Guava Juice

If life gives you guavas, you make guava juice. Life just gave me a couple of bags of guavas from a friend of a friend's prolific guava trees. What to you do with a gaggle of guava?

I've never even eaten one, so I had to look it up. It's ok to eat the whole gauva, seeds and all. Just rinse it off, cut off the ends, and munch away.

But my son likes guava juice, albeit the kind you buy in a can. I don't own a juicer or anything fancy like that. So I thought I'd try to make my own with basic kitchen equipment, a blender and strainer. This instructable documents what I did.

Apparently, the guava is more exotic then I realized. The spell-checker wants me to change guava to cave.

Step 1: Ingredients and Tools

Here is what you need:

Ingredients:

Guavas
Sugar
Water

Kitchen Tools:

Blender
Strainer
Knife
Measuring Cup
Cutting Board
Wooden Spoon
Container

Step 2: Slicing and Dicing

Rinse off guavas.
Slice them up by cutting off the black parts at the end.
Dice the guavas to fit in your blender.

Step 3: Blend

Fill up the blender with diced guavas. 4 medium size guavas seems to do the trick.

Fill up the blender about 2" from the top with water.

Add sugar to taste. I used 1/4 of a cup the first time which was fine for me. Kids like more sugar and seemed to like it a lot better if I used 1/2 cup.

Blend until it reaches a smooth consistency.

Step 4: Strain

Now you have to strain out the seeds.

Set up the strainer over your container and pour the blended mixture in. The mixture tends to clog the strainer very quickly. In order to help it through the strainer, stir with a wooden spoon. Almost all of it goes through except the seeds and a little of the pulp.

Repeat for all the juice in the blender.

Other people have told me they just let the seeds settle and then skim but I think I'd have to make the mixture a little thinner.

Step 5: Enjoy

Chill in refigerator. Drink. Enjoy.

Step 6: Other Things to Try.

I tried making guava cheese with all the leftover mush. Add a lot more sugar in the ratio of something like 3 parts sugar to 4 part juice. It was fun to watch the consistency of the juice change to the consistency of cheese. They weren't too popular with all the seeds still in the mush. If I perfect the recipe, perhaps I'll have a new instructable.

Try a smoothie. Add two cups of the guava juice, a cup of ice, and a cup of non-fat milk to the blender. Blend and drink.