Juice Concentrate from Fruit

Fruit concentrate is just fruit juice- but stronger. The idea is to take all of the flavor of the fruit and remove all of the water from it. The most common use I've seen is to freeze and store fruit juice compactly, but it can also be used for other things. For example, I made this fruit concentrate so that I could add stronger flavor to fruit juice gummy candies (I'll post an Instructable on that shortly!).

There are two ways to make juice concentrate from fruit. They depend on the type of fruit you are using.
For wetter, easily juice-able fruits, go to Step 1: Frozen Concentrate. Good for oranges, lemons, many other fruits if you have a juicer.
For fruits that will be a pain to juice, go to Step 2: Boiled Concentrate. Good for berries, pomegranate, apples, pears, etc.

Step 1: Frozen Concentrate

Use this technique for fruits that are easy to juice, such as oranges, lemons, limes, etc.

The method of freezing is based on the fact that juice can be extracted from ice- if you've ever made a fruit juice popsicle and sucked on it too hard, you remember that you sucked all the flavor out and had a pure ice-sicle left on the stick! Here's how to use that.

1. Juice your fruit by any method- a hand juicer, a lime squeezer, by hand, into a freezer-safe container.
2. Freeze it. This might take a while.
3. Set up a container that can hold all of the juice with a narrow funnel on top. Upend frozen juice on top of it.
4. Let sit at room temperature while the juice drips out.
5. When the ice is sufficiently clear/white, you're done! Throw out the ice and keep the concentrated juice.
6. Repeat freezing/thawing as necessary.

I juiced about 17 oz. of orange juice, and by repeating the freezing/thawing method described above twice, condensed to about 10 oz. It's much stronger tasting and thicker in consistency. You can also see a darkening of the color (the photos are in order).

Comments

[Penolopy Bulnick]

Awesome! I didn't know you could freeze it and the juice would drink out. I would think you would just get the same thing melted; that's cool to know :)

[HollyMann]

Wow...this is incredibly smart! I love this...and plan on trying it out sometime in the future! I wonder what else the concentrate can be used fir. Ill have to checkout your gummies