Even when we buy orange juice that lists only “orange juice” as its ingredients, store bought OJ looks and tastes really different from OJ when I run a couple of oranges through the juicer. Store bought is more opaque and tends to just taste different from biting into an orange. Why?
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I work on a small family juice farm in Florida and it boils down to a few simple points…
Pasteurization: heating “each particle of juice” to 100 C or 212 F will drastically change flavor profile. We do not pasteurize our juice and because of that we do lab samples every time we bottle and our juice has a 14 day shelf life.
Fruit Quality: major producers like Tropicana get a large amount of their juice concentrate from Brazil on tanker ships. Both pasteurized and frozen, the quality is piss poor.
Fruit Type: although there are many types of oranges, only a certain number are best suited for juice. The main juice fruit are navel, hamlin, pineapple, and valencia oranges. A unique perspective of being more of a “boutique” producer is that during certain parts of the season we can add more rare citrus for certain effects. A percentage of red navel in a mix give the juice a beautiful golden color that almost glows. Small batch tangerine varieties (think “Cuties”) like hw murcott and tangelos give the juice an intense sweetness whereas early season juice with mainly navel/hamlin are more tart. But not tart like the ultra pasteurized store juice that’s more bitter than tart.
All that to say, if you haven’t had fresh Florida juice before and you have the chance to stop at a roadside farm stand…take the chance. It’s a time honored tradition and one that sadly won’t last the next generation more than likely.
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