juicing aronia berries

I just thought I'd share with y'all my painless experience today processing tons of aronia berries.

First: my goal. I'd like to have aronia juice kind of like lemon juice.Tart, and sweetened with some honey for a good summer beverage. I wanted to save a fruit concentrate. And I wanted it to be small and packagable (such a capitalist!) so that I could create a sample for customers, and sell the concentrate.

What I did: Harvested all the berries with a friend, so more fun than by myself. De-stemmed the berries and put in a big bowl, where I washed them too. Blended them and put them into a strainer lined with cheesecloth, with a bowl underneath to catch the juice. After a few hours of dripping, I poured the juice into ice cube trays. It could have been like 4 gallons of fresh berries. And the juice filled up just TWO ice cube trays. (but heck, that's what 'concentrate' means right?)

I'm thinking one ice cube of aronia for each batch of un-lemonade. I mean, that stuff is Tart. Well maybe two, we'll see. I think this method could also work for some other tart berries, sorbus/ mt. ash comes to mind first.

I also happened to be making an apple pie while this was going on, so I added aronia juice to the apples for the tart that prevents discoloration. It was a nice little addition to the pie and blended in very nicely

kelda wrote:
(but heck, that's what 'concentrate' means right?)

well. sorry but to be concentrated you would then have to boil that juice down to remove some water. I am always dissapointed when I make tomato juice. ALL those maters made ONE quart??? you might could get more out if you used one of these...



It will separate all the pulp and juice from the skins, seeds and stems. it really gets all the juice adn leaves the skins dry dry dry. Then you could clarify it and use any pulpy solids in healthy recipe too.

True, Leah, a food mill would've been great. Even if I beat it, and then wait while it drips out again and again and again, it's still not that efficient. I'd like my pulp, like you say, to be dry afterwards. Oh well.  (also wish I had a steamer-juicer).

But along this line of thought, I was thinking that some other berries would work great for frozen lemon-juice-like cubes: autumn olive and sea buckthorn.
The colors alone would make me happy: red and then orange (for the berries above), and then a deeper red for sorbus, and a beautiful purple from the aronias. Permaculture kool-aid.

that would make for a pretty drink! you can become the martha stewart of permaculture  uhh. without the questionable financial moves hopefully lets see I can see...

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ok ok I'll stop before everyone vomits on their keyboards.....

oh, and by the way, i was thinking of my use of the word 'concentrate' in the first post. I think I was thinking along the lines of the mainstream 'lemon juice concentrate' that's kept in those round things in the freezer. I guess it's kind of a misnomer, because it sure isn't concentrated lemon juice, right? That would be Super tart. It's just a concentrate of what will later be sweet lemon juice.

Semantics. The lemon folks probably add some water or other carrier to spread out the tart, plus a bunch of high fructose corn syrup.

I could think of another word to help appropriately describe my colorful little juice cubes.

Kelda O. wrote:
And the juice filled up just TWO ice cube trays. (but heck, that's what 'concentrate' means right?)

I'm thinking one ice cube of aronia for each batch of un-lemonade. I mean, that stuff is Tart. Well maybe two, we'll see. I think this method could also work for some other tart berries, sorbus/ mt. ash comes to mind first.

I also happened to be making an apple pie while this was going on, so I added aronia juice to the apples for the tart that prevents discoloration. It was a nice little addition to the pie and blended in very nicely

Aronia apple pie!! Mmmm....

Did you ever end up trying to package/sell this? Sounds like a great idea. New to the forums, but interested in aronia berries - specifically mixing them with natural ingredients to reduce tartness/astringency. So, are you still doing this?

Cheers