They were probably overripe.

Think of a banana. Some people like them completely green, some like them when the peel has turned black and I'd only consider them suitable for squishing out into a banana bread batter.

The flavor and texture are hugely different between the two, and that is only one variety of banana at different stages of ripeness.

I've only had pawpaws a few times, but the ones I've really enjoyed have had a texture more akin to ripe mango than the custard-texture some describe. Its difficult to imagine a fruit-lover not liking that flavor.

What was awful about the taste of the ones you had? Was it bitter? Did it taste rotten or fermented?

If you think it was the most awful thing you tasted, you probably shouldn't try durian ;)

Pawpaws, you love em or hate em. They have a very strong odor and flavor that makes some gag. I like the odor and the flavor.

I agree with Murky that the age of the paw paws is probably an issue here. Another thing might be that Integration Acres (as far as I can determine from their web site) paw paws are wild harvested, and not named varieties. I have tasted some of the named varieties, which were selected for superior flavor, and they tasted good at the point they are about to fall from the tree or just have fallen. I have tasted wild varieties at the same stage and they tasted inferior. So you have two possible reasons for the poor taste: inferior varieties and their age. Their poor keeping quality is one reason there is no paw paw industry.

I would also guess that the problem is that they were overripe, and being wild, the quality will be quite variable. I've been eating wild paw paws for the last 10 days, and some of them are really good, others that have gotten overripe are pretty nasty.

On the other hand the named selections I have had have all been really good to excellent, and I find it hard to believe that any fruit lover would hate them. Don't judge paw paws by what you got from Integration acres.

It's worth noting that Neal Peterson says that the variety 'Shenandoah' was the consistent favorite when he sold paw paws at a farmers market, Shenandoah has a very mild flavor compared to other selections.

Go to http://www.earthy.com/Pawpaws_C249.cfm

This place is supplied by Deep Run Pawpaw Orchard, which grows several named selections of paw paws. You can read an article about the orchard here:
http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/articles/2009/09/18/news/local_news/newsstory1_pawpaws.txt

I imagine they won't be shipping much longer.

Alex

My experiences in previous years eating pawpaws have been widely varied from excellent to awful, and I am yet to understand the reasons behind the disparity. The best pawpaws I've had have been of the named varities, especially the Peterson selections, but I've repeatedly found even this distinction does not guarantee good flavor. This year I tried some Shenandoah, Allegheny and Taytoo and found them all bitter and nauseating. I have plenty more but really no desire to try another. And I'm not one to be easily disgusted - if it's any measure of such things, I've never found objection to any of the durian I've tried, though others nearby have had very different opinions.

>This year I tried some Shenandoah, Allegheny and Taytoo and found them all
>bitter and nauseating.

I talked to someone else this year who said their Shenandoah fruit was bitter. He had a cool and wet growing season, what was your weather like?

Weather may well play a large part in the fluctuations in quality of pawpaws from year to year. They are known to require a number of very warm days to develop and ripen properly, and this was lacking for much of the Northeast and some central states this year.

We have no local paw paw here in Madison, Wisconsin, but we do have blueberry shrubs out in the yard. They were not as sweet this year. Too much cloudy weather, I guess.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but yes, sounds like they were overripe to the point of being rotten, which is a shame.

When I first tasted my fruit from my 2 seedling trees, I thought "hmmm" not sure if I liked them, sort of a medicinal aftertaste. I've since learned that they need to be at the correct point of ripeness to be at their best, which, IMO, is when the skin is just beginning to show a bit of brown/black flecks, but is overall creamy yellow -- not too green, not too ripe, sort of medium.

The other thing I've found is that most of the bitterness is in the skin itself and the thin green layer of cells right underneath the skin. Remove this, and most of the problem goes away. I don't know if bitterness is the right way to describe it, it's more of an aromatic quality similar to breathing in pine or balsam fir fragrance, and sort of medicinal in a way like Listerine.

Cooking also changes the flavor a lot, removing the rest of the wierd taste. I made some really killer Paw Paw blondies last year -- came out tasting of butterscotch. Yum.

alright i was hoping there was an explanation for this... Thanks. I didnt want to think this wonderful legendary fruit was awful. I will certainly try to find some ones with a good ripeness.

So far I had one pawpaw this year and it was the best ever -- totally awesome banana custard! Not a whit that I didn't like in the flavor; I only wished there was more than one. I had cut away the skin with a knife instead of scooping it and I think that eliminated the bitterness as Dennis alluded to above. It had the black specks but was still a bit green so I had thought it was going to be a bit underripe, but it was absolutely perfect. I found it on the ground so I don't know what variety it was for sure (could have rolled downhill).

Scott

I've heard this described by others: that those unfortunate enough to have tried a few bad pawpaws are unable to enjoy even good pawpaws for some time afterwards. This has happened with me after trying a few bitter pawpaws this year - when I then tried one that I could not objectively find fault with, I could not enjoy it, as the taste immediately recalled the prior nauseating experience. As this seems to be a common reaction, I would advise sampling a small bit of a pawpaw first and then proceeding to eat it only if there is not a hint of a disagreeable flavor or aftertaste.

