Cider apple
Hewe’s Crab
The historic cider crab of Virginia — small, hard, very high in acid and unusually tannic for an American apple, and probably a hybrid between a cultivated apple and a native crab.
Also written Hewes Crab, Hughes Crab, Hewe’s Virginia Crab.
- Classification
- Bittersharp — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Sometimes bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Tannin and structure, Aroma
- Origin
- Virginia
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
How it is classified
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.
Assessed in Fruit grown in trial plantings at Geneva, New York State.
Assigned by a modern North American programme applying the English thresholds, not by any historic Virginian practice. Hewe’s Crab was never classified in its own tradition because that tradition had no classification scheme.
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 | Very high | |
| Tannin | Moderate | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | |
| Astringency | Drying | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Cornell juice analyses from New York trial fruit, plus consistent maker description of what a Hewe’s addition does to a blend.
Sharp to the point of severity on its own, with a drying astringency and a distinct rosy, crab-apple perfume that survives fermentation.
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.
- Apple skin — The dry, faintly waxy and slightly bitter aroma of the fruit’s surface rather than its flesh, carried by cuticular waxes, hexyl esters and skin-concentrated phenolics.
- 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Juice yield | 55.0–70.0 % | Geneva, New York State | 2010sModern analysis | Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science |
| 622 L/t | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| Fruit diameter | 39 mm | 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 0.910–0.950 % w/v | 0.800–1.100 % w/v | Geneva, New York State | 2010sModern analysis | Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science |
| 0.910 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| Total tannin2 readings, spanning 0.190–0.225 % w/v | 0.150–0.300 % w/v | Geneva, New York State | 2010sModern analysis | Cornell University, School of Integrative Plant Science |
| 0.190 % w/v | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center | |
| Brix | 14.8 °Bx | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| pH | 3.29 pH | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Specific gravity | 1.060 SG | WSU Mount Vernon NWREC, Skagit Valley, Washington, USA | 2002–2017Modern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
3 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 1.55 inches; converted at 25.4 mm to the inch
- Juice pressed from 25 fruit, 2015–2017 only. Published as 282 mL/lb; converted at 2.204623 lb to the kilogram
- A multi-season range, reported as malic acid. Hewe’s Crab is markedly more acidic than any cultivar in the English bittersharp class, and the figure should not be read as interchangeable with a Long Ashton bittersharp value.
- Straddles the Long Ashton tannin threshold of roughly 0.2% w/v, which is why the class assignment above is sensitive to season and site.
- Unusually good for a crab, and the reason Hewe’s was worth growing despite the fruit size. Yield depends heavily on mill setting and press type as well as on the fruit.
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 April
- Harvest
- 31 August
- Bloom density
- 4.6 of 5
- Productivity
- 3.9 of 5
- Growth habit
- Upright
- Bearing
- Standard
- Alternate bearing
- No
- Blind wood
- 1 of 5
- Rootstocks
- M9
- Held as
- Hewes
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.
Color gold, mild to moderately bitter. Lemony bright apple flavor with banana, pear & butterscotch notes. Full bodied with white wine intensity and a nice soft astringent finish. Possible varietal or acid addition to a blend.
Recorded by the programme from professional cidermakers in the region. One panel, one place, one set of seasons — a description of these ciders rather than of the cultivar everywhere.
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.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
Ripens through late September and early October in Virginia; the fruit is hard and does not bruise easily, which suited a long haul to the mill.
Heavy and consistent cropping, with very small fruit.
Small, dense and thick-skinned; keeps well enough that pressing could be deferred for weeks.
Reliable, heavy bloom, and a useful pollen source. It is one of the few cider cultivars in this file valued as a pollinator in its own right.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Fire blight | low | Notably resistant, which is part of why it persisted in the South when other cultivars did not. Fire blight is the defining orchard disease of eastern North America and is almost absent from English cider-fruit description. |
| Cedar apple rust | low | — |
| Apple scab | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Very high malic acid — the highest of any cultivar in this file.
- Tannin at a level that sits on the English bittersharp boundary, giving grip rather than frank bitterness.
- A pronounced floral, crab-apple aroma that carries through into the finished cider.
- Surprisingly free-running juice for such a hard little fruit.
How it is used
- Pressed as the principal cider fruit of colonial and early republican Virginia.
