Cider apple
Tremlett’s Bitter
A hard Devon bittersweet with tannin at the top of the English range, used in small proportion and difficult to use in any other way.
Also written Tremletts Bitter, Tremlett’s, Tremlett.
- Classification
- Bittersweet — Long Ashton classification
- Harvest
- Early (September)
- Single varietal
- Not suited to a single-varietal cider
- Blend role
- Tannin and structure, Early season
- Origin
- Exe Valley, Devon
- Species
- Malus domestica
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Biennial bearing
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
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.
At the extreme high-tannin end of the bittersweet class; under the French scheme fruit of this character would sit in the amère family rather than the douce-amère one.
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 | Heavy | |
| Sugar | Moderate | |
| Bitterness | Dominant | |
| Astringency | Harsh | |
| Aroma | Neutral | |
| Body | Full |
Long Ashton acid and tannin ranges, with bitterness and astringency at the top of the scale on unanimous description of the fruit as harsh.
Contributes aggressive bitterness and astringency, and overwhelms a blend at anything above a small percentage.
Aroma
No aroma descriptors are recorded for Tremlett’s Bitter, 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.
2 separate analyses of total acid. They are shown as they were measured, in their own contexts, and are not averaged — the same fruit grown somewhere else can genuinely give a different number.
Total acid0.120–0.200 % w/v
Long Ashton, Somerset, England, Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985 · Titration of pressed juice, reported as malic acid · National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol
Very low even by bittersweet standards. One site, one climate.
Total acid0.270 % w/v
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England, 1905–1975 · 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. · Andrew Lea
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.
How much acid the juice contains, conventionally reported as malic acid. Measured in percent weight per volume.
2 separate analyses of total tannin. They are shown as they were measured, in their own contexts, and are not averaged — the same fruit grown somewhere else can genuinely give a different number.
Total tannin0.280–0.400 % w/v
Long Ashton, Somerset, England, Long Ashton analyses, 1903–1985 · National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol
Among the highest tannin figures recorded for an English cider apple. Given as a range because the underlying per-cultivar tables are unverified.
Total tannin0.340 % w/v
Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, Somerset, England, 1905–1975 · 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. · Andrew Lea
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.
The phenolic fraction responsible for bitterness and astringency. Measured in percent weight per volume.
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
- 5 May
- Harvest
- 30 September
- Bloom density
- 4 of 5
- Productivity
- 2.8 of 5
- Growth habit
- Semi Spreading
- Bearing
- Standard
- Alternate bearing
- Yes
- Blind wood
- 2 of 5
- Rootstocks
- MM.106
- Held as
- Geneva
Filed here as sharp.
WSU records this accession as “Not the true ‘Tramlett’s Bitter’”. Because the site disowns the name, CiderHQ shows the observation but attaches none of its figures to Tremlett’s Bitter.
Not the true ‘Tramlett’s Bitter’
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 “Tremletts Bitter”, early/mid 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.
NYSAES Geneva cider cultivar analyses
New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, New York · late 1970s · AVI / Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989, edited by Donald L. Downing (ISBN 0-442-22117-7)
Humid continental, with a hotter summer and a colder winter than any European cider region. The compiler suggests the growing conditions may be part of why the phenolic figures sit so far below the English ones, and is careful not to claim it.
- Held as
- Listed as “Tremblett’s Bitter”
The compiler flags this row’s acidity and pH — 1.31% and 3.15 — as “frankly unbelievable” for a fruit that is a heavy bittersweet in England, and records the explanation: the material distributed in the United States under the Tremlett’s Bitter name is not the English cultivar, and behaves as a bittersharp. A measurement of the wrong tree is not a measurement of this fruit.
- Acid, pH, tannin and fruit weight of the tree listed as Tremblett’s Bitter, published as 11.8 °Bx, 1.31% acid, pH 3.15, 0.122% tannin, 91 g. The source itself says the accession is not the English Tremlett’s Bitter. Publishing the figures against this record would attach a known misidentification to the cultivar page it misidentifies.
Analysis of finished cider after a spontaneous fermentation. Acid by titration as malic; pH by meter; tannin by an unstated method; fruit weight as a mean. The data appear to come from a single season, and the original work was unpublished.
In the orchard
- Harvest window
- Early
- Flowering
- Pollination group 3
- Vigour
- Moderate
- Cropping
- Markedly biennial — heavy and light years alternate
- Keeping
- Poor — mill soon after picking
Early, from mid September — unusually early for a heavy bittersweet, which makes it useful for starting a pressing season.
