Cider apple
Breakwell’s Seedling
An early Monmouthshire cider apple raised in the early twentieth century, sharp with a little tannin, and widely grown on both sides of the border.
Also written Breakwells Seedling, Breakwell Seedling, Breakwell’s.
- Classification
- Sharp — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Early (September)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Early season
- Origin
- Monmouthshire
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 2
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
Classified under more than one system. The systems use different thresholds and were built for different fruit, so the answers can legitimately differ — that is a fact about the schemes, not a contradiction.
Long Ashton classification
Sharp
High acid, low tannin. Includes both purpose-grown sharps and many culinary apples.
Basis: Above about 0.45% w/v acid and below about 0.2% w/v tannin.
Placed as a sharp: acid above the threshold, tannin below or barely at it.
Long Ashton classification
Bittersharp
High acid and high tannin together — the rarest and, for a single-varietal cider, the most useful class.
Basis: Above about 0.45% w/v acid and above about 0.2% w/v tannin.
Recorded because a substantial body of description treats the fruit as a light bittersharp. Its tannin sits at the boundary, and the two placements reflect that rather than any error.
Every classification on CiderHQ names its system. Why there is more than one.
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 cider will be.
| Axis | Typical | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Acid | High | |
| Tannin | Light | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Slight | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Long Ashton acid and tannin ranges, with a wide tannin band because the fruit sits on the class boundary.
Supplies early-season acid with a trace of tannin, useful when little else is ripe.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Breakwell’s Seedling, 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 | 62 mm | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Juice yield | 573 L/t | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total acid3 readings, spanning 0.550–0.720 % w/v | 0.450–0.650 % w/v | Long Ashton, Somerset, England | Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985Historic analysis | National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol |
| 0.720 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| 0.640 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea | |
| Total tannin3 readings, spanning 0.180–0.230 % w/v | 0.140–0.220 % w/v | Long Ashton, Somerset, England | Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985Historic analysis | National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol |
| 0.200 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| 0.230 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea | |
| Brix | 10.1 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| pH | 3.28 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Specific gravity | 1.041 SG | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
2 properties here have been measured more than once. The readings are shown as they were taken and are deliberately not averaged — climate, season, ripeness at picking, the age of the tree and the analytical method all move these numbers, and a single figure would hide every one of them. Where a spread is given below a property, it is the distance between separate studies, not the variation within any one of them.
How these were measured
- Titration of pressed juice, reported as malic acid
- Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
- Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
- Published as 2.43 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 260 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
- Titration with alkali, reported as malic acid. Composite figure across many seasons; the source states neither the sample count nor the year of any individual analysis.
- Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported as tannic acid equivalent. Composite figure across many seasons; the source states neither the sample count nor the year of any individual analysis.
- A Monmouthshire cultivar analysed on Somerset-grown fruit — a difference of site and climate as well as of season.
- Straddles the scheme’s tannin threshold, which is the direct reason two classifications appear on this record.
- A composite of Long Ashton analyses reaching CiderHQ through three hands: the station’s own work, a printed compilation (Bulmer’s Pomona, 1987, and Beech and Carr, 1977), and a transcription of that compilation. CiderHQ has seen only the transcription.
- A composite of Long Ashton analyses reaching CiderHQ through three hands: the station’s own work, a printed compilation (Bulmer’s Pomona, 1987, and Beech and Carr, 1977), and a transcription of that compilation. CiderHQ has seen only the transcription. A permanganate figure. It is not comparable with a Folin–Ciocalteu total-phenolics figure for the same fruit, and the two can differ by a factor of two.
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.
WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar trial
Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center, Mount Vernon, Skagit Valley, Washington · 2002–2017 · Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center
Maritime, with cool summers and mild wet winters — the closest North American analogue to the English West Country, and the reason the programme planted European cider fruit here rather than east of the Cascades.
- Mean full bloom
- 19 May
- Harvest
- 6 September
- Bloom density
- 3.9 of 5
- Productivity
- 3.1 of 5
- Growth habit
- Spreading
- Bearing
- Semi Spur
- Alternate bearing
- Semi alternate
- Blind wood
- 1 of 5
- Rootstocks
- M26
Filed here as bittersharp, though the juice measured at this site falls in the sharp quadrant of the site’s own thresholds.
WSU lists this fruit as bittersharp — the class it carries in England — but the juice measured at Mount Vernon falls in the sharp quadrant of the site’s own thresholds. Neither reading is an error. A class assigned on acid and tannin describes fruit grown somewhere, and this is somewhere else.
Juice characteristics measured on 250 mL of pressed juice; juice yield from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Bloom density, productivity and blind wood are the site’s own subjective 1–5 ratings. Figures are means across the seasons each cultivar was in the trial.
