The Spirit World

Antique Juicer as seen in “The Art of the Bar“ by Jeff Hollinger & Rob Schwartz

In the beginning, it’s easy to take juice for granted when making cocktails. There are a few reasons for this, the most prevalent perhaps is that it seems fewer and fewer recipes actually call for fresh juice, instead you’ll find “sour mix” listed instead. So let’s deal that that issue first.

Sour mix started out as simply a shortcut to take two ingredients and shorten them down to one. There were many drinks that relied on the combination of simple syrup (a mixture of sugar and water), plus a citrus juice (usually lemon). It seemed to make sense to simply combine the two ahead of time which would allow you to make a Whiskey Sour by just combining whiskey and some of your “sweet & sour” mix.

If you look at all of the recipes that utilize a sweet + sour combination along with a spirit, there are actually quite a few of them. Whiskey Sour, Daiquiri, Margarita, Sidecar, Cosmopolitan, Aviation, just to name a few. The problem unfortunately is that some of these use lemon, some use lime, some are sweetened with sugar (or simple syrup), others with flavored liqueurs. To simply homogenize their flavor requirements to be able to use a generically made “sour mix”, is to render their distinctive characteristics unimportant. To this, you add the fact that fresh juices will begin to take on a slightly bitter flavor fairly soon after squeezing, and even when you are using a mix that is balanced for the cocktails you are producing, you won’t be able to produce top-notch drinks with it. Modern commercial sour mixes are also typically a blend of artificial flavors and colors which just further erode the quality that should be expected in a well crafted cocktail. In the end, I just have to recommend that you avoid sour mixes at all cost, even if they are made from scratch with quality ingredients.

It is also easy to get lulled into using “bottled” juices. Having the right fresh fruit always available can be problematic, and so picking up a bottle of lemon juice or lime juice to keep in the fridge has a certain appeal of convenience to it. However a simple taste comparison between cocktails made with fresh squeezed lemon juice and bottled lemon juice (try a Sidecar) quickly shows the reason that fresh is best.

So we now come to the problem of realizing you need to use fresh juices, and you are faced with how to best get the juices out of your lemons, limes, or oranges. There are many different devices to use, ranging from just a couple of dollars upwards of a hundred dollars or more.

When choosing a juicer the two things that I feel are important are amount of juice you can extract, and for the juicer to also extract some of the essential oils from the peel as well, for the oils in the peel are both flavorful and complex, and add a wonderful addition to the juice.

I don’t know why it is, but it seems like the best juicers I find, are the antique ones (such as the Ebaloy) which are unfortunately no longer being made. Of the modern juicers available, it is often the simplest ones which work the best, such as the Mexican lever style, which you can find almost anywhere, or a well made plier style, which is fairly hard to find. A juicer that simply reams out the fruit to release its juices won’t add any oils, which makes those little dish style juicers fairly worthless. If you want to use a mechanical lever style juicer, the trick is to not cut the fruit in half, but instead just cut off the bottom tip enough to get into the fruit. This means that when you squeeze the fruit, it will also roll the skin, which will express some of the oils.

Antique Ebaloy	Plier Style
Mexican Style	Mechanical Lever

When using your juicer, it is important to remember to measure the juices into your cocktail instead of just using “juice of 1/2 lime” (even if that is what the recipe asks for). In a well balanced cocktail, even the difference of 1/4 ounce can drastically affect the taste of the drink. The “juice of 1/2 lime” can vary from one lime (or lemon) to another, but typically is 1/2 to 3/4 of an ounce.

There are a multitude of juicers, both good and bad, available, hopefully I’ve given you some insights on what to look for in picking the juicer you’ll love to use. If you’ve got any juicers that you’ve found which you particularly like, please share that with us in the comment section!