Juicing at home. How we make grape juice in a juicer

Autumn is the season of ripening of many varieties of grapes. Tired of making wine? Today I will tell you what else you can do with grapes 🙂

The first year after moving, we had a lot of grapes, and there weren’t many options – the grapes were sour, and we were very busy with moving, so we made wine. In the second year, there were not very many grapes, and this year we have a lot of grapes again, the wine is worth even after the first vintage (we are still alcoholics), and…what else can be done? Compote? Boring! Jam? Bones! JUICE! You can make juice from grapes! How? I will tell you about this soon.

There is such a device, it is called a juicer. Early, they were produced, including in electric form, now more often you can find them in the form of a saucepan, which is placed on a stove (it doesn’t matter whether gas or electric) and juice is made. The design may initially surprise you with the number of containers, but in fact everything is very simple!

Capacity for water

Water is poured into the lower container of the juicer. The juice in this device is extracted with the help of its evaporation from the berries, so we pour water according to the marks – in our case, we poured to the upper mark. The water should be monitored from time to time, as the water may boil and the pan may burn. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to add water after receiving 3-4 litres of the resulting juice.

Juice collection

I’m not sure if the name is correct, but the second container is used directly to extract the juice from the berries. The photo shows this capacity after use. The structure is a container with a bulge in the center, through which steam enters this section, and due to the sufficient height, the juice does not fall directly into the water, but flows out through the hole at the bottom of the structure. It will be discussed a little later.

Capacity for products

In this photo, we can see a third of the structure – this is where our raw materials for extracting juice come from. The raw materials can be very diverse – someone gets juice from apples and pears in this way (extracted longer than from grapes), someone from raspberries or currants. In general, there are no restrictions as such, and juice can be obtained from most berries, but grapes are exactly the product that can be used in few places, so in our case, juice is extracted from it. I would like to note that the cake in the photo is from 12 litres of juice. It was obtained during the processing of three basins (with a top) with a volume of 15 lighters each. That is, when processing a container of grapes with a volume of about 50 litres, you can not remove the cake immediately after receiving the juice, but simply add fresh grapes on top.

The process is not complicated. We sort through the grapes and leave the berries themselves, after which we wash them.

We pour water into the lower container, put the second container, install the third one (with a mesh) and pour our grapes there. Cover the whole thing with a lid, put it on medium heat. The first time we made juice, we put on a small fire – we were afraid that the water would boil. You should not be afraid of this, because the design is designed for the fact that all the steam will come out through the hole, the bigger the fire, the more and faster the juice will go. If on low heat we got 3 liters of juice in about 3 hours, today 12 liters were obtained in about 5-6 hours of slow work.

Everything was explained from the mechanics, but… where does the juice flow?

On the side of the central container there is a hole into which a tube is inserted. It is through it that the juice enters the container. If there is a lot of juice, you can release it into the bottle by squeezing the clamp. Basically, everything is calculated so that through the hole in the tube (clamped with a clamp), the juice will flow little by little. If you need to change the container, you can attach the clamp to the handle of the container and the juice will not flow. But what should we do with the juice?

Everything is easy and simple. The juice should be poured into sterilized jars (we sterilize in a gas oven at a temperature of up to 170 degrees). After the container is filled with juice, roll it under the lid, then turn the can over onto the lid and put it under a blanket for sealing. Additionally, it is not necessary to sterilize or boil the juice, because this unit already heats the juice with high-temperature steam at the manufacturing stage. This is more than enough so that nothing happens to the juice.

Grapes are sour, but do you like sweeter juice?

The juice can be made sweeter. To do this, you should add sugar to the container with grapes. The calculation is individual according to your taste preferences, but in general, as far as I remember, according to the recipe, something around 50 grams will be enough. In our case, even without adding sugar, the juice from ordinary grapes (unfortunately, I can’t tell you the variety) turned out to be moderately acidic (yesterday it was more acidic, today it is quite sweet).

All right, but what is the price of the question?

How lucky here. In general, juicers on classifieds sites are found at a price of ₴200-300 and higher. We thought it best to buy a new WB-1256. WB-1256 stainless steel juicer from a local store in Ukraine at a price ₴800 (about $32). On Ebay same models sold for $70-80. There is no difference in work between them, so there is no point in recommending one in particular.

Are we satisfied with the result?

In our blog, there are reviews of certain things with variable success. Sometimes we don’t like the quality (or functionality) of things we’ve purchased. And yet, the juicer is 10 out of 10 for the household if you have grapes or other berries (those who have a lot of currant bushes will understand) that have nowhere to go, but you want to do something useful.

Author: Sa Crea

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