Juice Futures

Breaking juice news, from the states. Cold weather has bumped the heck out of the price of orange juice. (Wall Street Journal)

Juice Incoming

The past eight months at Juice Nation have been characterised by adventure, tragedy, heartbreak and web silence. This should change soon, thanks for your patience.

A simple summer combination

Strawberries are summer, swollen by warm showers, deep red bulbs suspended close to the soil. The true strawberry season runs from June to August and although most supermarkets sell only one, commercially optimised, variety if you search a bit wider you’ll find a wide range of the beautifully aromatic, carnal berries. For a fine morning juice we combined a dozen delicious strawberries with four class II clementines. The soft warm sweetness of the berries blended with the cheap, imported, clementine’s tarty sweetness to create a subtly fresh and light juice with the colours of a summer sunset.

12 Strawberries
4 Clementines
Put through Matstone single-auger masticating juicer

The raw ingredients

Around 350ml of juice was produced

Juice Art for Juice Nation by ncw

Click to view all of it…

Juicing Ghana

One person is at the  top of the Juice Nation Tree of Knowledge. A juice trailblazer and an incredibly juicewise man, The Juice Father passed his skills on to his son who then shared the love. This sharing led to a desire to share further, it led to Juice Nation. In the spirit of sharing, Juice Nation officer and musical powerhouse Luke Sanger, has sent us a series of photos documenting a typical morning’s juicing in Accora.

A pineapple moment

Visiting ‘the juice father’ in Ghana this summer, I got schooled in the art of juicing on the equator.

We blended lots of different fruit and veg (including cabbage!) it was a mix of things from the garden (like lemons and oranges, which are green skinned not orange) and bought things like ginger and beetroot. I was surprised beetroot grew there, being from Norfolk which is prime beetroot real estate, it couldn’t have been in more different climate/growing conditions!

Everything was chopped small and fed into the Green Power Kempo juicer aka ‘The Hippocrates Juicer‘.

What you can see in the pictures made enough juice for 4 people, for 2 days breakfast.

Prepared for the juicer

Jamestown fruit sellers

Market fresh from Jamestown

a juicemaster in his element

The blend

Fresh fruit

Fresh fruit, separated. Amazing colours all round!

Breakfast juice for four

*Juices of the World* Juice Review: Brämhults – Orange & Strawberry

Brämhults Apelsiner och Jordgubbar

380ml bottle, bought for approx 17 SEK in convenience shop at Stockholm Centralstation, Sweden, July 2010

Ingredients: Freshly pressed orange juice (85%), crushed strawberries (15%).

Brämhult‘s juices are, apparently, popular across Sweden and Finland. This particular juice was amongst the cheapest not-from-concentrate bottled juices available in many shops but looks quite good on the shelf, robust, modern and with a slight sheen of honesty. Underneath the brand name, at the front of the label is printed, in a scruffy handwriting style font, ‘Instead of juicing yourself’. Also on the label is a message to consumers, ‘Because our juices are fresh goods, they only keep for 18 days.’ A genuinely pure, fresh juice is a rarity in shops. The sell-by date, when read with the 18 day claim, suggested this juice had been made in the previous four days to purchase. Pretty fresh so far, but how did it taste?

The juice, chilled from the shop, presented itself as unusually watery for a fresh juice, low on sweetness and also strong flavours. The oranges represented as quite bitter, perhaps not that ripe or not from one of the more fructose rich varieties. They were not sweetened very much by the strawberries, the berry flavour joined in but as part of the orange juice, not as its own separate hit of summer sunshine. The result was a conservative,  effectively refreshing blend. The juice left a pleasant aftertaste and, once warmed up by summer sun, the flavours of the fruit became slightly clearer with the strawberries singing a bit louder in the heat, although the heat didn’t thicken up the consistency of the liquid. While this product may be an alternative to making your own juice, I find it hard to believe that the same fruit, juiced freshly, wouldn’t provide a more rounded, rich flavour and texture. Despite it’s lack in providing sensual luxury this was, overall, a very decent juice from a brand we’ll keep an eye on.

A journey into fruit

We have received a charming and inspiring report on an exploratory juicing session from fresh juicers in Essex. This is home juicing at its most raw, nothing beats the feeling of putting things you find tasty through a juicer and trying the results. Although the path to juice may not always be smooth, it sure is fun. We’re very much looking forward to more from these new operatives as they hone their skills.

_____

A late night read of Juice Nation lead three of us to fire up our 700 watt dual speed Cookworks Signature Whole Fruit Juicer and embark on a night of co-pro-juicing.