But as bad as my pawpaws were I would not describe them in the terms that semaje used, and I agree with the consensus that those were probably overripe. That brings up the question of how Integration Acres ships its pawpaws. If it's any longer than overnight, I would think it too long for pawpaws picked at the right stage of ripeness. Pawpaws picked too early for the purpose of withstanding an extended shipping period will never taste right.

I ordered from Integration Acres this year (again) myself. Got 14 or so fruit. 5 were excellent, 3 over-ripe already, 3 just ok, and 3 still not ripe (sitting and waiting at this point).

While picking kiwis this week to bring to work for some of the more adventurous people to try I noticed 3 pawpaws in one of my trees (which I somehow missed)...who knows if they'll ripen though with the weather we've been having.

~Chills

This discussion is making me wonder if this issue is not also why many people say they don't like pawpaws at all - its very hard to get them at optimal ripeness and maybe the few they had were not optima'. I had some sort of good in the last few years, but none were as good as this years one; based on only that one my impression of how good pawpaws can be has gone up by a huge amount.

Scott

Well not to belabour the point, but I recently purchased 5lbs of pawpaws from Integration Acres in Athens Ohio, and I found them to be completely delicious. Yes some of them were alittle over ripe, but I consider that par for the course since the harvest came early this year (1st week in Sept), and therefore I'm getting the very last few pawpaws on the tree (Oct 10th). In any case there were no objectional flavors to palate, and I intend to buy from them again next year.

I've been experimenting with paw paws in the southeastern acidic swamplands of a changing (back and forth) USDA 8b/9a zone for about eighteen years. Although I've had blooms for several years, apparently we've never gotten pollination until this year, and it was on one of my oldest trees, a seedling that was likely harvested from the wild in Tennessee. I believe that it produced four fruit, in two clusters, but one cluster quickly fell off, and the other, they probably got dropped by a squirrel just a few days ago, but the squirrels apparently did not like them (there were bites in them) and left them on the ground.

These paw paws seemed to be a bit small, but they had already started to soften. They smelled just like a pindo/jelly palm fruit, with seeds and texture similar to a loquat, maybe a little bit more soft flesh, and the taste was like a jelly palm fruit but without the acidity. They smelled just like a jelly palm fruit as well, kind of musky with a mixture of tropical fruit. There definitely was a bitterness after eating it that stayed in my throat/mouth for awhile.

It's been very hard to get these guys to survive in the acidic wetlands, but occasionally, they do take hold and eventually start going into a growth mode. However, for each one that has survived, there have probably been 3-5 that has failed, including potted, bare root, and grafted varieties. Some of the best plants I'd gotten, as far as being potted and having a good, healthy root system, have been from stark brothers, but I've gotten them from all types of nurseries. The worst grafted ones I've gotten were little twigs that seemed to have arrived dead.

Since this has been an ongoing experiment for a long time, I've experimented with planting them everywhere, high areas, low areas, shade, sun, in-between, and in my limited plantings, the ones that seemed to take off the best were always in shade or partial sun.

One of my youngest trees to flower was a Tallahassee/Panhandle seedling, probably as young as 3-4 years old and probably less than 3' tall, while my TN seedling was about 15 years old when it first bloomed. Interestingly, I never got suckers until it actually got pollinated for the first time. Some of my grafted varieties have consistently bloomed, while many of them (including the mango cultivar) haven't. I probably have somewhere around 8-9 grafted cultivars and around 10 or so seedlings. That gives me a genetic diversity of nearly 30 genetically different plants, as soon as the grafted ones sucker, because the suckers come from the rootstock, not the top grafted material.

With the above said, seeds produced from the fruit we get going forward can be used, to further diversify the experiments and be used for future grafting purposes.

I did not realize that it would take 18 years to get this far, and it could potentially be another 15-18 years before we could potentially start introducing paw paws to the industry that are capable of reliably producing fruit in this zone, or sent down to Orlando and Tampa, for further experiments. Selectively breeding paw paws for their lack of needing 600-1000 chill hours is only one step, and the next step is actually selectively breeding for fruit size, quality, etc. I may be long dead before we see top quality paw paw fruit being reliably produced as far south as Tampa, but I believe it's a possibility. It could be 20, 30, or 40 years before the next generation of people perfect it.

We have a friend with a paw paw tree & he gave us one to try. My husband & stepson thought it was the greatest thing they had ever eaten - couldn't stop raving about it. I took one sniff of it and was grossed out, but I took a taste anyway. Instantly started gagging. Thought it was the most disgusting fruit I had ever tasted. I had to brush my teeth twice & use Listerine to get rid of the taste in my mouth cuz I kept dry heaving. I couldn't even be in the same room as it after that. Obviously not a ripeness issue since the boys thought it was heavenly even though it tasted rancid to me. It was the most bizarre experience ever.