Fruit juice processing
Practical Action
No horizontal ledges, window sills, or rafters where dust, insects and bird droppings can
collect.
This technical brief outlines the basics of fruit juice processing. It does not give specific details
or recipes for individual fruits. These can be found in the individual technical briefs (lime
cordial, mixed fruit juice manufacture, passion fruit juice).
Method of production
For all the fruit based beverages, the first stage is the extraction of juice or pulp from the fruit.
The following are the key manufacturing stages:
Selection and preparation of raw material
Juice extraction
Filtration (optional)
Batch preparation
Pasteurisation
Filling and bottling.
Any fruit can be used to make fruit juice, but the most common ones include pineapple, orange,
grapefruit, mango and passion fruit. Some juices, such as guava juice, are not filtered after
extraction and are sold as fruit nectars.
Preparation of raw material
Select mature, undamaged fruits. Any fruits that are mouldy or under-ripe should be sorted and
removed. Wash the fruit in clean water. It may be necessary to chlorinate the water by adding 1
tablespoon of bleach to 5 litres of water. Peel the fruit and remove stones or seeds. If necessary,
chop the fruit into pieces that will fit into the liquidiser or pulper. Remember that at this stage,
you are exposing the clean flesh of the fruit to the external environment. Make sure that the
utensils are clean. Do not leave the cut surfaces exposed to the air for long periods of time or
they may start to turn brown and this will discolour the juice. The fruit pieces can be placed in
water that contains lemon juice (250ml lemon juice per litre of water) to stop them browning.
Juice extraction
There are several methods to extract juice depending
on the type of fruit you use. For citrus fruits which are
naturally juicy, the best option is to use a hand
presser (see figure 1) or a revolving citrus 'rose'.
Some fruits such as melon and papaya are steamed to
release the juice. Apples are pressed and fruits such
as mango, guava, soursop, pineapple, strawberry must
be pulped to extract the juice. The fruit pieces are
pushed through a perforated metal plate that crushes
and turns them into a pulp. Some fruits can be
pulped in a liquidiser and then filtered to remove the
fruit pieces. There is a range of equipment available
that varies in size and in the type of power supply
(some are manual while the larger ones require
electricity). For the small scale processor, the Mouli
Legume or a hand-powered pulper/sieve which force
the fruit pulp down through interchangeable metal
strainers (figures 2 and 3) is sufficient.
Figure 1: Hand presser
2