Quinkana

Brew yer own from juiced apples? Just add yeast, sugars for stronger brew, and keep the air out. Cornish pasties - roll your own.

mr mover

Funny ,? works for me, but then i think my "pooter" is possessed :scared: ... MM

MarkMyWords

Exactly, you can't get good apples in Australian supermarkets or even the grocers that I've looked in. No decent varieties to be had. Oh please please please let them do long-distance delivery!

Quinkana

Give 'em a call.

When apples cost per kg more than pork in supermarkets - not much demand.

Growing cider apples

MarkMyWords

Not a very useful comparison. In the UK people are fond of saying that petrol is cheaper than milk, so it must be good value despite the high taxation; that's really not the point, because they serve different purposes. Now that's a damn fine link. They've got some lovely cider apple varieties there. Sigh.

Quinkana

Well, in Australia people sniff both petrol and milk and they eat both apples and pork.

Being high in protein, the food value of pork is much greater than apples which are largely just sugary, starchy water. As a vegetable carrots are ~0.25 times the cost of apples, much better food value and a better juice.

MarkMyWords

What, all at the same time? That explains a lot... That's my point, you don't eat pork and apples for the same reason. Different kinds of pleasure (or utility in the case of petrol/milk) are valued differently. There's much much more to food than "food value" (and even that is not simply a matter of the highly over-valued protein; if we ate only protein we would be dead in no time: scurvy/rickets/kwashiorkor anyone?) That's why doing a comparison by weight or volume is meaningless.

Getting back to the matter in hand, I suppose I should look for a good nursery.

Quinkana

A kg of beans or carrots have more food value than a kilo of apples and a kg of mangoes or custard apples has more taste.

Have you considered your climate - apples need chilly winters - some varieties more than others.

Have you patrolled the long paddock in your area - see what grows and you will get apples for free but are probably infected with grubs.

MarkMyWords

Again, "more" isn't "better". It's just different. I happen to like mangoes and apples, and would consider it daft to say that one of them was better than the other. I can buy perfectly good mangoes here but am doomed to buying second-rate apple varieties. Hence my yearning for better apples. OTOH I have yet to explore fully the more Asian fruit that were ludicrously expensive in the UK. Oh yes, I understand perfectly well why there are no good apples grown commercially in Oz. I just miss them terribly. That doesn't worry me in the least. Scrumping is a great British tradition! Funnily enough I recently saw (much to my surprise) a heavily laden crab apple tree dropping its excess wares. Not that I'm advocating eating crab apples, but where they grow, I might expect interesting eating apples too.

Quinkana

For me, more for / in less is better - occassionaly eat apples in winter when there is less variety of fruit.

If you live near an area with cool / cold winters, I'd be surprised is you can not find a local cheap producer of at least some of your favourite apples if you dig around. Try your local "fruit-ologist" or phone some suppliers.

The British immigrants used to be good at making all sorts of jungle-juice. Many of the older Italian, Greek, ... migrants still order in ~ a tonne of grapes each year and make their own wines and grappa. Maybe a bit more digging around will reveal someone making home-brewing scrumpy. Try asking at your local home-brewers shop.