Fruits and vegetables can be categorised into soft pulpy e.g papaya, mango, peaches, avocado, tomato and hard e.g apples, pears, carrots, beetroot . Whilst most hard fruits/veg can be processed into both clarified “clear” juices as well as “nectar” pulp juices, soft pulpy fruits/veg are not so easy to produce clarified juices and are more commonly processed into fruit/veg nectars. Almost all juices can be turned into concentrates.
Processing facility
- A potable water supply including hot water. Water quality is critical, if in doubt use boiled water or add one tablespoon of bleach to each gallon of water to sterilise it. If water is cloudy, a water filter should be used.
- Preferably electricity
- Screened windows and doors to reduce insects
- No horizontal ledges, window sills, or rafters where dust, insects and bird droppings can collect.
- Clean hard surface preferably steel working surfaces
- Separate storage area for chemicals, packaging materials and cleaning materials
- Sloping concrete floor
- Proper drainage for washing down each day
Juicing step-by-step
2. Washing – Washing of fruit/veg is carried out to remove all external debris and contamination. This is commonly the initial process carried out within the confines of the production facility and often food grade sanitising chemicals are used as sterilising agents.
3. Sorting – A final sorting is done to ensure there are no internal contaminants e;g worms or other bugs. For optimum efficiency this operation is carried out on sorting tables or moving inspection conveyor belts within the production facility.
4. Peeling and Seed removal – Depending on the scale of production, some fruits/veg require skins and seeds to be removed before processing: e.g. Mangoes, peaches, papaya, pineapples, avocado.
5. Cutting – Depending on the scale of production and machinery used for processing, some fruit/veg require cutting into optimal sizes for machinery or process used: e.g. mango, carrot, beetroot.
Manual Juice Making
This is a basic form of making juice without the help of any electrical machinery. The process is labour intensive and sometimes a less efficient extraction method.
1. Squeezing or pressing
2. Sieving/Pulping
Small scale fruit/vegetable juice production using electric appliances
Steps 1 – 5 are followed as above before fruit/veg are subject to crushing, grinding or disintegration using various electrical appliances.
1. Disintegration through process of blending
Soft fruits/veg may be blended using commercial blenders resulting more often in “nectars” where the pulp remains in the final product. Fruits/veg processed like this often include mango, pineapple, papaya,tomato, avocado etc and also many combinations of these creating fruit “mixes” or “smoothies”.
3. Grinding Juices of fruits such as apples and pears are extracted through the process of grinding.
4. Centrifugation Centrifugation achieves a separation of particles in suspension in the juice. Many electric juices use this principle where fruit mass is spun at speeds of 6000 to 6500 RPM (rotations per minute) through a sieve that retains the seeds and unwanted pulp mass. Centrifugation can be considered as a pre-clarifying step.
Commercial juicers crushes, grinds and centrifuges – especially good for pineapples and passion fruit. Fruit is pushed through the feeding mouth of the machine and is pulverised on a rotating disc before the pulp is spun against a very fine filter, thus fruits normally needing grinding and crushing can be juiced. The seeds and pulp are expelled from the side shute on the machine.
N.B Citrus fruit are normally juiced using special citrus juicers as their skins contain oils that will create the juice to taste bitter. There are many types of electric citrus juicers on the market ranging from domestic use to commercial.
For further information on machinery and utensils click here