Juicer X

We started off with some of the exotic and went for juicing up some pomegranate. This I must admit was fantastic. The only problem is as you can see one pomegranate does not go far especially between three people, three people with an appetite for juice.

One Pomegranate

Using all of our will power we put this to the side and got out the big gun AKA the Pineapple.

Chopped

Juiced

Fresh Pineapple Juice, as many of you know, is a wonderful thing. Straight from the juicer it has a light and fluffy texture. If it is allowed to sit for a while it is still undeniably tasty but loses its bubbly, foamy texture which to my mind is what makes this one of the best juices you can make.

(Continues on page 2…)

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An update from an undisclosed location

Our chance discovery of a 14.4kbps modem fused to a knock-off palm pilot and a Sputnik era satellite phone in a remote jungle shack allows a chance to post an update, post an explanation for the lack of activity on this juice blog. We’ve been risking life and limb on a frantic paper chase. Our efforts to attempt to recover our £15,000 operating fund, lost by a former Juice Nation operative in Minehead, have taken us to some of the most dangerous and downright evil places in the world. We can’t divulge any details about where we’ve been or what we’ve done, even if we wanted to. We are happy to reveal, however, that our travels have exposed us to more plants and their juices than are known to Western food science. This new bank of knowledge will surely elevate Juice Nation to unimaginable heights, as long as we make it back alive, which doesn’t seem likely.

While the battery on this device lasts we might as well have a look at a juice health claim, sent to us by a an operative holding the fort in the UK.

The Independent, May 11 2010

Professor Andy Jones, who seems to be behind this bold beetroot boast, certainly looks like a specimen of healthy humanity. Juice Nation does not exist to promote health claims attached to the drinking of juice, nor does it seek to knock them unjustly. Good luck to the athletes binging on beetroot juice elixir. As we’ve discussed in the Beetgrapple recipe, the juice of the beetroot is a harsh and unusual element, dangerous when isolated. Professor Jones’ guinea pigs drank half a liter a day. To us that seems more dangerous than scaling down a ravine in the Andes, at night, the rocks around you shattering from rifle rounds. Not that we’d know anything about that.

The screen on the device is going dim. Happy Juicing to everyone, we hope to be back.

Visit to Bloc Weekend music festival yields juicy new juice

A plain clothes unit of Juice Nation operatives attended the Bloc Weekend music festival in Minehead earlier this month with the twin aims of enjoying the music and juice networking. The music was great, the crowd also great, Juice Nation heartily endorses Bloc as the holiday of a lifetime.

The juice networking was of mixed success. Before sharing the germination of a couple of new special guest Juice Nation recipies, I’ll share a Juice disaster, one of many. This one happened before the festival even began. An operative, while queuing in the Minehead Tescos, his trolley loaded with fruit, bankrupted Juice Nation. He gave the entire £15,000 JN operating fund for the 2010/2011 tax year to a middle aged man in smart trousers, grey trainers and a leather jacket. The man had claimed that he could double the money, with a machine that he keeps in his car, that works with the cigar lighter. Needless to say, the con-man walked with the money and the gullible operative was RETIRED and JUICED.

On the plus side, Juicing went on. Two long-standing master juicers, who have been inspirational and supportive to the Juice Nation project, shared their skills and shared their juice. Luke’s Anger, a creative juicer and shining star of 21st century Dance, brought his flesh tearing, juice gushing centrifugal juicer to the event. Luke demonstrated his juicing prowess, bringing a sweet but sharp approach. His creations had echoes of Caribbean islands, warm days in the sun and balmy nights under starry skies. Luke agreed to share his knowledge on Juice Nation at some point in the future, we can’t wait.

Also on great juicing form was DJ Joe Hart, who moved the crowds (in a good way) with his sets over the weekend and moved the bowels (in a good way) with first class juice combos. Joe, working on the Juice Nation burgundy Matstone, made a rare litre of ‘Methadone’, his greener than green fruit/veg juice of distinction. A closely guarded secret, the recipe for this legendary blend has long been a subject of much debate in the juicing community. We can reveal that Joe offered to share this recipe with the world, through the proud medium of Juice Nation! Keep those eyes PEELED.

C-Rayz Walz on juicing

From: Matisyahu TV

As well as being one of New York’s finest emcees C-Rayz Walz is clearly also a wise disciple of juicing. The end of the video’s got what’s most likely the best recorded freestyle that deals with juice. I’d love to be proved wrong on that one, if you’ve got any juice related music you’re proud of send it in to Juice Nation and we’ll give it a kind ear. JuiceNationHQ@googlemail.com

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