Thursday, November 15, 2012

Storing Your Juice

Hello all. Sorry I haven't been more active with this blog. Life has been hectic on many fronts and I'm just now getting back into a groove. Expect a lot more activity out of this blog in the near future.

Anyways, let's get back to business. In my last post I mentioned that I'd talk about storing fresh made juice to consume later. Typically, it's best to consume the juice right away, most experts agree that within the first twenty minutes is ideal. After that time period the juices begin to lose many of their vital nutrients that make these fresh juices so healthy.

That's fine and all, but juicing can be a little time consuming, and many people can't drop everything to make every batch of juice right before they want to consume it. So, what I and many others do is make our juices in big batches two or three times a week instead of every single day. Doing this allows us to consume our juice whenever we want to, and most people would never make it through something like a juice fast without doing this. Granted, we know that these juices aren't optimal in terms of nutrients, but I'm going to mention a few ways to ensure that these stored juices can be as good for us as possible.

The two main things that deteriorate juices are light and air, so to store our juices we want to eliminate both as much as possible. If you plan on storing your juices then the first thing you need to do is purchase some air-tight containers. Mason jars work great, and I prefer the wide-mouth kind because they're easier to wash. Since air is something we want to eliminate as much as possible it's best to fill these mason jars all the way to the top. I also own various sizes of mason jars so that i can put smaller juice batches in smaller jars, still filling them to the top. If you wanted to take this one step further then you could even vacuum seal your juices. I put the juices in the refrigerator as soon as possible, and they stay there until I'm ready to consume them. This way the juices aren't exposed to much light (only when the fridge is opened.)

Juicers vary in terms of how long the juice made by them can last for. Low RPM juicers usually tend to make juice that can be stored longer than higher RPM juicers. As a general rule, I don't let juices sit longer than 48 hours before consuming them, and as always, the sooner the better. Another helpful tip is to add an extra lemon to your juices. The citric acid from the lemon juice helps preserve everything else. One other option that I don't necessarily recommend is freezing your juices. It can be done, but that doesn't mean it really should be. However, if you made a lot of fruit juice, then it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to pour some of it in some ice-cube trays. This can be a sweet treat that many kids will love, and still much better for them than the processed, store-bought popsicles. Anyways, I hope this helps those with hectic schedules. Juice on.

1 comment:

  1. Hectic I can empathize with! This post is so timely for how crazy busy things have been at our house lately. I was actually just wondering the other day how to store juice and in the past had to dump some out which is costly. Thanks for the great info!

    ReplyDelete