Cider apple
Brown Thorn
A Herefordshire bittersweet with russeted skin and firm tannin, an old county cultivar now grown in small quantity.
Also written Brownthorn, Brown Thorne.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure, Bittersweet base, Late season
- Origin
- Herefordshire
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
Long Ashton classification
Bittersweet
Low acid, high tannin. The class that has no real equivalent in dessert fruit and that defines West Country cider.
Basis: Below about 0.45% w/v acid and above about 0.2% w/v tannin.
A medium to full bittersweet on description; no verified analysis attaches to this cultivar.
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 | Low | |
| Tannin | Firm | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | |
| Astringency | Drying | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Medium |
Description in Three Counties cultivar listings. 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.
Adds firm, slightly drying tannin to a Herefordshire blend.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Brown Thorn, 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 | 61 mm | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Juice yield | 558 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 acid2 readings, spanning 0.190–0.200 % w/v | 0.200 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 0.190 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea | |
| Total tannin2 readings, spanning 0.160–0.240 % w/v | 0.160 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 0.240 % w/v | Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England | 1905–1975Historic analysis | Andrew Lea | |
| Brix | 12.2 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| pH | 4.20 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Specific gravity | 1.048 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
- Permanganate titration against indigo carmine, reported as tannic acid equivalent
- Titration, reported as malic acid equivalent
- Published as 2.42 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 253 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 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
- 8 October
- Bloom density
- 2.4 of 5
- Productivity
- 2.7 of 5
- Growth habit
- Semi Spreading
- Bearing
- Standard
- Alternate bearing
- Yes
- Blind wood
- 2 of 5
- Rootstocks
- M9
Filed here as bittersweet, though the juice measured at this site falls in the sweet quadrant of the site’s own thresholds.
WSU lists this fruit as bittersweet — the class it carries in England — but the juice measured at Mount Vernon falls in the sweet 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 “Brown Thorn”, late season
Filed here as bittersweet.
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
- Late
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Good
Late October.
No pollination group is recorded.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Low acid
- Firm tannin
- Russeted skin
How it is used
- A tannin component of Herefordshire farm blends
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
A structural blending fruit.
About Brown Thorn
Brown Thorn is an old Herefordshire bittersweet with a russeted skin and firm tannin, used in county blends for structure. It has never been widely planted and is now grown mainly by producers and conservation orchards with an interest in the older Three Counties fruit.
Its name causes routine confusion with Brown Snout, which is a quite different and far more widely grown Herefordshire apple. A listing that reads "Brown" and a county is not enough to identify either.
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
A Herefordshire cider apple of unrecorded origin. The name may refer to the russeted skin and to a thorn hedge where the seedling was found, which is a common pattern and not documented here.
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.
Dabinett
The most widely planted English cider apple: a small, late-ripening bittersweet whose soft, full tannin ferments into a cider that needs almost nothing added to it.
Yarlington Mill
A vigorous Somerset bittersweet, conical and red-striped, giving a cider with more aromatic lift than most of its class and a reputation for fruitiness that the tannin figures do not explain.
Chisel Jersey
A hard, high-tannin Somerset bittersweet used in small proportion for structure, and one of the fruit most often reached for when a blend needs backbone rather than bulk.
Harry Masters’ Jersey
A medium bittersweet from the Yarlington district, valued for tannin that is full without being harsh, and among the more reliable croppers in a class that is generally unreliable.
Ashton Brown Jersey
A late, full bittersweet selected at Long Ashton from Somerset material, giving high tannin and a long finish from a tree that crops poorly.
Nehou
A Norman bittersweet long grown in English orchards, giving high tannin from a small, late, hard fruit and cropping better than most of its class.
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 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 chisel jersey
- What is tannin balancing
- 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.
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.
Three Counties Cider and Perry Association
TCCPA · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.