Fresh fruit and vegetables from your own garden simply taste best. So why not make juice from it yourself?
Sometimes the fruit harvest is so bountiful that it pays to make your own juice. And that has a big advantage compared to bought products: since the juice is left in its natural state when you make it yourself, it is also much richer in vitamins. You don't even have to make just fruit juices. Delicious juices can also be made from many types of vegetables such as tomatoes.
Appropriate selection of fruits/vegetables
You can basically use anything your garden has to offer to make juices. However, almost all berries (currants, strawberries, blackberries, etc.), grapes, pears, apples, cherries and plums are particularly suitable. And as already mentioned, fruity tomatoes, as well as beetroot and carrots. Fruit juice combinations of e.g. apple-cherry, apple-pear, a mixture of forest fruits, etc. even guarantee a very special taste experience.
In order to be able to make juice from the fruits or vegetables, you must first harvest and clean (wash) them well. You can then start with the actual juice production. The following options show how you can do this.
Introduced 3 ways to make juice
Possibility 1 - home brewery:
Comfortable compact devices are now available in specialist shops, which ensure that you can easily set up your own home brewery with little space. Standardized household appliances even enable fruit juice pressing of up to 70 liters per hour. However, the average purchase price of such devices is between around 1,000 and 2,000 euros. The in-house cider factory then processes the fruit into delicious juice in just a few steps.
How it works:
- Washed pome fruit is crushed with a fruit cutter, berries can be processed directly.
- The crushed pieces of fruit (the so-called mash) are optimally pressed with an automated hydraulic press, which is fitted with a filter on the inside.
- The pressed juice is immediately inappropriate vessels made of stainless steel or plastic ( alternatively, wooden barrels, sterilized bottles or special cardboard boxes can be used). You can store the juice in many of these special containers for several weeks.
Hint:
You can then even use the fresh fruit juices to produce alcoholic fruit must (prerequisite is a fermentation process) and various fruit liqueurs. Those are great homemade gifts from the garden, aren't they?
Option 2 - Juicer:
For the production of only a few glasses of juice, which should be suitable for immediate consumption, the purchase of an electric juicer in the form of a powerful household appliance is completely sufficient. With such a juicing device, however, you can only ever press a few fruits and process them into juice - on average only up to 1.5 liters per pressing process. This acquisition is therefore less suitable for larger harvest quantities.
➤ Tip:
Sometimes these small juicers are offered as accessories for a conventional food processor and you can also use these devices to make delicious smoothies.
Option 3 - Large fruit presses:
Many commercial fruit juice factories and some horticultural associations that own a large fruit press also offer gardeners the opportunity to have their crops processed into fruit juice for a small fee. However, when using large juicers, it is not always guaranteed that you will get 100% juice from your own garden fruits. Although the quality is usually just as good as when you make your own fruit juice.