JoeReal

My very first to show off (actually my second bunch), 100% California Grown Dwarf Brazilian fruit. I harvested this last 12-02-2006 and placed it under the cupboard and started to turn color about 3 days ago. All fruits ripened under the cupboard this morning, 12-09-2006. This is my second bunch this season, we have finished the first one but did not take pics of those. I still have a late bunch hanging out there in the winter, the tree so far is holding after 14 frosty nights, will try to experiment on that if it will make it through the winter and will report it here if success or the attempt was futile. Meanwhile, celebrate with me on this DB fruits that will exist but for a short while:






The results:
Taste similar to Saba and California Gold when ripened to the same color. But come to think of it, the Dwarf Brazilian has more of the Saba flavor that I remember in the Philippines compared to the Saba fruits sold in Oriental Stores! This seems better to use than the store-bought saba. Dwarf Brazilian fruits are slightly smaller than saba but bigger than California Gold.

When these are microwaved cooked, the DB's taste is not as sweet as that of Saba, but when uncooked and eaten fresh, it seems to be sweeter. This could be due to less amount of amylase which usually sweetens plantain type of bananas when you cook them.

Well, the DB are all gone now, this morning, 12-09-2006, I made tostones out of them and my wife and kids couldn't get enough! They tasted excellent for tostones. So no DB wine for me this year. Perhaps next year.

NANAMAN

Thanks for the taste results Joe. I don't know what Saba tastes like either, so I guess I'll just have to wait until my bunch of DBs ripen.

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JoeReal

Tastes similar to Dwarf Orinoco.

mrbungalow

I thought Dwarf Brazilian was supposed to have a tarty apple kind of flavour?

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eggo

Yummy, never had a DB or Saba but that looks delicious! I will hopefully be acquiring a Saba next year.

JoeReal

Now we know why it shouldn't be called apple banana in the first place...

chong

Thanks for the update, Joe.

Now that I've seen another picture of a ripe DB, and your description of its taste, these lead me to believe that all these plants are somehow related to the Sabá, or mutants of it (as with Cardaba, Praying Hands, even the Pitogo). Most of the pictures I've seen of green DB look more like green Bungulan or Gros Michel, where they are evenly 4-sided, longish, as opposed to short and stubby, and occasionally triangular cross-section. Rmplmnz has a photo of green DB fruits on the plant. I thought that the DB might be a true dessert type rather than more of a cooking type.

I've attached the picture of harvested DB that I got from Rmplmnz. I did not want to post them on my folder because they're not mine. Chris(Rmplmnz), I hope you don't mind.

As you can see they're a little more slender than Sabá, or even the D.Orinoco.

Attached Images

Braz.JPG (38.0 KB, 37 views)

maesy

Hi Joe

Can you tell me something more about your Dwarf Brazilian?

I found out that the DB is at least as good storeable in a cold basement as Dwarf Orinoco!
Comparing to Cardaba, FHIA-18 or the most other bananas I guess, are they staying dry. The others allways start rotting down from top where I cut the leafes off. I may not loose the plant, the youngest leaf stays green, but I loose a part of the stem.

When in the summer did the flower emerge on the DB, and at what height?

Maesy

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bencelest

Joe your pic is reminescent of saba also. So I take it that it is a cooking banana also? The california gold is a fresh eating variety so I guess.
and what about a thousand fingers?
I think what I have that you gave (that is fried right now because of the arctic blast) is a thousand fingers or lady something.

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meizzwang

Bringing back a very old thread, figured I'd throw in my 2 cents on a Dwarf Brazilian Taste Report.





Check out the flesh color! Maybe environmentally induced? I didn't notice all of them having this color:


TASTE REPORT
TEXTURE- slightly chewy but in a good way! Very pleasant, has some thickness to it that really makes you feel like you're eating some calories. It's filling like a cavendish, not fluffy or light like Blue Java where you can eat an entire hand before getting full. 2 or 3 medium sized fingers does the job for me, and I'm an average sized dude.

FIRMNESS – pretty dense yet soft.

SWEETNESS- Decently sweet at peak maturity, but not super sweet where it hurts your teeth. Just the right amount!

TARTNESS- Quite tart if you eat them right when they're yellow. Wait 2-3 days, and it's still tart, but the sugar balances it out and the flavor is incredibly bright and flavorful. I've always been skeptical about people describing sour fruit as being good, but this isn't like an unripe orange. The acid is like adding wine to a sauce: it really brings out the flavor and isn't so overpowering, it's more of a background flavor.

