If anyone wants some quince (variety 'Pineapple') fruit, it is available
as of 5 October 2021 if you want to trek to SE Portland.
Send an email to plants at ledress dot com
for exact location.
Larry
I'll probably be over on Sunday 🙂
I think my tree has only 6 or 7 quince fruit on it after the loquat, pear and quince grafts plus the crazy weather this summer.
After several rounds of thinning since July, I ended up with 250 pounds of fruit,
a typical year. 185 pounds of cosmetically nice fruit and 65 pounds of splits and
weirdos for juicing. This on a 12' x 15' tree. Another quince tree in SE Portland was
lost this year to property development, several have gone away in the past decade.
I am seeing more persimmon trees here in recent years.
Probably tomorrow I am going to try and finish up on a blackberry clearing up project around some quince trees that I think are chinese quinces. This field is in Aurora OR which on my way back home to Vancouver probably puts me in a position that you "can receive one". I bring them home every year because I can't eat oranges due to my having heartburn of which oranges are a primary concern. So I use fresh quince, this high in vitamin-C, and in raw form is very delicious blended up with blackberries.
So I will send you an email for your address. If this works out (and I drop one off) maybe we can get your feedback of the differences between yours and these others.
The Rooney fruit, shown to me yesterday, could be mistaken for an unripe mango,
with its flattened shape amd fuzzless green skin.
Larry: It was nice having that few gulps of red quince juice. I liked it. Bring to a boil for a mere 3 minute period? /unquote. Am I understanding this right that the fruit juice is extracted first then boiled before adding sweeteners?
My box of green species of quinces are still in the car and the greens are quickly paling to yellow now. Presumably the small atmosphere inside a car with windows shut helps.
The way you have everything set up with triplecrown raspberry and the pineapple guava that's now fruiting around the back shows some good planning of over 25 years, so way to go! 
I served that quince juice at the last 3 HOS potlucks.
1. Get rinsed quince, can use cracked, pecked, small rot-spots fruit for juicing.
2. Cut cored and unpeeled into chunks for auger-type juicer.The result is 1 part ejecta to 7 parts coarse juice, by weight.
3. Let juice sit for an hour, skim off foam.
4. Gently press juice through fine-mesh strainer, discard large particles/grit.
5. Let the result of that settle in the fridge for two days.
6. Carefully pour that through coffee filter, avoid pouring the bottom sediments.
7. Heat to steamy phase, add sweetener, juice should be golden, this is my normal finish of the process.
8. I let it go to a boil for the first time this year, it immediately turned rose` color.
Note that no water is used in the process, except for equipment clean-up.
Thanks to Rooney for the compliments.
I should also add that the quince variety is 'Pineapple' and the pure juice
described above is strongly flavored and noticeably astringent (dry mouthfeel).
So I use it as a "sipping" juice, about 2 ounces at a time.
For larger use quantities, sweetened or not, it mixes well with and enhances apple, pineapple,
or white grape juice. I think Looza still makes bottled pear juice, it would go well with that.
Yes, I have also added quince juice to 7UP, Sprite, and Fresca, so it should also mix well with grapefruit juice.
A person who viewed this forum topic came by yesterday and took
the last of the quince fruit. Thanks to all who helped in using this
year's crop.
Larry, I'm following your recipe. A few quarts of juice will be going into the fridge for step 5 after dinner.
Back to Rooney: I sampled two of the "Chinese quinces" today.
One had acquired a more yellow skin, the other was still green-skinned.
*very woody and hard to cut
*large seed cavity with many mature dark seeds
*flesh is greenish and relatively little of it
*yellow fruit was lemon tart; green fruit was bitter; none of the typical Cydonia flavor.
I wonder if this is actually a large Chaenomeles fruit.
Jafar: Step 5 is 2 (arbitrary) days because I find the sediments form a surface somewhat
like drying paint in a can, and these sediments stay put better when pouring off the juice.
The fine sediments will pass through a coffee filter in step 6 without careful pouring.
Using a ladle to get started allows for eventually being able to tip the partially emptied
main container into the coffee filter directly. Replacing a single-layer filter every
quart or so can speed up the process.
All this fussing around is to get as clear a final product as possible; for those who don't
mind cloudy juice, it all tastes the same.
Picture of cloudy juice yesterday before fridge. Overnight it separated into clear and a small layer of sediment on the bottom.
Larry G: Thanks for comparing your 'pineapple' quince to those I brought over. Yours are obviously superior due to smaller seed cavity for 'pineapple'. Mine came from an area designated as pear rootstocks for which no pears were ever got around to be grafted yet. Its also known the original trees were seedlings with the appearance of varying fruit types although tree height was very similar and short. I have no idea yet if these were hybrids between 2 species such as flowering quince (Chaenomeles) or other. They are smaller trees than named cultivars that exist outside the rootstock area. In better seasons these have always been very woody and hard to cut.
As a side I found a string that enables one to see the various attributes of quince varietals. The 'pineapple' seems to be on the heavy production set of attributes according to the list of compared varietals:
Thanks Rooney,
They didn't list any of the Russian varieties, which are my favorites.
In my brief observations, it appears to me that Pineapple is one of the least disease ridden quinces here in the PNWet.
John S
PDX OR
Rooney, perhaps you have researched Pseudocydonia, any evidence of serrated leaves on the Aurora trees?
RE: evidence of serrated leaves
Larry G: This is leaf typical Pseudocydonia sinensis per Wikipedia:
<-- click to Wikipedia image
I have had seed from this Aurora type of quince every year from my compost per lower picture, just like the now mostly yellow and heavily seeded fruit next to it (& 25 cent piece). The flesh is still hard to cut yellow.
<-- click to HOS image
So the record is fixed and should have been very obviously true in the first place that from home (Aurora), Lon always released seeds as pure to type species, they would be as follows:
- The long row just north of pear rootstock (pyrus betulafolia) are native collections from very high elevations. They have a Corvallis OR number for anyone wishing to know later. None are volunteering from root runners.
- The long row of quinces seem to ring true as Pseudocydonia Sinensis and about two weeks ripening after your 'pineapple' other species of quince. Very likely traceable to catalogs in Corvallis as well. Some quince are volunteering from the proximal (closest to trunk) side from very early life. There are no to little (if any) thorns for these.