How to make hawthorn juice?

Hawthorn is rich in organic acid, sugar, vitamin, and minerals. They are easy to absorb by human body. Hawthorn juice is also a popular juice. It looks transparent and dark red, and tastes sweet and sour. Drinking hawthorn juice is refreshing and healthy.

Generally, Hawthorn juice has 3 types: raw hawthorn juice, hawthorn juice drink, and concentrated hawthorn juice. Their production processes are different.

Raw hawthorn juice

The production process of raw hawthorn juice includes: raw material selection, cleaning, crushing, softening, dipping, filtration and clarification.

Raw material selection: choose fully ripe hawthorn without decay or insect damage. You also use the leftover materials of hawthorn cans.

Cleaning and crushing: clean the raw materials with flowing water. Then use roller crusher to press the hawthorns into pieces without breaking the seeds.

Softening and dipping: boil the crushed hawthorn in hot water to extract juice. It is called softening and dipping method.

Put the crushed hawthorn in a pot, add water 2 times the weight of hawthorn. Heat up to 85-90℃ and keep for 20-30min. After heating, keep the hawthorns in the water for 12-24 hours. Then filter out the hawthorn juice and clarify it.

Also, you can collect the hawthorn slag after the first time filtration. Then repeat the boiling, dipping and filtration process, and mix the juice of the first and second time.

Filtration: Filtrate the hawthorn juice roughly with porous metal screen, baffle rotary drum screen, or vibration flat screen. The diameter of sieve holes is usually 0.5mm.

Clarification: there are natural clarification and enzyme clarification 2 method. For natural clarification, you just need to let the hawthorn juice rest in airtight containers for 12 hours.

For enzyme clarification, they first heat up the hawthorn juice to 80℃ for sterilization and wait it cools down to 30-37℃. Then add dry enzyme preparations for 2-4kg in 1 ton of hawthorn juice. Stir them well and keep static for 3-5 hours.

Fine filtration: The equipment for fine filtration includes bag filter, fiber filter, diatomite filter and plate frame filter, etc. Raw hawthorn juice is a semi-finished products, which can be made into hawthorn juice or concentrated hawthorn juice.

Hawthorn juice drinks

The production of hawthorn juice drinks includes: raw juice selection, composition adjustment, filling and sealing, sterilization and cooling.

Raw juice selection: Choose transparent and clarified hawthorn juice, with rich flavor and bright color, and without suspension or precipitation.

Composition adjustment: use citric acid and white sugar to adjust the taste of the hawthorn juice. You can also add small quantities of SHMP as the stabilizer, which have color protecting effect.

Filling and sealing: heat up the mixed hawthorn juice to above 75℃, and fill it into bottles and seal them at once.

Sterilization and cooling: sterilize the bottled juice right after sealing. It can be sterilized by boiled water or steam. After that, label the bottles and put them in storage.

Quality requirement: the hawthorn juice drinks should be red or light red, with no impurities or foreign flavor. The raw hawthorn juice should be higher than 65%, the total sugar content should be 15%-18%, the total acid content should be 0.5%-0.7%.

Concentrated hawthorn juice

The production of concentrated hawthorn juice includes: raw hawthorn juice selection, concentration, mixing, bottling, sealing, sterilization and cooling. The raw juice selection process is the same as hawthorn juice drinks.

Concentration: hawthorn juice can be concentrated by 2 technology: atmospheric concentration and vacuum concentration.

Atmospheric concentration: put the raw hawthorn juice in a jacket cattle. Heat up and set the steam pressure to 2.5kg/cm2. Keep stirring during the concentration. Stop until the soluble solid content reaches up to 28%.

Vacuum concentration: the equipment includes centrifugal film evaporator, coil tube type single effect vacuum concentrator, etc. Keep the vacuum degree above 650mmHg during concentration. Keep the steam pressure of 1.5kg/cm2 and the juice temperature of 50℃. When the soluble solid content reaches up to 28%, release the vacuum and the temperature will quickly rise up to 95℃, then you can take out the juice.

Mixing: for every 80kg raw hawthorn juice, add 20kg 75% sugar liquid, certain quantities of citric acid, carmine, hawthorn essence, and heat them up to 75℃ quickly.

Bottling and sealing: fill the hawthorn juice into bottles and seal quickly when the temperature is above 75℃.

Sterilization and cooling: keep the temperature of bottled juice of 85-90℃ for 20min and cool it down to 37℃.

Quality requirement: the concentrated hawthorn juice should be red or crimson, with rich hawthorn flavor and no impurities. The soluble solid content should be higher than 40% and the acid content is 1.2%-1.4%.