Cider apple
Discovery
A very early red dessert apple raised in Essex, used by cidermakers to start the season with something aromatic and sharp.
Also written Discovery Apple.
- Classification
- Sharp — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Very early (Late August to early September)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Early season, Aroma, Acid lift
- Origin
- Langham, Essex
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
How it is classified
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.
A sharp when pressed: moderate to high acid, negligible tannin. Placed on description; no cider analysis is attached.
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 | Negligible | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Pronounced | |
| Body | Light |
Description of an early, aromatic, low-tannin dessert apple. No cider analysis is attached. 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.
Gives sharp, bright acid and a strawberry-tinged aroma that is unmistakable in an early-season cider.
Aroma
Descriptors associated with this fruit. Each names a character with a known cause, and association is not a promise — what reaches the glass depends on the ferment as much as on the apple.
- Fresh-cut apple — The smell of a cut apple surface, produced within seconds of the fruit tissue being broken by six-carbon aldehydes released from membrane fats.
- Strawberry — A soft red-fruit note from furanone and ester chemistry, arising in fermentation or from added fruit.
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.
Specific gravity1.058 SG
England — the source does not name the orchards, 1922–1977 · Published in the two-figure form the table uses (a printed 51 meaning 1.051) and written here in full. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three.
Juice density, the practical proxy for sugar before fermentation. Measured in specific gravity.
Total acid0.640 % w/v
England — the source does not name the orchards, 1922–1977 · Titration, reported as malic acid, on juice from freshly harvested fruit. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three. Several cultivars appear more than once in this table under sample numbers, and the repeats are far apart: Bramley’s acid is 1.21, 1.05 and 1.43 per cent in three rows. Read any single row as one pressing of one parcel of fruit.
How much acid the juice contains, conventionally reported as malic acid. Measured in percent weight per volume.
Total tannin0.090 % w/v
England — the source does not name the orchards, 1922–1977 · Method not stated in the compilation; the Long Ashton work behind it used Löwenthal permanganate titration. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three.
The phenolic fraction responsible for bitterness and astringency. Measured in percent weight per volume.
pH3.49 pH
England — the source does not name the orchards, 1922–1977 · Meter on juice from freshly harvested fruit. · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
A National Association of Cider Makers compilation crediting three bodies of work — MAFF/ADAS acidity and pH from freshly harvested fruit, Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties reported in 1977, and the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. The compilation does not say which row came from which, so no row can be dated more precisely than the span of the three.
Acid strength, which governs microbial risk and sulphite effectiveness. Measured in ph.
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.
Typical English apple juice analyses
England — the compilation does not name the orchards · 1922–1977 · National Association of Cider Makers, Archive of Cider Pomology
English fruit-growing country, and no closer than that: the source gives neither site nor season for any individual row, which is a real limit on what the figures can be asked to do.
- Held as
- Listed as “Discovery”
Juice from freshly harvested fruit. Acidity and pH credited to MAFF/ADAS; the remainder to Long Ashton cider-making trials with dessert and culinary varieties (1977) and to the Long Ashton Annual Report for 1922. Specific gravity is printed in a two-figure form and written out in full here.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Very early
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
August. Among the earliest apples grown in Britain, and it must be used at once.
A few days at most. Early apples of this type do not store at all.
Mid-season flowering despite the very early fruit.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | low | Comparatively resistant, which was part of its appeal on introduction. |
| Canker | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Moderate to high acid
- Negligible tannin
- Distinctive aroma with a strawberry note
- Available in August
How it is used
- A commercial early dessert apple
- Used by cidermakers for very early pressing and for aroma
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Pressed alone for early-season releases by producers working in a modern idiom. Light, aromatic and short, with no tannin to give it length.
About Discovery
Discovery is a mid-twentieth-century Essex introduction that has found an unplanned second life in cider. It ripens in August, carries good acid, and has a pronounced aroma with a strawberry note that comes through fermentation clearly — three properties that between them let a producer bottle something in the autumn of the same year.
The strawberry character is inherited from Worcester Pearmain, which is generally accepted as one of its parents, and it is one of the few genuinely distinctive fruit aromas available from a British apple. In a blend it is easily lost among tannin; in an early single-varietal cider it is the point.
Everything about it is fast. The fruit is ready in August, keeps for days, and makes a cider intended to be drunk young. It is the opposite proposition to a Vilberie blend that needs eighteen months, and it is a legitimate one — but a producer should be clear which they are making.
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 · documented
Raised at Langham in Essex in the 1940s and introduced commercially in the 1960s. The origin is documented — a twentieth-century introduction with a paper trail rather than a folk story.
Parentage · not established
Commonly given as a seedling of Worcester Pearmain, with Beauty of Bath sometimes named as the other parent. The Worcester connection is widely accepted; the second parent is not established.
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.
Katy
A Swedish-raised dessert apple widely grown in Britain and one of the most used dessert cultivars in modern British single-varietal cider.
Cheddar Cross
A very early sharp raised at Long Ashton, giving acid at the start of the season when little else is ready.
James Grieve
A Scottish-raised dual-purpose apple of clean, bright acid, widely grown in Britain and pressed for acid and freshness in modern cider.
Sops in Wine
An old English name for red-fleshed apples that stain the juice, applied to several distinct cultivars and identifying none of them reliably.
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.
Golden Russet
The highest-gravity fruit in widespread North American cider use — a small bronze russet from New York whose juice regularly presses above 1.060 and which many revival makers treat as their benchmark cultivar.
Styles it is characteristic of
Eastern counties cider
Cider from eastern and south-eastern England made largely from dessert and culinary apples, giving a lighter, sharper and less tannic drink than the West Country tradition.
Scottish cider
Cider from Scotland, made in a cool maritime climate from dessert, culinary and cold-tolerant fruit, in a small sector built largely within recent decades.
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
- When are cider apples harvested — In the northern hemisphere the cider harvest runs from about September to November, with late bittersweets such as Dabinett and Vilberie coming in last. Cider fruit is generally picked riper than dessert fruit, and often gathered from the ground.
- What does fresh-cut apple mean in a cider tasting note — The smell of a cut apple surface, produced within seconds of the fruit tissue being broken by six-carbon aldehydes released from membrane fats.
- How is supermarket cider made
- Is single variety cider better than a blend — Neither is inherently better and CiderHQ does not rank them. A single varietal shows one cultivar’s character and depends entirely on that fruit being balanced; a blend is how most makers reach balance deliberately.
- Why does cider smell of strawberry
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.
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.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.
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.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.