Canning Apple Juice

The jar on the left is apple sauce and the other is apple juice.

I had quite a few wrinkled organic apples that needed to be used up so I decided to use my Acme brand Omega “Super Juicerator” (cue the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner music) to juice them up for a healthy drink. It took the better part of a day, a box of Red Delicious apples, and a lot of patience, but I managed to make 6 quarts of apple juice and about 5 quarts of applesauce.

Now to start, let me just say that I am so not in love with this particular juicing machine. I really wish I had gotten a brand that has a pulp ejection system and a larger feed tube. I should have listened to Tom…he suggested getting the other one, and he was right! This one has to be emptied after about 3 apples, and those apples need to be cut into about 8 pieces with the core removed to feed them into the small opening. Once I already had the juicer and read the direction booklet, I realized that it will not be practical for making tomato juice, since they recommend peeling the tomatoes before juicing…give me a break! But I digress, so…back to my project.

After washing the apples and peeling off the little stickers from the store, I cut them into eighths and cored them. Then they went into the juicer and juice started to trickle slowly from the spout. As the juice in the collection bowl accumulated, I poured it into a sieve to separate the juice from the pulp. I started filling my clean quart jars with juice and saved the pulp to make applesauce.

Each jar was filled, wiped clean and capped with a lid and screw top. When all of the juice had been collected, I had room for one more jar in my pressure canner so I filled a jar with the applesauce and processed it along with the juice. The instructions in my pressure canning booklet called for filling the jars to 1/4″ from the top and processing applesauce for 10 minutes at 5 pounds of pressure. I didn’t see any instructions for apple juice and just used the directions for the sauce.

The rest of the applesauce went in the refrigerator for immediate consumption. We have been mixing it with yogurt, topping our pancakes with it, and eating it for snacks. I think I saw Joe mixing it with cereal and nuts last night. He eats the weirdest things sometimes

Normally I am making applesauce and juice in the fall when apples are ripe and ready to use, but with the boxes of produce that the stores save for me, I end up canning and preserving things all year. It’s nice to have jars of home canned food on the shelves for later. Pin It