Dessert · 2 trees planted · confidence high
A late, crisp, high-acid commercial dessert apple, partially self-fertile but cropping better with a mid-to-late bloom partner such as Fuji or Granny Smith. In cider it contributes acid and aromatics rather than sugar or tannin — cidermakers report roughly 71% juice yield at about pH 3.2 and 11 Brix — so it functions as a sharp aromatic base rather than a standalone. Needs thinning to avoid alternate bearing.
Disease: Susceptible to apple scab, powdery mildew and rust, and somewhat susceptible to fireblight. Prone to internal (Braeburn) browning in storage. Scab pressure is the main practical concern on the Olympic Peninsula and it will need a spray program that the scab-immune varieties in this planting do not.
Discrepancies: Not in the WSU cider cultivar database — it is a commercial dessert cultivar, evaluated by WSU tree fruit programs rather than the Mount Vernon cider trial — so no maritime-Washington cider juice data is available and the SG/Brix figures come from cidermaker reports rather than trial analysis. Harvest timing conflicts by region: New Zealand and general references say mid-October, but Braeburn is a very late-maturing cultivar bred for a warmer, sunnier climate, and on the Olympic Peninsula it frequently runs into autumn rain before reaching full sugar. Recommended keeping the mid-to-late October window but flagging the maturity risk explicitly, since that is the site-specific fact the general sources omit. Ploidy is well established as diploid across references and is not in dispute.