Best Crabapples for Cider

Yes, crabapples make some of the best cider fruit you can grow, because they bring the acid and tannin most eating apples are missing. Hewe's Virginia crab is the proof: WSU measured its juice at SG 1.060, 9.1 g/L acid and 0.19% tannin, a hair under the bittersharp line, on a tree that takes zone 3b.

We list 19 crabs and applecrabs, every one rated zone 3b or colder (a few are sold out for spring 2027), and this page puts them side by side with the juice numbers we could find and where each number came from. Where nobody has measured a crab yet, we say so. If you're after dessert apples to go with them, start with our guide to the best apples for cider.

Our picks, short version

• For acid and tannin together: Hewe's Virginia crab (zone 3b) and Trail (Bilodeau) crab (zone 1b). Quebec cider makers grew Trail for years as Bilodeau before a 2022 DNA test at the University of Guelph showed they're the same apple.
• For a rosé or a big all-rounder: Kerr applecrab (zone 2), Dolgo x Haralson from the Morden station in Manitoba. USask puts its juice at 15 to 18 Brix with 6 to 10 g/L acid.
• For pure acid in small doses: Dolgo crabapple (zone 1b) and Siberian crab (zone 1), both around 25 to 27 g/L acid, four or five times a normal juice. They're sharps, so they bring acid and color, not much tannin.
• For sugar and acid in one crab: Wickson crab (zone 3), measured anywhere from 13.9 to 18.9 Brix with 8.8 to 13.6 g/L acid.
• For sweet juice: Chestnut applecrab (18.7 Brix average at USDA Geneva) and Centennial applecrab (19 Brix on farm in Vermont), both zone 2.
• For the coldest country: Trailman applecrab, zone 1 per USask and zone 1b in our ratings. Nobody has published its juice numbers, but USask calls it a good juice and mixer, and it took -47F at Ed Schultz's orchard near Bozeman with no damage.

Every crab here links to its tree page with this spring's price and stock. Orders are open now and the trees ship bare root in spring 2027. Most crabs need a different apple or crab blooming at the same time, so see crabs as pollenizers before you order just one.

Every crab we grow, by the numbers

Sugar is specific gravity (SG) or Brix, acid is titratable acidity as malic, and tannin is on the Long Ashton scale, where 0.2% is the line between a sharp and a bittersharp. A range means the sources or the years didn't agree. Zones are our ratings from real winters at our orchards in Missoula and Florence and our grower network. Bloom groups run 1 (earliest) to 7.

On a phone, swipe the table sideways to see every column.

All of these numbers are loaded into our hard cider calculator, so you can blend any of them and see where the juice lands before you plant.

Are crab apples good for cider?

Yes. A good cider crab carries 7 to 9 g/L of acid or more, and the best ones carry tannin too: Hewe's juice tests 9.1 g/L acid and 0.19% tannin, and Trail runs about 7.5 g/L acid with medium tannin across nine samples. Eating apples carry far less tannin (Cox tests 0.07% and Golden Russet about 0.10%), which is why a cider pressed from one eating apple tastes thin. A share of crab juice fixes that. The catch is size. Crabs are small, so you pick and mill more fruit per gallon, and the really sour ones (Dolgo, Siberian) go in by the cupful, not the bucket.

What are the best crab apples for cider?

Hewe's Virginia crab and Trail are the two with the strongest measured case: both are classed bittersharp, Hewe's with SG 1.060 and 9.1 g/L acid, Trail with SG 1.065 and 7.5 g/L. Kerr is next, with 16.5 Brix and 9.5 g/L acid in the Saskatchewan juice trials and a bittersharp rating there. Wickson brings the most sugar of the high acid crabs. Hewe's has the oldest pedigree of any of them: it was grown in Virginia before 1755, Thomas Jefferson set aside his entire north orchard at Monticello for it, and it was a popular Southern cider apple through the 1700s and 1800s. Which one is best for you comes down to your zone, so pick from the hardy end of the table if your winters see -40F.

What these crabs taste like off our trees

Juice numbers tell you what a crab does in the carboy. Here's what a few of them were like eaten fresh, from Luke's own notes and our crew's.

• Wickson (Missoula, October 2, 2025): intense, very bright and fruity, with citrus, melon and hints of raspberry and strawberry, tangy with some nice sweetness, and mild astringency about 15 seconds after eating.
• Hewe's Virginia crab (at peak, fall 2025): somewhat thick skin, starts sweet then turns tart quickly, not super complex, a slight chalkiness. A press crab more than an eating crab.
• Chestnut: one of the sweetest applecrabs we've tried. Hints of bubblegum in fall 2023 at a Kalispell orchard, nutty, mellow and less acidic at the WARC field day in fall 2024. It ripens a week or two before Kerr.
• Kerr: bold and complex, red skin over yellow-tinged flesh. People who grow it describe it as floral, cinnamon, cherry, grape, almond, pineapple and even hoppy.

Can you make cider from only crabapples?

