Cider apple
Ben Davis
The apple that shipped — a handsome, tough, thoroughly mediocre-tasting fruit planted across the United States in the late nineteenth century and pressed in vast quantity because there was so much of it.
Also written Ben Davis, New York Pippin.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Bulk juice
- Origin
- The upper South, variously Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Regular cropping
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
- Evidence
- Analysed in 1 source, watched at 1 trial site
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Ben Davis. That is common outside Europe: the English, French and Spanish systems were each built for their own fruit, and a cultivar grown where none of them applies simply has no class. What the fruit contributes to a blend is described below regardless — the class is a shorthand for that, not a substitute.
What it contributes to a blend
A direction, not a measurement. These bands are the level of resolution the evidence supports, and they say which way adding this fruit pushes a blend rather than what the finished drink will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | Low | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Neutral | |
| Body | Light |
Uniformly consistent description of a bland, tough-skinned, low-acid shipping apple across a century of American pomology. These bands were authored from description; published analyses of this fruit have since been transcribed onto the record from named trial programmes and are shown above. The bands are not derived from those figures, which is why this profile is marked as classified rather than measured.
Tough-skinned, dry-fleshed and notably bland; a juice with little acid, little sugar and no aromatic character.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Ben Davis, and for a great deal of cider fruit that is a finding rather than a gap. Bittersweet apples in particular contribute tannin, sugar and body while being close to aromatically mute, and most of what a cider made from them smells of was produced by the fermentation rather than carried in by the fruit. CiderHQ publishes the absence rather than filling the space with descriptors nothing supports.
Measured analysis
Each figure is shown with where and when it was taken. They are not averaged: the same cultivar grown in another climate genuinely gives different numbers, and collapsing them into one would be the most misleading thing this page could do.
Measured on the fruit
Measured on the fruit itself, before anything was done to it. These figures hold whatever was later made from the juice.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fruit diameter | 82 mm (77–88) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Fruit firmness | 77.9 N (64.7–91.2) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Fruit weight | 231 g (194–269) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Starch pattern index | 7.9 SPI (7.6–8.2) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
Measured on the juice
Measured on juice as pressed, before fermentation. This is where most cider analysis lives and what the classification schemes are defined on.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brix | 10.1 °Bx (8.0–12.1) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Fructose | 47.1 g/L (39.7–54.5)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Glucose | 11.8 g/L (8.4–15.2)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| pH | 3.77 pH (3.34–4.20) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Sorbitol | 8.1 g/L (6.0–10.2)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Sucrose | 35.2 g/L (31.9–38.5)Not used in comparisons: see note below | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Titratable acidity | 3.5 g/L (0.4–6.6) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
| Total phenolics | 680.0 mg/L (510.0–850.0) | USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, USA | 2017Modern analysis | Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit |
How these were measured
- Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range. Published to two decimal places and shown at the precision CiderHQ displays for the unit.
- Mean of the fruit sampled per accession; where a bracket is shown it is one standard deviation either side of the mean, not the observed range.
- Cornell generic starch–iodine chart, 1–8, where 1 is no hydrolysis and 8 is complete. Mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of it.
- Penetrometer, mean of replicate fruit; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Refractometer on pressed juice. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Titration to pH 8.1 with sodium hydroxide, reported as malic acid equivalents. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- The starting pH recorded by the autotitrator before titration, on juice stored frozen at −80 °C and thawed; the source describes no separate pH measurement. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Folin–Ciocalteu assay against gallic acid standards, published in grams per litre of gallic acid equivalent and stored here as milligrams per litre by exact conversion. The source converts these figures to Löwenthal tannic acid equivalents, by a laboratory factor of 1.6, only to sort its accessions into classes; the figure here is the unconverted one.
- Enzymatic assay (Megazyme). Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- D-sorbitol/xylitol assay kit (Megazyme), sorbitol dehydrogenase method. Mean of replicates; a bracket, where shown, is one standard deviation either side of the mean.
