Cider apple
Red Delicious
An Iowa chance seedling of the 1870s selected and re-selected for colour until almost nothing else remained — the most-planted apple in twentieth-century America, and among the least useful fruit a cider maker can be given.
Also written Delicious, Starking, Red Chief.
- Classification
- Sweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Mid (Late September to mid October)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Bulk juice
- Origin
- Peru, Madison County, Iowa
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
How it is classified
Long Ashton classification
Sweet
Low acid and low tannin. Fruit that contributes sugar, alcohol and body but little structure or sharpness.
Basis: Below about 0.45% w/v acid and below about 0.2% w/v tannin.
Assessed in Fruit grown in western Washington State.
Very low acid and no tannin. It is the extreme case of the sweet class among modern dessert fruit.
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 low | |
| Tannin | Negligible | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | None | |
| Astringency | None | |
| Aroma | Restrained | |
| Body | Light |
WSU acid and pH figures from Washington fruit; every other axis is at or near the floor, which is an accurate description rather than a dismissal.
Sweet and mild with a thick, bitter skin and very little aroma; the flesh softens quickly and the juice is correspondingly flat.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Red Delicious, 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.
| Property | Reading | Where | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pH2 readings, spanning 4.20–4.32 pH | 4.00–4.40 pH | Mount Vernon, Washington State | 2010sModern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| 4.32 pH | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry | |
| Brix | 13.0 °Bx | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry |
| Titratable acidity | 2.6 g/L | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry |
| Total acid | 0.150–0.300 % w/v | Mount Vernon, Washington State | 2010sModern analysis | Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center |
| Total phenolics | 300.0 mg/L | Winchester, Virginia, USA | 2012–2013Modern analysis | Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry |
One property here has 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
- Refractometer on pressed juice.
- Meter on pressed juice.
- Titration, reported as malic acid. Published to two decimal places and shown at the one the site displays.
- Folin–Ciocalteu, reported as gallic acid equivalents.
- Reported as malic acid, and among the lowest of any commercially grown apple. A juice at this acidity ferments at a pH high enough to be a genuine spoilage risk without correction.
- High enough to matter. Sulphite is markedly less effective above about pH 3.8, and lactic and acetic bacteria are comfortable in this range. This is a safety observation, not a flavour one.
- A Folin–Ciocalteu figure in gallic acid equivalents. It is not interchangeable with a Löwenthal permanganate “tannin” figure: the two assays respond to different things and can differ by a factor of two on the same juice.
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.
Virginia cultivar polyphenol characterisation
Winchester, in the northern Shenandoah Valley, Virginia · 2012–2013 · Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Humid subtropical shading into continental, with hot summers — warm enough that acid falls faster through the ripening period than it does in a maritime autumn, which is part of why the titratable acidities here run lower than English figures for comparable fruit.
- Held as
- Listed as “Red Delicious”
The lowest acid in the study at 2.58 g/L and the highest pH at 4.32, in a fruit with unremarkable phenolics. Low acid without tannin is the profile that makes a juice microbiologically awkward and sensorially flat, which is why the classification schemes treat sweet fruit as a blending component rather than a base.
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.
Soluble solids by refractometer, pH by meter, titratable acidity by titration as malic acid, total polyphenols by Folin–Ciocalteu as gallic acid equivalents. Twenty cultivars, one site.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Mid
- Flowering
- Not recorded
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Slightly biennial
- Keeping
- Good
Stores for a long time, which was central to its commercial career.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Fire blight | moderate | — |
| Apple scab | high | — |
| Bitter pit | moderate | — |
Juice and pressing
- Very low acid, and consequently a high juice pH.
- Modest sugar.
- No tannin from the flesh; the thick skin carries a little, and heavy pressing extracts an unpleasant rather than a useful bitterness.
- Almost no aroma.
- High juice yield.
How it is used
- The dominant American fresh-market apple from the 1920s to the 2000s, and still a very large crop.
- Pressed in enormous volume as unsold and downgraded fruit, particularly as its market share declined.
- A breeding parent of Empire, Fuji and Kidd’s Orange Red.
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
There is nothing to build on. Very low acid, no tannin, almost no aroma and modest sugar; and the high juice pH makes an uncorrected ferment a real spoilage risk rather than merely a dull one.
