Pure Natural Apple Juice
Natural apple juice is not particularly complicated to make at home. One method is to cook the apples in a small amount of water. When the apples are moist, you can drain the juice from the apples through a piece of cloth. This might take some time. However, if you have a juicer or a steam cooker, you can do it more efficiently. There is, of course, the more advanced method of using a fruit grinder and a fruit press, but they are costly, and if you only have a few apples, the juicer will do fine.
Two Methods to Make Apple Juice
I have made juice using both a juicer and a steam cooker. Although, both produced good apple juice, I prefer the juicer because it doesn’t heat the apple juice simultaneously. Finally, with a juicer you can prevent the heat to exceed 80 degrees Celsius during pasteurisation. This prevents loss of flavour as well as vitamins.
Apple Juice with an Electric Juicer
There are plenty of juicers available in stores and chances are you already have one if you like to make your own juice. If you have a lot of apples, a regular spin juicer may not be ideal since it is meant for making small amounts of juice to drink directly.
However, I take a break now and then to allow the juicer to cool off and have used it to make several litres of juice in one take. This is how you proceed:
- Cut and remove the core from the apples. You don’t need to peel the apples. You may use apples that have visual damages, but do not use apples that have begun to rot.
- Fill a container with water and add some lemon juice. Place the apples in the lemon water to prevent them getting brown while you cut and remove the cores
- Start the juicer and follow the instructions. Fill the apple juice into a larger container now and then, and empty the waste box
- After collecting some juice, remove the foam that forms on the top with a slotted spoon. Then pour the juice through a filter to clear it more
- Once you have juiced and filtered all your apples you are ready to pasturise the juice by heating it up to between 72-80 degrees for a few minutes. Don’t let the liquid cook.
- Fill the juice onto sterilised bottles and cap them.
- Store the bottles in a cold and dark room.
Apple juice with a juice steam cooker
Modern steam juicers come in stainless steel. We have an old steam juicer called Safte-Maja, that my husband found at a junk yard. All parts were there and it still works its magic. Here is a description of how to make apple juice:
- To get the best result, start by peeling the apples and take out the core. If you do this, you may also use the leftover apples to make apple butter.
- Fill a container with water and add some lemon juice. Place the apples in the lemon water to prevent them getting brown while you peel.
- Prepare the steam cooker by filling warm water in the bottom container. About 2/3 of the height.
- Then place the juice collector container above the water container.
- Finally, fill the fruit container (the perforated container) with apples and place it on top.
- Place the entire stack on the stove and turn on the heat.
- Open the clamp on the hose to siphon apple juice from the collector to a separate container. Be careful since the liquid might be more than 80-90 degrees Celsius.
- Check the water container at the bottom now and then to make sure it doesn’t run dry. Fill it up with more water if necessary.
- Continue to siphon apple juice until the apples have cooked into a small heap and hardly emits any juice.
- The apple juice can be filled directly into clean sterilised bottles. Cap the bottles.
- If you want to give the juice extra shelf life you may water pasteurize them for 30 minutes. I haven‘t found this to be necessary.
Since apples contain a lot of acidity and you pour the hot liquid directly onto hot bottles, you don’t need to wather bathe the bottles unless you want a really long shelf life for the juice. This juice will store well for 6 monts, but I doubt it will last that long in our houshold.
Enjoy 🙂
The apple juice can also be used to make apple jelly. Moreover, the apples from the steam cooker is a good basis for apple butter. Click on the links if you want to have recipes.