- Glucose, fructose, sucrose and sorbitol: Not used in any distribution, ranking or comparison. This programme’s enzyme-assayed sugars do not reconcile with its own refractometer readings across the collection — for many varieties the sugars add up to more than the Brix reading allows. The figures were checked against the thesis’s own tables in October 2026 and are transcribed exactly: the disagreement is in the published source, which does not say which reading is wrong. Proportions between glucose, fructose and sucrose, which came from one assay, are still used in summary.
- A chart position, not a quantity. Almost every accession here scored at or near 8, which says the fruit was picked at or past full starch conversion rather than that the cultivars are alike.
- One harvest at one site. Soluble solids move several degrees between seasons and with crop load.
- A Folin–Ciocalteu figure counts everything that reduces the reagent, not tannin alone, and is not interchangeable with a Löwenthal permanganate figure for the same juice. Compare this reading with other Folin–Ciocalteu readings in gallic acid equivalents.
Where it sits among the varieties each programme measured
| Programme | Property | Ben Davis | Programme median | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Titratable acidity as malic | 3.5 g/L | 4.1 g/L | Above 21 and below 25 of the other 46: lower middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | pH | 3.77 | 3.64 | Above 26 and below 14 of the other 40: upper middle |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Total phenolics | 680 mg/L | 980 mg/L | Above 6 and below 40 of the other 46: lowest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Brix | 10.1 °Bx | 12.5 °Bx | Above 5 and below 41 of the other 46: lowest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Fruit diameter | 82.0 mm | 65.0 mm | Above 43, level with 1, below 2 of the other 46: highest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Fruit weight | 231 g | 124 g | Above 43 and below 3 of the other 46: highest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Fruit firmness | 77.9 N | 58.9 N | Above 38 and below 6 of the other 44: highest quarter |
| The USDA-PGRU germplasm characterisation | Starch pattern index | 7.9 SPI | 8.0 SPI | Above 17, level with 2, below 25 of the other 44: lower middle |
Compare within a study to see where these figures sat among the other cultivars the same work analysed — which is a more robust statement than the figures themselves, because absolute values move between laboratories and the ordering inside one study mostly survives.
Watched in the orchard
What named research programmes recorded about this fruit at their own sites. Bloom, harvest and cropping belong to a place and a run of seasons rather than to a cultivar, so they are reported site by site rather than merged.
USDA-PGRU Malus germplasm characterisation
USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Geneva, New York, in the Finger Lakes region of western New York State · 2017 · Cornell University / USDA-ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit
Humid continental, with cold winters and warm summers moderated by the Finger Lakes — a sharper seasonal swing than any of the European cider regions whose fruit the collection holds, and warm enough in late summer to bring acid down faster than a maritime autumn does.
- Held as
- PI 588953, held as “Ben Davis”
One harvest season. Fruit assessed for weight, diameter, starch pattern index on the Cornell 1–8 chart and flesh firmness by penetrometer; juice pressed and measured for soluble solids by refractometer, titratable acidity by titration to pH 8.1 as malic acid, pH as the autotitrator’s starting reading on juice that had been frozen, total phenolics by Folin–Ciocalteu assay as gallic acid equivalent, and glucose, fructose, sucrose and sorbitol by enzymatic assay.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Late
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Regular cropping
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
Extremely reliable and heavy-cropping, and precocious into the bargain.
Its keeping and its resistance to bruising were the whole of its commercial case.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Fire blight | low | — |
| Apple scab | low | Genuinely robust, and used as a breeding parent partly for that reason. |
Juice and pressing
- Low acid and modest sugar.
- No tannin and essentially no aroma.
- High yield of a neutral juice from a tough, uniform fruit.
How it is used
- The great American shipping apple of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
- Pressed in enormous volume as culls and as the commercial crop lost its market.
- A breeding parent, notably of Cortland.
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Neutral, low in acid and structureless. Nobody has ever made a case for a single-varietal Ben Davis.