- Used to sharpen and preserve blends dominated by sweet southern apples.
- Planted as a pollinator and hedgerow tree in southern orchards.
On its own
Sometimes bottled on its own
Made single-varietal by revival producers, and the result is austere — very high acid, firm astringency, little sweetness to cushion either. It works as a statement of what the fruit is; it is not the way the fruit was historically used.
About Hewe’s Crab
Hewe’s Crab is the cultivar that makes it possible to say that colonial Virginia had a cider fruit rather than merely cider. It is small, hard, unattractive to eat and extremely sharp, and it was planted deliberately and at scale for pressing. Jefferson-era records of orchard planting in Virginia name it, and it stayed in southern orchards long after the northern cider trade had gone, partly because it is genuinely resistant to the diseases that make apple growing difficult in a humid eastern summer.
The likely explanation for its behaviour is that it is not entirely a European apple. Its size, its hardness, its acid and its resistance all point towards a cross with a native North American crab, and that proposal appears in most modern accounts. It is not established, and this record says so rather than repeating it as fact — but it is the hypothesis that makes the fruit’s properties hang together.
For a blender, Hewe’s does two jobs at once that most American fruit does separately. It brings acid — a great deal of it, enough that a small proportion moves a whole blend — and it brings phenolic grip and a floral crab-apple perfume with it. In a country whose available fruit is overwhelmingly low in tannin and moderate in acid, a cultivar that supplies both is disproportionately useful, and that is why it appears in modern blends far out of proportion to how much of it is planted.
The Cornell figures above are worth reading against the English scheme rather than through it. At 0.8 to 1.1% w/v acid Hewe’s is well beyond anything Long Ashton called bittersharp, while its tannin hovers around the scheme’s threshold. The classification recorded here is a modern North American programme applying English cut-offs to fruit those cut-offs were not drawn for, and the class label carries less information than the numbers do.
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
The Virginia origin and the eighteenth-century currency of the fruit are well documented in colonial and early republican agricultural records. Its parentage is not: a cross between a European apple and a native North American crab is widely proposed and not formally established.
Parentage · not established
Frequently described as a hybrid of Malus domestica with a native North American crab, on the strength of the fruit’s size, hardness and disease behaviour. CiderHQ records this as a proposal, not a finding.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Virginia Crab | Regional name | Virginia and the upper South. The name most used in Virginia, and the one under which the fruit appears in Jefferson-era records of Monticello planting. |
| Hughes Crab | Historic spelling | A phonetic variant carried in several American nursery listings. |
| Red Hughes | Disputed identity | Used for Hewe’s in some sources and for a separate southern crab in others; CiderHQ does not treat the identification as settled. |
Why it matters
- The only widely grown North American cider cultivar with both high acid and appreciable tannin, which makes it the continent’s closest structural analogue to an English bittersharp.
- Its disease resistance is the practical reason it survived the collapse of the American cider orchard when softer cultivars did not.
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.
Skyrme’s Kernel
A Herefordshire bittersharp with high acid and firm tannin, one of the county’s few genuine vintage-quality cider apples.
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.
Stoke Red
A small, dense, dark-red Somerset bittersharp carrying both high acid and substantial tannin, and the most reliable alternative to Kingston Black for a single-varietal cider.
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.
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.
Styles it is characteristic of
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 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 long can apples be kept before pressing
- Why does cider smell of apple skin
- 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.
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.
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.
GRIN-Global germplasm database — Malus and Pyrus
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
Cider: Making, Using and Enjoying Sweet and Hard Cider
Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols, Storey Communications, 1997; first published as Sweet & Hard Cider by Garden Way, 1980 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library, and the verification changed what CiderHQ knows about it. The work first appeared in 1980 as Sweet & Hard Cider: Making It, Using It, & Enjoying It (Garden Way, Charlotte, Vermont) and was retitled for the 1997 Storey edition the site had registered; nine editions are recorded in total. That matters for a source cited on North American practice, because a passage in the 1980 text and a passage in the 1997 one are not interchangeable and neither is the 2003 revision. Two scans exist in the Internet Archive — sweethardciderma0000prou for the 1980 edition and cidermakingusing0000prou for the 1997 — both access-restricted to the lending library and the print-disabled collection, so neither is openable by retrieval.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.