About Red Delicious
Red Delicious is the cautionary tale of twentieth-century pomology, and the story is worth telling accurately because the fruit is still grown in quantity and still pressed. The original Iowa seedling was, by contemporary account, a good apple. What followed was seventy years of selecting colour sports — redder, and then redder still, and then redder earlier — because supermarkets bought on appearance. Each selection took the fruit further from the eating quality of the original, and by the 1980s it had a thick bitter skin, mealy flesh and almost no flavour.
For a cider maker it is close to the least useful fruit available. The acid is extremely low, the aroma is negligible, the sugar is modest and there is no tannin. More seriously, the juice pH sits in a range where sulphite loses much of its effectiveness and spoilage bacteria are comfortable, so a ferment built on Red Delicious is not merely dull but genuinely at risk. Any maker handed a load of it needs to bring acid in before anything else.
It nonetheless reaches presses in very large volume, and for a revealing reason: as its market share collapsed in favour of Gala, Fuji and Honeycrisp, the unsold crop had to go somewhere. Fruit that cannot be sold fresh becomes juice, and the decline of a fresh-market cultivar is therefore an increase in its contribution to cider. That is worth stating because it is invisible from the drinker’s side and it is one of the real mechanisms shaping what North American cider is made from.
Its genetic legacy is better than its reputation. Empire, Fuji and Kidd’s Orange Red all have it as a parent, and through Kidd’s Orange Red it stands behind Gala. It contributed size, colour, storage life and productivity to all of them, which is precisely the set of properties it was selected for.
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
Found by Jesse Hiatt as a chance seedling and introduced commercially by Stark Brothers. The finding and the introduction are documented.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Hawkeye | Historic spelling | Iowa. The original name of the chance seedling before commercial introduction. |
| Starking | Trade name | One of many colour sports marketed under separate names; all press as the same fruit. |
| Red Chief | Trade name |
Why it matters
- The standing example of what a century of selecting for appearance rather than flavour does to a cultivar.
- Its low acid and high pH make it the clearest illustration in this file of why acid is a production variable and not only a taste preference.
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.
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.
Fuji
A Japanese cross of Ralls Janet and Red Delicious released in 1962, exceptionally sweet and dense and very low in acid, now among the most planted apples in the world and a very large contributor of sugar to modern cider.
Gala
A New Zealand cross of Kidd’s Orange Red and Golden Delicious that became one of the most planted apples in the world — sweet, low in acid, and a very large but structurally unhelpful contributor to modern cider.
Court Royal
A large, pale West Country sweet giving a mild, sugary juice, historically grown as much for the size of the crop as for what it contributed to a blend.
Hangdown
A Devon mild bittersweet named for its weeping habit, sitting close enough to the tannin threshold that sources place it on both sides of it.
Morgan Sweet
A large, early, pale Somerset sweet apple, historically sold as an eating apple and pressed for the earliest cider of the year.
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.
- Why is sulphite added to cider — Sulphur dioxide suppresses spoilage bacteria and wild yeast before fermentation and protects the finished cider from oxidation. How much of it is active depends strongly on pH, which is why low-acid juice is harder to protect.
- What is juice blending
- How is supermarket cider made
- What is modern american cider like
- Can eating apples make a strong cider — Sugar is rarely the problem. Fuji is exceptionally sweet and ferments to a substantial strength; what its juice lacks is acid, which leaves the result flabby and vulnerable to spoilage. Strength and balance are separate questions.
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.
Washington State University cider research programme
Washington State University Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center · university · passage verified 2026-08-24
The single most useful open cider dataset CiderHQ has found. The programme’s cultivar performance database gives juice chemistry, orchard behaviour, bloom and harvest timing and cider-maker tasting notes for 73 cultivars grown at one maritime site over fifteen years, and — unusually — publishes its classification thresholds alongside its figures, so the classification can be checked rather than taken on trust. It also states outright that its results diverge from the English ones. Read in full on 2026-08-24 and transcribed into `data/trials/wsu-mount-vernon.ts`; four published figures were found to be impossible and are withheld there with their reasons.
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, 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.
Research Evidence standard for this record. What that means.