You can, but with Dolgo or Siberian crab alone you'd be fermenting juice at roughly 25 to 27 g/L acid, so it has to be cut with sweeter juice or water. A milder crab like Trail (7.5 g/L) or Hewe's (9.1 g/L) can carry a cider on its own. Hewe's proves it: Liberty Ciderworks in Spokane and Buskey Cider in Richmond, Virginia have both bottled single variety Hewe's ciders. For the very sour crabs, think of them as the acid and color in a blend, not the base.

How much crab to put in a blend

With Dolgo or Siberian crab, start around 5 to 10% of the juice and keep it at 15% or less. Our Zone 3 heirloom blend uses just 4% Dolgo with 6% Hewe's, 20% Kerr, 25% Franklin and 45% Golden Russet, and lands near SG 1.066 and 8.4 g/L acid. With the milder crabs you can go much further: 20 to 50% Kerr, Trail or Hewe's is common.

• Open the Zone 3 heirloom blend: russet sugar, crab acid and tannin, everything rated zone 3b or colder.
• Open the bittersharp crab blend: Franklin, Hyslop and Hewe's for grip, with Golden Russet for sugar.
• Open the rosé crab blend: Kerr and Otterson for pink to red juice. See all our red fleshed crabs for rosé cider.

The calculator flags every number as measured, published or our estimate, so you can see how much to trust each blend. There are ten worked examples on our cider blends for cold country page, and if you're planning how big an orchard to plant, see how many apples for a gallon of cider.

Are ornamental crabapples OK for cider?

Some are, but you can't tell from the tree, and most ornamental crabs have never had their juice tested. Red Splendor, for example, is a pollenizer crab with no published juice numbers at all. If you have an ornamental crab with fruit bigger than a pea that tastes sharp and a little astringent, press a gallon and measure it. Tiny, mealy or bland fruit isn't worth the work.

Pressing crabapples

Crabs are firm and juicy for their size, but they're small, so the mill does most of the work. Grind them fine, the way you would any hard apple, and press the pomace the same day. If your crabs ripen weeks ahead of the apples they're going in with, freeze the juice or ferment it on its own and blend the finished ciders; the calculator has a tool for blending finished batches by acid.

Crabapples for cider in cold country, by region

• Minnesota and Wisconsin: Chestnut (1946) and Centennial (1957) came out of the University of Minnesota's breeding program, and Kerr and Hewe's both make a strong case. See our zone 3 cider apples.
• Colorado: most of the Front Range can grow everything on this page, including Wickson and Hewe's, which need a bit more warmth than the prairie crabs.
• Alaska, the Prairies and the northern plains: stick to the zone 1 and 2 crabs: Trailman, Trail, Dolgo, Kerr, Centennial and Chestnut. See our zone 2 cider apples.

Crabs as pollenizers

A crab that blooms with your apples pollenizes them, so a cider crab can do two jobs. Dolgo blooms early (group 2), Wickson and Hewe's in group 3, and Kerr and Trail in group 4. Match the bloom group to your apples, or browse our crabapple pollenizers.

Shop cider crabs

We sell all of these as edible crabapple trees and applecrab trees, along with the rest of our cider apple trees. The high acid, high tannin ones are grouped as bittersharp apples and crabs, and Martha applecrab rounds out the early ripening crabs. For fruit beyond apples, see fruit to blend into cider.

Sources

1. WSU Mount Vernon cider cultivar database (2002 to 2017 means)
2. Claude Jolicoeur, Bilodeau (Trail) variety page and juice measurements
3. University of Saskatchewan fruit program, Kerr
4. University of Saskatchewan fruit program, Trailman
5. MSU Western Agricultural Research Center, Dolgo (heritage fruit ID guide)
6. Alaska Pioneer Fruit Growers Association, Dolgo crab
7. Cider Workshop, How to use crabapples (Claude Jolicoeur on Dolgo: SG 1.070, 27 g/L acid)
8. Silver Creek Nursery, Dolgo crabapple (cider class and tannin)
9. Bradshaw et al., UVM cider cultivar evaluations, 2014 and 2015
10. Valois, Merwin and Padilla-Zakour 2006, Journal of the American Pomological Society 60(3)
11. Walden Heights Nursery, SARE fruit evaluation 2014 (Table 7)
12. Walden Heights Nursery, SARE project FNE20-960 (UVM lab juice tests, 2020 and 2021)
13. Apple Cultivars for Production of Hard Cider in Michigan (Brix tables, USDA Geneva and MSU)
14. Andrew Lea, Cider Apple Compositional Data (Long Ashton juice table and Geneva table)
15. University of Minnesota, hardy fruit release list
16. Wikipedia, Hewe's Crab
17. Monticello, Hewe's Crab Apple (Jefferson's north orchard)
18. Orange Pippin, Wickson Crab
19. Cider Says, Liberty Ciderworks Hewe's Crab single varietal (Spokane)
20. Brewbound, Buskey Cider's single varietal Hewe's Crab release (Richmond, Virginia)