North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[John S <swim_at_svc@yahoo.com>]

Don,

 

Thanks to you and the others for responding.  A little background may be appropriate, but keep in mind that these are my observations and may not be indicative of all aronia in other locations.

 

I have 1 plant, container grown, that is 4-5 years old and about 2.5' in diameter.  For the past 2 years, the plant has been completely covered with berries, to the extent that I begin minor harvesting/thinning mid summer to avoid damage to the plant from the weight of the berries.  The plant increases in size very slowly, perhaps because it is fruiting so well.

 

I have been eating fresh aronia berries for at least 3 years straight from the plant.  I find them OK to eat fresh, but when eating them carefully crush the berry in the teeth to extract the juice from the center of the berry then spit our the seeds and skin.  I am careful to avoid too much damage to the outer skin.  The inner juice is sweet and reminds me of a mild grape juice.  The outer skin is bitter and if damaged too much, say with chewing, ruins the experience.  It is perhaps the opposite experience from concord grapes where we traditionally extract the juice from around the skin and spit out the sour inner flesh and seeds.

 

My aronia fruits at its best after it has survived a few frosts, which cause the berry to become sweeter and better tasting.  However, last year and this year, the berries appear to have matured before first frost here.  I am trying to keep them going on the plant until after frost, but am experiencing a few berries drying out.  My experience (and remember here this is a container plant) is that inadequate moisture in the fall contributes to or accellerates the berries drying.  Also I have noticed that berries sampled from the plant when it is going through a dry spell are not as sweet or flavorful as berries when the plant has sufficient moisture.  It seems to me that only 1 berry per cluster is drying at a time, which I also take a sign as conserving moisture.

 

So I want to raise the questions to you:  Perhaps you have harversted too soon and perhaps your berries were in a situation without sufficient water for best flavor.

 

Also, it is clear to me from what you said that the juice extraction process that you used extracted juice from the skin with the same success as the rest of the berry probably shifting the balance of flavor.

 

That was my concern with the original question.  I expect that my juicer will produce significant skin extraction as well as extraction of the inner part of the berry.  I was expecting to hear from NAFEX members that a press of some sort would be most appropriate where the pressure of the press was limiited to favor extraction from the softer interior of the berry and less from the tougher outer skin.

 

To my thinking, juice extraction via steam would have a similar problem of extracting from the skin.

 

The productivity of my single plant suggests that I may want to have more plants if I can get the proper juice fraction of the berry.  Howevere, I am not interested in commercial production, just family use.  I am, forgive me for saying, mostly just exploring the range of "small fruit" varieties that are out there.

 

So Don, perhaps you should not give up on your aronia just yet.  I'd be curious to hear from someone who has tried gentle pressing of the fruit after it has been chilled a few times by frost.  I personally do very little juicing, but am looking around for an inexpensive press that might fit the situation.

 

Thanks

 

John

Don Yellman <don.yellman@webformation.com> wrote:

> John:
>
> 1. I have 3 mature Aronia bushes here (Viking) that I have never bothered to pick, but this season, when they were particularly full of berries, I decided to pick and process them all. Two full 5-gallon buckets of clusters snipped off with a small scissors. I waited until they were fully mature and very dark purple, with none of the berries showing any red, and a few perhaps past their prime and beginning to dry up a bit. These berries hang on until the bitter end, and birds and animals never touch them. I removed each berry individually from its cluster, then rinsed them vigorously several times, ending up with close to 5 gallons net berries. As it turned out, that was plenty.
>
> 2. The only reason I can see to process these berries at all is
>  for the purported health benefits of their anthocyanins, and their deep purple color which is capable of turning just about anything purple. I do not totally discount the health claims. I just don't know. But I certainly believe purple berries are a healthy food. There is no reason to process them for their flavor, since they have no fruit flavor that I can detect, although they are very highly astringent, which I take to mean acidic, and the ideal environment for the presence of anthocyanins. Aronia juice is almost always sold as a very minor (2% or less) component of a blend with other, sweeter juices that have some flavor. I think products like Trader Joe's Aronia blend contains about this amount of Aronia, in the form of "reconstituted" juice produce somewhere in central or eastern Europe. I make quite a bit of apple juice (cider) here, and had the vague idea of blending a little Aronia juice in each
> gallon, where the astringency might be welcome with the sweet
>  juice, and the Aronia would improve the nutrition of the cider and turn it a nice purple color.
>
> 3. Aronia is quite a dry berry, and I am afraid if you try to process these berries in your centrifugal juicer, you will end up with little to no juice. I first tried my steamer/juicer, but after nearly an hour of boiling found the berries still nearly intact, and began to mash them with a potato masher. That removed more of the juice, mixed with water from the steam, but not nearly all of it. I ended up finishing this batch with a small jelly cone, utilizing a wooden pestle, which removed all of the juice and left only seeds and dry skins behind. For the next two batches, I simply boiled hell of out of the berries for an hour, after adding a good amount of water, mashed them, and processed them all through the jelly cone. It was very tedious work, but I ended up with more than 3 full gallons of very dark Aronia juice, which currently resides in my freezer. I figure I
>  have enough Aronia juice to blend with over 50 gallons of apple cider, should I choose to do so. It
> is, of course, not pure juice, since I added water to boil the berries, and the steamer/juicer also adds water as it operates, but if you tasted this stuff I think you would agree it is as pure as you would want it.
>
> 4. The bottom line here is I don't think you will produce significant amounts of Aronia juice without boiling and softening the berries, then forcing them through a strainer like a jelly cone. If you have only a small amount of berries, you might be able to knock off this job in about 90 minutes, but I will have to think about it before I process any Aronia berries next season. If I end up not using the 3 gallons I already have I probably won't bother.
>
> Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA 
>
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