Those of you who know me on Facebook know that my juicer died recently. To be fair, it’s had quite a good innings – Mark will probably remember the joys of juicing in Leghorn Road in London. So I bought a new juicer…and it’s pretty good (though I have no idea if it’s ethical or not).
This is basically a review of it, so if you’re not interested, move on.
I started juicing when I was working nights for Mistral. Working nights is probably one of the worst things I’ve ever done to my body. I didn’t realise it at the time, but over the course of several months I completely screwed my body up – sleep patterns, digestion, skin quality, energy (or lack thereof) and a whole host of other problems. I’d have frequent headaches and my weekly shopping included a pack of painkillers. I had a bit of a wakeup moment towards the end of my time there where I realised that this was Not a Good Thing and with some help from Steve we both started eating and living more healthily. One of the things we both discovered was Jason Vale’s books on juicing. I won’t go into the details here, but going from a crap food diet to a very healthy diet; dropping coffee almost completely; drinking lots of water – also the best water softener helped turn things around. Within months I was feeling great and had lost weight. I’d also finally got off nightshift and eventually changed jobs.
So I’ve been juicing on and off for a while – the biggest problem is the cost. Fruit, especially in winter, tends to be fairly expensive so requires some careful budgeting. I’m back on that particular bandwagon again in an effort to boost my fitness having discovered a job that in its first year saw me gain almost a stone. My first juicer, a Moulinex BKA14 JuiceMaster Junior, lasted quite well but has a few problems. The juice jug is too small; it doesn’t extract enough juice – and most importantly, mine no longer actually spins.
Which? prompted me to look at a few juicers and I finally settled on their top rated one – a Breville JE27 which I ordered from Amazon and it arrived a few days ago. I couldn’t resist – as soon as I got home, it was out of the box and plugged in, ready to juice.
First of all, it’s heavier and bigger. The design is slightly different too – the meaty bit is effectively a grater disc which a metal sieve at a shallow angle. As it spins, it mashes your fruit and with the speed it’s turning at, it works its way up the sieve, with the juice going through and pulp eventually being thrown off, where it goes into some kind of repository. The Moulinex juicer had the repository at one side, with the problem that the cover would collect large amounts of pulp as it whizzed around which occasionally fouled the sieve and sent it off-balance. The new Breville one has a different design. The pulp collection bowl surrounds the whole sieve, which means that any angle the pulp comes off at is fine.
There are a number of other changes – the juice jug is bigger and the motor is a lot more powerful. The sieve is better quality as is the mashing-bit at the bottom. It generally feels like a better quality product as well – oh and it has a full-size chute so I can thrown a whole apple down. Saves a lot of time. Also, lots of parts have rubber seals on them where they link up to another part – this solves the major problem I had with my old juicer where after dismantling it you’d find half your juice was leaking into the guts of the machine -under- all the parts you could wash.
So, I turned it on. After looking around for the helicopter that I thought was starting its engines, I lobbed an apple down. The pulp that came out was a) smaller pieces than the old juicer and b) considerably drier. From four apples, I managed to get nigh on half a litre of juice. I’m impressed.
Cleaning is easier as well. This has 4 parts to clean – the old one had 7. It just makes life that little bit easier. They even include a little scrubbing brush to clean the sieve – oh and that’s important. The pieces are all marked “Diswasher safe” but to be honest, I wouldn’t want to wash the sieve in a dishwasher. It has very small holes that by the time you come to wash it are full of very small bits of fruit. Very small. If it dries, it’s welded on. So first of all, it needs washing immediately. Secondly, the easiest way to wash it is to just scrub it under running water. Takes about 30s – if you want, you can wash it with soap afterwards as well.
So yeah impressed. It takes -ages- to spin down from full speed, and the amount of juice it gives you is seriously impressive. Chalk this customer up as a happy one.
Tags: review