Looking for Apple Juice: How to make and bottle your own homemade Apple juice (directions, recipe, with photos and free) in 2022? Scroll down this page and follow the links. And if you bring home some fruit or vegetables and want to can, freeze, make jam, salsa or pickles, see this page for simple, reliable, illustrated canning, freezing or preserving directions. There are plenty of other related resources, click on the resources dropdown above. If you are having a hard time finding canning lids, I've used these, and they're a great price & ship in 2 days.
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Prepared this way, the jars have a shelf life of 18 months to 2 years, and require no special attention.
The most important step! You need apples that are sweet - that will eliminate the need to add any sugar. Most apple juice doesn't have as much natural sweetness or flavor because they use underripe or off-spec apples. You can choose the best apples you can get and make far better apple juice. Don't get me wrong, it is fine to use "seconds", as long as you cut out the bruised spots!
If you can, choose apples that are naturally sweet, like Red Delicious, Gala, Fuji, Rome and always use a mixture - never just one type. This year I used 4 bushels of red delicious and one each of Fuji, Yellow Delicious, Gala and Rome. This meant it was so sweet I did not need to add any sugar at all. And the flavor is great! The Fuji's and Gala's give it an aromatic flavor! Honeycrisp and Pink Lady are also excellent, sweet, flavorful apples.
You can pick your own, or buy them at the grocery store. But for large quantities, you'll find that real* farmer's markets, like the Farmer's Market in Forest Park, Georgia have them at the best prices. In 2012 , they were available from late September at $14 to $30 per bushel. 2013 prices, thanks to abundant rainfall, are likely to be good at the real farmer's markets, like the Atlanta-Forest park Georgia State Farmer's Market and orchards in the southeast of the U.S.
You'll get about 12 to 20 quarts of apple juice per bushel of apples. Count on 15 or 16 quarts per bushel.
* - not the cutesy, fake farmer's markets that are just warehouse grocery stores that call themselves farmer's markets.
Now's a good time to get the jars ready, so you won't be rushed later. The dishwasher is fine for the jars; especially if it has a "sanitize" cycle, the water bath processing will sanitize them as well as the contents! If you don't have a dishwasher with a sanitize cycle, you can wash the containers in hot, soapy water and rinse, then sanitize the jars by boiling them 10 minutes, and keep the jars in hot water until they are used. Leave the jars in the dishwasher on "heated dry" until you are ready to use them. Keeping them hot will prevent the jars from breaking when you fill them with the hot apple juice.
Put the lids into a pan of hot, but not quite boiling water (that's what the manufacturer's recommend) for 10 minutes, and use the magnetic "lid lifter wand" to pull them out.
I'm sure you can figure out how to wash the apples in plain cold water.
Chopping them is much faster if you use one of those apple corer/segmenters - you just push it down on an apple and it cuts it into segments. Note: You do not peel the apples! You will put the entire apple into the pot to cook.
Pretty simple put about 4 inches of water (I used filtered tap water) on the bottom of a huge, thick-bottomed pot. Put the lid on, and the heat on high. When it gets really going, turn it to medium high until the apples are soft through and through.
Hardware stores sell a fruit steamer. I haven't used one yet, but I hear they work well.
NOTE: If you have a electric juicer, you can simply juice the chopped apples, then skip to step 7 to heat the juice to boiling.
Now you want to separate the liquid from the pulp, skins, seeds, stems, etc. There are quite a variety of ways to filter the apples.
Unfiltered juice:
Filtered juice:
Note: One of the easiest ways to extract juice is by using a steam juicer available at many hardware and variety stores. If you plan on making a lot of juice or doing this every year, it may be worth buying one. This unique piece of equipment allows you to conveniently extract juice by steaming the fruit which is held in a retaining basket. The juice drops into a reservoir which has a tube outlet for removal. Follow manufacturer's instructions for using steam juicer. See the steam juicers at the right side of this page. All of them get very positive reviews from owners online)
If your goal is to make apple juice, you will still have a lot of apple pulp left, so I'd recommend you make apple sauce from it (see this page)
Put the apple juice into a large pot. If you want, add cinnamon to taste. You should not need to add any sugar.
The apple juice does not need any further cooking; just get it heated to a low simmering boil and keep it hot until you get enough made to fill the jars you will put into the canner (Canners hold seven jars at once, whether they are quart or pint size)
Fill them to within 1/4-inch of the top, wipe any spilled apple juice of
the top, seat the lid and tighten the ring around them. Put them in
the canner and keep them cover with at least 1 or 2 inches of water and
boiling. if you are at sea level (up to 1,000 ft) boil pint or quart
jars for 5 minutes and half gallon jars for 10 min. This assumes
you kept the juice hot until you filled the jars. If you are at an
altitude of 1,000 feet or more, see the chart below Recommended process time for
Apple Juice in a boiling-water canner.
Process Time at Altitudes of
Style of Pack
Jar Size
0 - 1,000 ft
1,001 - 6,000 ft
Above 6,000 ft
Hot
Pints or Quarts
5 min
10
15
Half-Gallons
10 min
15
20
Lift
the jars out of the water and let them cool without touching or bumping
them in a draft-free place (usually takes overnight) You can then
remove the rings if you like, but if you leave them on, at least loosen
them quite a bit, so they don't rust in place due to trapped moisture.
Once the jars are cool, you can check that they are sealed verifying
that the lid has been sucked down. Just press in the center, gently,
with your finger. If it pops up and down (often making a popping sound),
it is not sealed. If you put the jar in the refrigerator right away, you
can still use it. Some people replace the lid and reprocess the jar,
then that's a bit iffy. If you heat the contents back up, re-jar them
(with a new lid) and the full time in the canner, it's usually ok.
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Victorio V250 Food Strainer (the same as the
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See the seller's website for more information, features, pricing and user reviews! |
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Deluxe Food Strainer and Sauce Maker
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Lids, Rings, Jars, mixes, pectin, etc.Need lids, rings and replacement jars? Or pectin to make jam, spaghetti sauce or salsa mix or pickle mixes? Get them all here, and usually at lower prices than your local store!
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Above is the
2020 version of
the Ball Blue Book