Chemical and organoleptic evaluation of some Finnish apple varieties

Chemical and organoleptic analyses were carried out on ten important locally grown apple varieties. Most of the varieties were characterized by high titratable acidity and fairly low total sugar concentration. Consequently the sugar-to-acid ratio (a suggested indicator of the eating quality of apples) remained low. However, some of the varieties with high acidity (Red Atlas, Raike) were scored high in the preference test, confirming that other factors in addition to the sugar-to-acid ratio have an influence on the palatability of apple juices. Generally it seems that juice from most of the studied varieties should be mixed with low acid, high sugar juices to be suitable for commerical juice production