RIPENESS- 2-3 days after the peel turns yellow seems to be peak ripeness. This is when texture, sugar content, and background subacid flavor is at its perfect balance. The peel should be looking a little weathered or slightly beat up and a bit darker yellow. If you eat this banana right when the entire peel turns yellow, it's not very sweet and tastes like a slightly tart, unripe cavendish. I actually like it at this stage, but most would probably not.

PEEL: very easy to peel, medium thickness. There are some strings that get stuck to the meat when the fruit is at peak ripeness, these should definitely be removed because they're not pleasant to eat (slightly stringy). The neck of the stem becomes very fragile once at peak ripeness, but is tough as any other banana before that. That said, the fingers break off very easily once at peak ripeness.

FLAVOR- At peak ripeness, the acid and perceptible sugar are in perfect balance, and the flavor becomes way more amplified compared to your store bought cavendish! Some have described it has having both lemony aspects to it, as well as the typical, aromatic banana flavor with a lemony. Unlike Rajapuri, where all the fingers tasted great regarless of how well filled out they were, the dwarf Brazilian fingers needed to be fat and really full to have the best texture. skinny, unfilled fingers were slightly crunchy? and stringy, but still had that out of this world flavor! We ate every last one!

RATING (out of 10): 9.2/10 I rate american goldfinger as 9/10, but this is slightly better in my opinion because it's easier to grow, withstood frost better probably due to its shorter height, easier to get bigger fingers, and after a month of eating this banana every day, my entire family didn't get tired of it! Can't say the same for any other variety I've harvested so far! However, it could have just been the luck of the draw, I've had some goldfinger bunches that turned out amazing, while other bunches from the same clone were just okay.

Yield on Dwarf Brazilian was excellent, the first bunch lasted a family of 5 an entire month! We picked hands as needed, didn't harvest everything all at once, which is key to extending the "bunch life" if that's a term. Our cool, Northern California climate delayed ripening big time too!

Botanical_Bryce

All the fruit I ever saw from Dwarf Brazilian were more elongated with a bottleneck tip. Those don't resemble the ones I have seen.

Botanical_Bryce

Botanical_Bryce

More Raja Puri looking but little more orange and blunt than most of mine but some come out near identical to that.

Mudturkle

Wow! I wonder is anyone else has a Dw. Brazilian with orange flesh like that? That plus no bottle necks? Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

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Central Texas Zone 8B and Gulf Coast zone 9B: Raja Puri, Dw. Brazilian, Dw. Orinoco, Dw. NamWah, Dw. Cavendish, Dw. Green?, Dw. Red? Iholena Tigua, Veinte Cohol, Misi Luki, Pisang Raja.

meizzwang

I'd be surprised if this is rajapuri, which I also grow:


The main thing that sticks out is the flavor is very different from rajapuri, a lot more acid in Dwarf brazilian. Rajapuri has only a hint of acid compartively, and isn't as aromatic in flavor if that makes sense.

Rajapuri matured much quicker, about 7 months from the first bloom. This dwarf brazilian took almost a year from the first bloom to mature. In the tropics, I've heard reports of Dwarf Brazilian taking 6 months, which when translated into my cool climate, seems about right.

Leaf structure is different too, Dwarf Brazilian has much wider leaves in comparison.

I'm no ID expert, but what I do know is that the lack of bottle necked tips doesn't mean it's not dwarf brazilian. I have another bunch hanging and I think there are a few that look bottle necked, will take pics shortly.

There's a lot of phenotypic variance in the fruit size and shapes, and since I'm way up in Northern California, it's not surprising that these plants aren't always behaving like they do elsewhere. I cut off the male flowers on the first two bunches, but another p stem is going to flower anyday now, so I'll leave that on for ID purposes.

Botanical_Bryce

I used Raja Puri as a visual never really thought it was.

robguz24

Hmmm, nothing about that looks anything like a Brazilian I've ever seen. Especially with that color, I'm thinking it must be something else.

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meizzwang

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, the proof is in the male flower, gotta wait to see what it looks like. I was so confident in the source that I didn't keep it on. I still wouldn't be surprised if the climate here is the reason for such phenotypic variation....either that or some mutation could have occurred. For sure, this is a cold hardy dwarf plant that tolerated frost better than any of the other varieties, and there aren't many varieties of cold hardy dwarf plants in the US, so that narrows it down a bit.

For what it's worth, here's the plant (in the foreground) after experiencing some frost and months of cold rain: