Make homemade juice from berries and fruit.

Grow your own

Do you want to fill your pantry with homemade treats? Making your own juice is a perfect way to utilize fruits and berries from the garden.

Preserve, pickle, dry, can, and ferment. There are many possibilities when storing the harvest from the garden. If you have fruit trees and berry bushes at home, you can use some of it to make your own juice. Mix different varieties to bring out delightful flavor combinations, or go for safe classics.

What can you make juice out of?

You can make juice from all kinds of berries and fruits, such as red currants, black currants, raspberries, and elderflower/elderberry. Of course, you can also make strawberry juice, and a tip is to mix in rhubarb for an extra good taste. You can also make juice from apples and pears, but you won't get as much compared to making apple or pear cider. If you have plenty of apples, we recommend delivering them to a reception center that makes apple cider for you. The fruits are crushed there, and that way they get the most juice out of the apple harvest.

This is how you make your own juice

You can make juice all year round. The important thing is to pick the berries and fruits when they are fully ripe, as this will extract the most out of them - and you will get the best juice. If you are not going to make juice right away, you can freeze them and take them out when the time is right.

You can make the juice either in a juice cooker or with a cloth. A juice cooker is a three-part large pot with a lid on top. The advantage of this is that it is simple and easy, you can tap the juice directly into the bottle via the hose. If you are making juice with a cloth, you add water along with the berries when you cook them, otherwise the process is pretty much the same.

Sugar from the start or from the end?

It is easiest to add sugar from the start, because then you can tap out the finished juice directly into the bottle while the steaming process is still ongoing. The downside of this solution is that it can get sticky in the hose, and you do not have the same control over the sweetness. Alternatively, you can add sugar to the juice in the pot, taste it, and then bottle it by hand. Then you also have to add preservative halfway through the steaming process (if you want to extend the shelf life).

You will need this:
Berries or fruit
Bottles to store the juice in
Juice cooker - or pot and cheesecloth
Preservative if necessary

Make juice - step by step

Clean the bottles
Thoroughly clean the juice bottles so that the juice stays fresh for as long as possible. This will minimize the risk of bacterial growth, preventing the juice from molding. Many prefer glass bottles that are sterilized before use (you can do this by putting them in boiling water for a few minutes).

Clean berries and fruit
Pick the berries or fruits and remove any dirt and debris. They must be fresh and free of mold. Rinse them if necessary, or take them out of the freezer if you've already prepared them earlier.

Fill and stack the juice cooker
If you are using a juice cooker, start by adding water to the bottom container. On top of that, place the next unit, which will catch the juice. Then, add the last container, which holds a basket for the berries.

Sugar or no sugar
When you add the berries, you can choose to put everything in at once or add a little sugar in between to achieve a sweeter juice. If you add sugar, take a handful of berries, place them in the basket, sprinkle sugar over them, and repeat until the basket is full. If you decide not to add sugar from the start, just put all the berries in at once.

Boil the water
Turn on the heat and boil the water. The steam will rise and steam the berries, causing the juice to flow down into the middle container. The entire process takes a little over an hour. Attached to the middle container is a hose through which you can drain the juice into bottles. If you added sugar initially, you can pour the juice directly into the heated bottle. If you didn’t add sugar at the start, pour the juice into a new pot and add the sugar afterwards.

Mid-time trick and preservative
After the berries have steamed for about half an hour, you can drain some juice from the middle container and pour it back over the berries to help dissolve the sugar better. Additionally, you can add a preservative, such as sodium benzoate, dissolved in a little juice. Use about 1 teaspoon per liter of juice and follow the instructions on the package.

Add sugar afterwards
If you chose not to add sugar initially, take what comes out of the hose and pour it into a pot. Measure how many liters of juice there are, add the correct amount of sugar, and a preservative dissolved in a little juice, then stir. Finally, pour the juice into bottles (make sure the bottles are heated first to maintain the same temperature as the juice).

Bottle the juice
Fill the bottle as high as possible with juice, as the liquid shrinks when it cools. You want to minimize the amount of air in the bottle for the best shelf-life.

Cool down slowly
Place the bottles upside down in a container, such as a cooler, and cover them. This will allow the juice to cool down slowly for the best results. The shelf life depends on how tightly sealed the bottle is, but it's not uncommon for it to last up to two years if the bottle is sterile, sealed, and full of juice. Once opened, the shelf life of the juice bottle is limited.

Freezing option
You can also freeze bottles of juice, but be sure to pour the juice into plastic bottles and not fill them completely. Juice expands when it freezes, and glass bottles can crack.

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Grow your own