Long Ashton composite cider apple analyses
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, North Somerset, England · 1905–1975 · Andrew Lea
Maritime and mild, with wet autumns and few hard frosts — the climate the English cider cultivars were selected in, and the reason their acid and tannin figures here are the ones the rest of the world has spent a century comparing its own fruit against.
- Held as
- Listed as “Breakwell’s Seedling”, early season
Filed here as bittersharp.
Freshly expressed juice, not finished cider. Acid by straight titration against alkali, reported as malic acid; tannin by Löwenthal permanganate titration, reported as tannic acid equivalent. Composite figures across seventy years of analyses: the source gives neither a sample count nor the year of any individual reading.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Early
- Flowering
- Pollination group 2
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
September. One of the earliest cider apples of the border counties, which is a substantial part of its value.
Comes into bearing early and crops reasonably regularly.
An early apple that must be milled promptly.
Early flowering, which makes it vulnerable to spring frost on low ground.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
| Spring frost damage to blossom | high | Early flowering is the practical risk with this cultivar on frost-prone sites. |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate to high acid
- Light tannin
- Available in September
How it is used
- The early sharp of Monmouthshire and border orchards
- Used to start a pressing season before the main crop
- Widely planted in twentieth-century commercial orchards on both sides of the border
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Bottled alone occasionally as an early-season cider. It is light and clean and does not carry much beyond its acid.
About Breakwell’s Seedling
Breakwell’s Seedling is one of the very few English or Welsh cider apples whose raiser can be named with any confidence and whose raising happened recently enough to be within living memory when it was first written down. Mr Breakwell of Monmouthshire raised it in the early twentieth century; it ripens in September, carries good acid and a little tannin, and it went into orchards on both sides of the border because early fruit is always short.
The blending role is straightforward. A mill starting in September has sweets and a handful of early bittersweets and no acid, and a tank of Breakwell’s corrects that. It also lowers pH at a point in the season when warm weather makes spoilage more likely, which is a practical benefit as much as a sensory one.
It sits on the sharp–bittersharp boundary and different sources place it on different sides, so this record carries both. That is not a failure of the sources: the fruit’s tannin genuinely varies around the threshold, and a scheme that produces a categorical answer from a continuous measurement will always generate this.
Its early flowering is the drawback. Blossom in April on a Monmouthshire valley floor is exposed, and a late frost can take the crop entirely. The cultivar suits a slope better than a bottom, which is true of early-flowering fruit generally and worth stating rather than assuming.
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
Raised by a Mr Breakwell of Monmouthshire. The attribution is consistent and comparatively recent, which makes it better evidenced than most cider apple origins; the precise date and circumstances are still not documented.
Related cultivars
Recorded relationships, including the ones this fruit is routinely confused with.
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.
Kingston Black
The most celebrated English single-varietal cider apple: a small dark-red bittersharp carrying acid and tannin in one fruit, and a tree difficult enough that its reputation has always outrun its plantings.
Frederick
A Monmouthshire bittersharp with bright red-striped fruit and high acid, the most widely known of the Welsh border cider apples and a genuine single-varietal candidate.
Porter’s Perfection
A very late Somerset bittersharp with high acid and moderate tannin, cropping heavily in its on years and barely at all in its off ones.
Foxwhelp
The oldest named English cider apple still grown, a Herefordshire bittersharp of extraordinary acidity whose identity has fractured into a family of sports, seedlings and impostors.
Broxwood Foxwhelp
A Herefordshire selection of Foxwhelp from Broxwood, keeping much of the parent’s acidity in a fruit that is easier to grow, and the form most commonly planted today.
Bulmer’s Foxwhelp
A twentieth-century Foxwhelp selection distributed under the Bulmer name, keeping the family’s very high acid in a fruit chosen for orchard reliability.
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.
- How do i balance acid and tannin in a blend — Acid and tannin do different jobs and cannot substitute for each other: acid gives freshness and microbiological safety, tannin gives structure and length. A blend short of acid tastes flabby however tannic it is.
- How do you blend cider
- What are the three counties in cider — Herefordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire — the block of country where England’s cider and, above all, its perry have historically concentrated.
- What is welsh cider
- What is herefordshire cider
- Where are perry pears grown
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.
Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses
National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol · research institute · registered as competent for this subject · covers 1903–2003
The foundational body of cider-fruit science in English. Long Ashton produced the acid-and-tannin classification that divides cider apples into sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp, and analysed hundreds of cultivars grown at its Somerset site. Its figures are historic measurements of specific fruit at a specific place, not universal constants — a distinction CiderHQ preserves in every measurement record that cites it.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.
University of Reading / Defra, Brogdale · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
The UK national reference collection for apple and pear cultivars. The authority CiderHQ uses for whether two names are the same fruit, which is the central duplicate-resolution problem in cider data.
WPCS · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Documents Welsh cider and perry traditions and has done substantial work identifying and conserving Welsh perry pear cultivars that were close to being lost.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.