Alternates heavily and is not a generous cropper in any year.
Ripens and softens quickly; should be milled promptly.
Mid-season flowering.
Disease and pest susceptibility
| Issue | Susceptibility | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Scab | high | — |
| Canker | high | Canker is the usual reason Tremlett’s Bitter trees are lost. |
Juice and pressing
- Extremely low acid
- Very high tannin
- Deeply coloured juice that browns rapidly
How it is used
- A small-percentage tannin correction in Devon and Somerset blends
- Used early in the season when little other bittersweet fruit is ready
On its own
Not suited to a single-varietal cider
Single-varietal Tremlett’s Bitter is made occasionally and is generally described as punishing. The fruit has no acid to balance the tannin and nothing aromatic to distract from it.
About Tremlett’s Bitter
Tremlett’s Bitter is the most concentrated tannin an English orchard reliably produces, and everything about how it is used follows from that. Five per cent of it in a blend is a decision; fifteen per cent is a mistake that will take two years in barrel to soften and may not soften at all. Devon makers have used it for a century as a corrective — the thing you add when a cider tastes thin and washed out — and almost never as a component in its own right.
The unusual feature is its season. Heavy tannin in English cider fruit normally arrives in November, with the Jerseys and the Normans; Tremlett’s Bitter ripens from mid September. That gives a mill something structural to press at the start of the run, when the alternative is early sharps and sweets that ferment into something insipid. It is a genuinely useful property and the main reason the cultivar survives in commercial orchards despite being a poor and irregular cropper prone to canker.
The juice is worth noting for a practical reason: it browns very fast. High phenolic content plus active polyphenol oxidase means pressed Tremlett’s Bitter goes dark within minutes, and makers who care about colour either sulphite promptly or accept a deep amber blend. This is a property of the phenolic load rather than a fault, and it is one of the clearer illustrations of what a total-tannin figure actually represents.
On the identity question, the fruit is stable and well documented in modern collections, but "Tremlett" as an origin is little more than a surname attached to a district. The Exe valley story is repeated everywhere and rests on nothing checkable. It is also easily confused in conversation with Ellis Bitter, which shares a season and a region and is a much milder apple; anyone reading an old Devon orchard list that says simply "Bitter" is reading an unresolvable record.
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
Attributed to a Mr Tremlett of the Exe valley. The surname is local and common in that district, which makes the attribution plausible and unverifiable in equal measure.
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.
Ellis Bitter
An early Devon bittersweet, large and conical and deep red, giving good early-season tannin from a tree that crops heavily and unevenly.
Ashton Bitter
A twentieth-century bittersweet raised at Long Ashton, combining early ripening with substantial tannin and a compact, precocious tree.
Major
An early, heavily bittersweet Somerset apple with high tannin and very low acid, valued for putting structure into the first pressings of the season.
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.
Styles it is characteristic of
West Country farmhouse cider
Cider made on the farm from tannic bittersweet fruit, wild-fermented in wood and sold still and unfiltered, in a tradition whose variability is one of its defining features.
Scrumpy
A colloquial West Country word for rough farm cider that has never had a fixed definition and now carries as much marketing weight as descriptive meaning.
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
- 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.
- Why does apple juice go brown when pressed — Polyphenol oxidase in the fruit reacts phenolics with oxygen the moment cells are broken, turning the juice brown. In cider making this is sometimes prevented with sulphite and sometimes encouraged, because it also drops harsh tannin out of solution.
- What is a traditional west country cider blend — Predominantly bittersweet fruit for body and tannin, with a proportion of sharp fruit for acidity and sometimes a smaller share of bittersharps for both. The exact composition varied by farm and by what was in the orchard.
- What is somerset cider
- What is chisel jersey
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.
Long Ashton Research Station cider fruit analyses
National Fruit and Cider Institute / University of Bristol · research institute · registered as competent for this subject · covers 1903–2003
The foundational body of cider-fruit science in English. Long Ashton produced the acid-and-tannin classification that divides cider apples into sweet, sharp, bittersweet and bittersharp, and analysed hundreds of cultivars grown at its Somerset site. Its figures are historic measurements of specific fruit at a specific place, not universal constants — a distinction CiderHQ preserves in every measurement record that cites it.
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.
The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing
Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24
Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.
Traditional record Evidence standard for this record. What that means.