cut it in half.

~~~
logfromblammo
I want apples that I can fit three in my mouth at a time, that squish like
grapes. I want apples bigger than my head, that I can pop into the oven whole,
then cut off the top and spoon out the flesh like custard. I want apples that
crunch when I bite them. I want apples that splat when I throw them. I want
apples that taste like cherries. I want apples that taste like pears. I want
apples that taste like different kinds of apple when you bite opposite sides
of the fruit. I want apples that stay the same color when you cut them up. I
want apples that are already fermenting by the time you get them home. I want
apples that shrivel up all winter into little wrinkly apple-raisins, and then
still taste fine in spring.

What I don't want is one apple that's one size fits all. Because the last
variety they tried for that was Red Delicious, and it is the worst named
variety of apple I have ever eaten. The only way to get worse is to try
naturally pollinated grown-from-seed apples, and even then you have to be very
unlucky with your pick.

Apple farmers tend to graft the variety clones onto dwarfing rootstock, to
control for height and branching, so it's likely that any mutual crop would
work just as well for any kind of apple. I seem to recall that someone was
trying to get truffle to grow in apple orchards, but I don't remember seeing
anything about it actually being successful.

~~~
zaroth
_Ode to Apples_

logfromblammo

HN, 11/18

That paragraph would make a nice children’s book with the right illustrator.

The narrator would get older each page until he was eating the rais-apples
with no teeth.

------
colechristensen
Variety and regional specialty are good! This article seems to be complaining
that things grow well in one place and not another place. Breed your own
apples then!

There aren't any apples besides honeycrisp that I __know __I like for eating
out of hand. The market wants better produce all around and most things you
find these days were bred for qualities that are good for the supply chain
instead of the taste and health of the consumer.

If the apples everybody likes don't grow well in your climate, fund research
into finding new varieties that do.

There's no "curse". The best things will not suit everybody's tastes or needs.
In fact it's a pretty good indicator that you're doing something right if some
people really don't like it.

~~~
soperj
>There aren't any apples besides honeycrisp that I know I like for eating out
of hand.

Really? I can think of a few just off the top of my head, ambrosia, gala, pink
lady, spartan, fuji. I'm not really even that into apples.

~~~
bluejekyll
How did you leave Granny Smith off that list?

~~~
gwbas1c
I remember loving Granny Smith back in the 1990s. Now they just don't have the
same flavor. They're pulpy instead of sweet.

~~~
mrob
I suspect it's "improvements" in storage that are to blame. All Granny Smiths
are clones from the same tree, and they were grown successfully in many
different places, so I don't think climate is the problem. Probably it's some
new storage technique that lets them keep longer without rotting, at the
expense of taste/texture. I see problems with bananas too that I think have
the same cause, where they turn directly from green to brown, and I don't
remember that happening ten years ago.

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viggity
Target has 3lb bags of honeycrips at consistently low prices $2ish/lb. It is
because they're smaller apples than what you get in the "pile-o-apples". But
this works great for us because we have small kids and they can't eat a huge
honeycrisp anyway.

If you really like a big honeycrisp but are more price conscious, I think the
Braeburn is a damn close comparison for a much more reasonable price. And
they're available at all the stores around me in Iowa. Just stick with the
ones that still have a fair bit of yellow/green spackle and not too much or
too deep of the red color. Too much red ends up being slightly less crisp with
much less tartness. That is kind of true with honeycrisp but it is really true
with Braeburn.

------
xfactor973
[http://skillcult.com/](http://skillcult.com/) has an amazing set of blog
posts and videos about a whole range of obscure and interesting apple
varieties. He’s talked about apples that taste like fruit punch, bananas,
anise, spice, etc. The range of possible flavors that apples can express is
pretty amazing.

------
lisper
Personally, I'm a big fan of Fujis. And nothing beats a good Red Delicious if
it's fresh. I know that Red Delicious is reputed to be the White Zinfandel of
the apple world, but I like 'em, and I don't care what the apple snobs have to
say about it. (Or the wine snobs either, for that matter.)

~~~
justinmchase
You get a couple mealy dry red delicious and it just makes to scared to keep
trying them.

~~~
lisper
Yeah, I totally agree. That's why I hedged with "if it's fresh."

You can actually tell the quality of a RD by pressing on them with your thumb.
The mealy ones will give. The crispy ones won't.

I suspect even a honeycrisp will get mushy if you let it sit on the shelf long
enough.

------
waldoh
Here in Los Angeles (Specifically Sunland Produce in Sunland) Honeycrisps are
available nearly year around for 99 cents a pound. Not on sale. It's insane,
I've lived all over the place and the price actually shocks me every time i go
in.

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CoolGuySteve
If you're in the Northeast, you should try a Macoun apple. More tart than
Honey crisp, it's a cross between a Macintosh and some more crisp apple.

