Storing Juice

The juice you will produce will be naturally cloudy and will contain small particles of suspended apple solid – as this contributes a great deal to the flavour and texture there should be no need to filter. Fresh juice is so tasty that you will find a lot is drunk immediately; however, it will keep in the refrigerator for two to three days before it begins to ferment. Juice may be stored for longer periods by:

1. Freezing: Cut the top off an empty fruit juice carton, place a polythene bag inside, fill with juice, tie the top of the bag and freeze. Once frozen, the bag can be removed from the box and you have a brick of juice, which can be stacked in your freezer. One cubic foot will hold over five gallons. Juice can be frozen for months without any appreciable loss of flavour.
2. Pasteurisation using a purpose built pasteuriser with both thermostat and timer:
   Careful pasteurisation will kill off any organisms that could cause spoilage of the juice whilst preserving its fresh apple flavour.
   • If you do not have freezer space then the traditional preserving jar method can be used. Fill clean glass bottles with juice and close the caps loosely, place them in a ‘bath’ of water and heat to 75°C. Once the juice inside the bottles has reached temperature it should be left for a further 25 minutes at 75°C before tightening the closure and allowing the bottle to cool. Both our stainless steel and enamel pasteurisers hold 13 x 75cl bottles so juice can be bottled in large batches with ease. The shelf life of bottle, pasteurised juice should be 1 – 2 years.
• Alternatively, juice can be pasteurised in bag-in-boxes for medium term storage. With the aid of a filling stand, the bags can be filled ready for pasteurisation and then sealed. Two 5 litre bag-in-boxes or one 10 litre bag-in-box can be pasteurised at any one time by the same process described above. Bag-in-boxes can easily fit into a fridge so are excellent for those who wish to serve chilled apple juice. The shelf life of bag-in-box pasteurised juice should be 3 – 6 months.

When not in use for fruit juice, both models of pasteuriser can be used for mulling wine and cider, preserving fruit and vegetables, yoghurt making, and even as a tea urn for large functions. To extend this list of functions, you could purchase a Juice Extractor Top to allow you to extract juice from currants (blackcurrants, redcurrants and whitecurrants), stoned fruits such as damsons, plums and sloes, hard fruits like crab apples and quinces, and for berries like blueberries, raspberries, loganberries and elderberries; please see Steaming Currants & Berries for more information.

To view the pasteurisers, please click on Storing Juice and select Pasteurising.