garlic taste test

[tjg911]

I just did a garlic taste test on 4 of the 5 garlic varieties I grew this season. I want to buy a softneck variety from the good people at http://wegrowgarlic.com and I'm trying to decide how much garlic I need to buy based upon the space I allocate for garlic. I thought maybe I'd drop one of the varieties I'm growing to add space for a new softneck.


So I cut about 1/3 of a clove of Korean Red, German Red, and Music from 2 different sources that I will call Rich's Music and Gauger's Music. I've grown 3 of these for 3 years here and Gauger's Music I grew for the 1st season. The only variety I did not taste was German White because I know I want to grow it again. Most of the bed is Music so with 2 different sources for it I wanted to see how they differ.


All I can say is my mouth is on fire! I started taking a bite from the pointed end but I now know that the base of the clove is even hotter. Korean Red is very sneaky, at 1st you don't taste anything but in about 3 seconds it hits and it is piercing. Both Music are hot and very burning and you know it quickly tho Gauger's Music is a bit sweeter. The German Red is perhaps the hottest, it burns and penetrates like acid eating into your tongue! And then I tried them all again but this time it was the base end. Each variety was even hotter and burned more, most brought tears to my eyes and extreme pain to my tongue!


I have to admit I never did this before, I usually just crush the garlic and add it raw to something or saute it with something. These are all fresh dug on 7/19 and dried for 4 weeks. Man oh man I have some really hot garlic. I usually eat Music last because it keeps the longest so by year end or early spring it has lost it's heat and punch. I often eat raw garlic but I never realized how hot it was this soon after digging.


Tom

[salix]

So Tom, what decision did you arrive at, re: which one to drop?

Dug mine a week ago, it's just beautiful! Thanks to your timely warning, I will refrain from a taste test...

[tjg911]

i decided to drop nothing.

what i will do is grow both rich's and gauger's music but cut back on the number of cloves planted to just 32 of each. this year these 2 dominated the bed. no need to grow so many now as i have a variety that'll last a year. i'll grow 32 each of korean red, german red, german white and the balance will be chamiskuri about 40 or 50 cloves.

chamiskuri is an artichoke softneck and lasts a year in storage. an added bonus is that artichoke type garlic have larger and less cloves vs the silverskin type that have smaller outer cloves and tiny interior cloves.

so instead of growing nootka rose (a sliverskin) as i have for a few years i'm buying chamiskuri (an artichoke) from http://www.wegrowgarlic.com/. karen and mike are very very helpful and i highly recommend them. in the past i always posted telling people to buy garlic locally as the farms that sell garlic charge way too much, about $12 to $22 a pound! but you can get varieties not found locally and then plant from your harvest never having to buy that variety again.

so i am happy with chamiskuri and it was due to all the emails between me and karen and mike. very helpful and they really took the time to reply to emails, lots of emails and answer lots of questions from me!

tom