I never had one until I moved to New York but now it's my favourite variety.

~~~
sam
I just have to second this. Macouns are sublime. They peak in late fall in the
northeast. Their fragrance in the cold New England fall air is the definition
of November to me.

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milleramp
I just came across Smitten apples and they are also crunchy, sweet and tart
like the honeycrisp.
[https://www.smittenapple.com](https://www.smittenapple.com) In California
even these new apples are relatively cheap, i never pay over 1$/lb Those who
complain about red delicious simply do not know how to pick them. I often pass
over them if they are not hard with tight skin. Put them in the fridge and
they can be great. In fact I put all my apples into the fridge, it extends
their shelf life about 2-3x.

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war1025
Pinata apples are my favorite
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinova](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinova))

Honeycrisp have been on sale a lot lately (99 cents a pound a week ago)

Honeycrisp is good, but it just seems sort of hollow and doesn't really leave
you feeling any fuller at the end. It also doesn't seem to have much depth of
flavor. It's just sweet.

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gbustomtv5
“Envy” is my personal favorite.

------
spiritcat
Wow sounds like they're talking about JavaScript frameworks.

A few good years then on to new hotness. Think of all those poor red delicious
trees.

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justinmchase
But damn they're good! We're overflowing with honey crisps and fresh cider
this time of year, its beautiful.

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SuoDuanDao
No love for Cortlands here? Incredible.

I'm one of those who don't understand the appeal of honeycrisp, I guess I
prefer soft-fleshed apples.

~~~
Sgt_Apone
+1 I got a batch of local (Atlantic Canada) Cortlands and it was a revelation.
They're amazing in salads too.

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GatorD42
The Honeycrisp is fine, but I don't love the trend of Apple varieties that
taste like jolly ranchers (super sweet and crisp - see also Pink Lady or
Jazz). Old fashioned apple varieties like Macintosh and even Red Delicious can
be great in season from local farms - I had a Red Delicious today I would take
over any Honeycrisp.

I have friends who only eat Honeycrisp, I feel old when I complain that it's
not a real apple and they should try something else.

~~~
citrus1330
I don't understand how anyone could feel this way. Pink Lady and Honeycrisp
are so much better than Red Delicious they may as well not even be the same
fruit. I'll never eat a Red Delicious again.

~~~
CarVac
It's almost certainly about location. Maybe there's some climate where good-
tasting Red Delicious grows.

I find that Fuji apples in the US are fairly bland, but when I was in Japan I
had one from Aomori Prefecture. It was right up there with the best Honeycrisp
I've ever had. Crisp in the same way, and just as flavorful in a different
way.

------
crazygringo
This is one of the silliest articles I've ever read.

> _" Though it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, along the way it
> became a nightmare for some producers, forcing small Northeastern growers to
> compete with their massive, climatically advantaged counterparts on the West
> Coast."_

> _Prices for Honeycrisps Can Be 2-3x Other Apples_

> _" So why do farmers put up with the hassle? They simply don’t have a
> choice. The demand for this one apple exceeds supply—it’s all consumers, and
> therefore supermarkets, want. So growers are planting with almost reckless
> abandon, pulling out old varieties, like the tired Red Delicious, and
> putting in Honeycrisp trees—even in places where they don’t grow well."_

> _" Meanwhile, everyone is nervously waiting for the day when the supply-
> demand equilibrium brings sticker prices down far enough that growing the
> Honeycrisp no longer makes economic sense. But it’s not likely to happen
> soon, said Eric Rama, head of agricultural research at MetLife Inc. Even
> though production is increasing at a rapid pace, demand for premium apples
> isn’t waning."_

Farmers need to grow the things that people want to buy? And it seems like
this will be the situation for the foreseeable future, so it's low-risk? And
they sell for more?

Really struggling to see how this is a curse... instead of sensational
journalism at its very worst...

~~~
notable_user
It’s a curse if you were a small orchard happily growing another apple
variety. No one wants your apples anymore so you have to rip out all your
trees an plant new one. (Side note: Really you’re grafting new branches.)
That’s a lot of capital investment for a family business that might have been
eeking along already.

And, as the article says, who knows when you’ll need to switch to the next
variety.

~~~
Alex3917
> Really you’re grafting new branches.

Where does the expense come in for grafting? Isn't the only cost basically the
parafilm? I'm not a grafter, but my understanding is that you just take some
branches from the varietal you want to clone, cut off the tops off your
existing root stock, and then connect the root stock with the twig using some
grafting tape.

Unless by capital investment you just mean the fact that you're not going to
get more apples for another three years or whatever.

~~~
handystack
Apple trees take years to begin producing fruit. A new orchard is very
expensive in terms of labor and the opportunity cost of tying up acreage with
non-producing plants.

------
hockeybias
Interesting article on the U of M apples:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/theresabeckhusen/2018/10/06/tha...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/theresabeckhusen/2018/10/06/thank-
minnesotas-harsh-winters-for-your-honeycrisp-sweetango-and-first-kiss-
apples/#61618b476241)

