Cider apple
Rheinischer Krummstiel
An old Rhineland apple named for its bent stalk, long-keeping and dual-purpose, and a familiar tree in the meadow orchards of western Germany.
Also written Krummstiel, Rheinischer Krummstil.
- Classification
- Not classified under any recorded system
- Harvest
- Late (Late October)
- Single varietal
- Rarely bottled on its own
- Blend role
- Acid lift, Late season, Bulk juice
- Origin
- The Rhineland, Germany
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
How it is classified
No classification scheme has been recorded for Rheinischer Krummstiel. That is common outside Europe: the English, French and Spanish systems were each built for their own fruit, and a cultivar grown where none of them applies simply has no class. What the fruit contributes to a blend is described below regardless — the class is a shorthand for that, not a substitute.
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 | None | |
| Astringency | Slight | |
| Aroma | Present | |
| Body | Medium |
Description in Rhineland orchard practice as a long-keeping, moderately acid dual-purpose fruit.
Firm and moderately sharp with a distinctive bent stalk that identifies it at a glance; it softens and sweetens in store.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Rheinischer Krummstiel, 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
CiderHQ holds no sourced juice analysis for Rheinischer Krummstiel. Figures for this cultivar circulate, but they reach the present through compilation rather than through the original tables, and publishing a number we cannot attribute would give it an authority it has not earned. What is known about how the fruit behaves is described above and below.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Late
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Vigorous
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Very good — holds in store for weeks
One of the longer-keeping German apples, and it was valued as a winter fruit before it was valued for the press.
Juice and pressing
- Moderate to high acid at picking, falling in store
- Negligible tannin
- Reliable yield
How it is used
- Winter eating and cooking
- Most, Viez and juice
- A standard tree of Rhineland Streuobstwiesen
On its own
Rarely bottled on its own
Not a practice; its juice is a component.
About Rheinischer Krummstiel
Rheinischer Krummstiel is identified by its stalk, which curves distinctively where most apple stalks are straight, and that is a more reliable field character than colour or size. Naming a cultivar for a structural feature rather than an impression gives it a better chance of staying distinguishable, which is worth noting given how many fruit in this file are named for how red or how big or how sour they are.
It is a keeper. Before refrigeration, an apple that would hold in a cool cellar until March was worth more to a household than one that would not, and the winter-keeping cultivars form a distinct class across northern European pomology. Cider and Most took the fruit that was left when the keeping stock was drawn down, which is why so many German cider records describe dual-purpose keepers.
Its acid falls appreciably during storage, so a Krummstiel pressed in November and one pressed in February contribute differently to a blend. This is a general property of stored apples and one of the reasons German Most varies through the winter in ways that have nothing to do with the fermentation.
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.
| Name | Kind | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Krummstiel | Regional name | Rhineland. The bare form — “crooked stalk” — is descriptive and applied to more than one fruit. |
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.
Blanquina
A pale-skinned Asturian cultivar of high reputation, and — like Raxao, with which it is usually named — an acid-block fruit rather than a semi-acid one.
Regona
The most acid cultivar the Asturian designation characterises, at 7,1 g/L, and one of the most planted: a late, hard, acid-bitter fruit that supplies the backbone of *sidra natural*.
Rheinischer Bohnapfel
The classic German *Mostapfel*: a very late, very acid, enormously productive Rhineland cultivar that carried more Apfelwein and Viez through the twentieth century than any other single fruit.
Txalaka
The most widely recognised Basque cider apple: a hard, sharp, late cultivar from Gipuzkoa that supplies much of the acid backbone of *sagardoa*.
Fuentes
The second-most acid cultivar the Asturian designation characterises: a vigorous, heavy-cropping tree whose juice runs to 6,2 g/L of acid, and which and which sits at the opposite end of the register from the sweet block.
Glockenapfel
A large, bell-shaped, very acid Alpine apple that keeps until spring, grown across Switzerland and southern Germany for cooking, storage and *Most*.
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 you blend cider
- How should i store cider — Cool, dark and at a steady temperature. Light causes light-strike in clear glass, warmth accelerates oxidation, and temperature swings push cider past the closure of a bottle that is not tightly sealed.
- What is bohnapfel — A German Mostapfel — a cider and juice apple of the Rhineland — long valued for high acid and a tannin content unusual among German cultivars, which is why it appears in almost every recommendation for German Apfelwein.
- How long can apples be kept before pressing
- What is apfelwein — Apfelwein is the dry, still, tart apple cider of Hessen in Germany, known locally as Ebbelwoi and served from a stoneware jug into a ridged glass. Despite the name it is a cider, not a wine in any technical sense.
- Why is apfelwein associated with frankfurt — Hessen kept a dense landscape of scattered orchard trees around Frankfurt and a network of pressing works to work them, and the drink became a city institution with its own glass, its own jug and its own taverns.
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.
Hochschule Geisenheim University — beverage technology
Hochschule Geisenheim · university · retrieved 2026-08-24
German beverage-technology research covering apple wine and fruit juice processing, including the enzymology of clarification.
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.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.