About Ben Davis
Ben Davis is remembered mainly as a joke at the expense of nineteenth-century American horticulture: an apple so tough that it could be shipped anywhere and so bland that nobody wanted it when it arrived. The joke is fair and it misses the point. Railways and refrigerated shipping created a market for fruit that survived the journey, and Ben Davis survived the journey better than anything else available. It was planted in millions.
What that means for cider is arithmetic rather than aesthetics. When a cultivar occupies that much orchard, its culls and its unsold crop dominate the press, and the neutral, low-acid, structureless juice of Ben Davis was for decades a significant fraction of everything pressed in the United States. The point is not that it made good cider — it did not — but that the composition of what Americans drank was set by shipping economics, not by cider preference.
It has one lasting descendant of note. Cortland was raised at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station from Ben Davis crossed with McIntosh, and Cortland became a mainstay of northeastern orchards and of Quebec cider. Ben Davis also contributed its genuine disease robustness to that line, which is a more respectable legacy than its reputation suggests.
Names, origin and identity
Cultivar naming is the hardest problem in cider fruit data. The same tree carries different names across ten miles, and two different trees have shared a name for two centuries.
Origin · traditional account
Several competing origin claims, none of them documented well enough to prefer. The multiplicity of trade names makes the early record particularly hard to follow.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| New York Pippin | Regional name | One of a long list of nineteenth-century trade names for the same fruit. |
| Baltimore | Disputed identity | Applied to Ben Davis in some listings and to unrelated apples in others. |
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
Parentage
Fruit that plays a similar part
Cultivars sharing a classification under the same system and a comparable role in a blend. Not a similarity score — a stated relationship.
Blanquina
A pale-skinned Asturian cultivar of high reputation, and — like Raxao, with which it is usually named — an acid-block fruit rather than a semi-acid one.
Bramley’s Seedling
England’s dominant cooking apple, a triploid of very high acid and negligible tannin, and by volume one of the most important fruits in modern British cider.
Browns Apple
The standard Devon sharp: a bright red, heavy-cropping, high-acid apple with almost no tannin, and the fruit most English blends reach for when they need lift.
Douce Moën
The workhorse of Breton cider orchards: a large, pale, very low-acid bittersweet that crops heavily, presses generously, and carries more Breton cider than any other single cultivar.
Golden Delicious
A West Virginia chance seedling of about 1890 that became one of the most planted and most bred-from apples in history — high in sugar, low in acid, and by volume one of the largest single inputs to cider worldwide.
Granny Smith
An Australian chance seedling of the 1860s that became one of the most planted apples on earth, and — because it is reliably sharp when almost nothing else commercial is — a genuine workhorse of commercial cider worldwide.
Where it grows
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- What is juice blending
- What is modern american cider like
- Which apple juice browns most slowly — Cortland, unusually among common cultivars. The slow browning that made it a salad apple also makes its juice noticeably resistant to oxidative browning, which is a practical property rather than a flavour one.
- Do you need to sort apples before pressing
- Is cider made in nova scotia — Yes. The Annapolis Valley has grown apples since French colonial settlement, which makes it one of the oldest continuously planted orchard districts in North America.
- What is new york cider like
Where to go next
- How cider apples are classified — Why there are four schemes and none of them is universal.
- The blend explorer — See which way changing the proportions moves a blend.
- Blending — What a cider maker is actually deciding when they build a blend.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Cider, Hard and Sweet: History, Traditions, and Making Your Own
Ben Watson, The Countryman Press, first edition 1999; third edition 2013 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: first published 1999 by The Countryman Press, with five editions recorded and a 2008 printing scanned by the Internet Archive as ciderhardsweethi0000benw. The scan is access-restricted to the print-disabled collection. The site had registered this without a year; it now carries one, and the first-edition date matters because a general trade book on cider written in 1999 predates almost the whole of the North American cider revival it is sometimes cited about.
GRIN-Global germplasm database — Malus and Pyrus
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
Cornell Cider Research and Extension programme
Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
Runs cultivar trials in New York State and publishes juice chemistry for European cider varieties grown in a North American climate — the single most useful counterweight to treating English figures as universal.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.