I have not yet researched this topic deeply, but after Wayne Curtis remarked on it on Twitter, I went ahead and made a batch of lime “superjuice”. I simply followed the (loose) directions on this video:
collect the peels of eight limes in a vessel
add 44g citric acid and 8g malic acid and muddle it all together; wait a couple hours for the acid to extract the oils from the peel
add 1 liter of water
blend thoroughly (an immersion blender was used in the video, so that’s what I used)
add the squeezed juice from the 8 limes and stir
strain through a superbag or similar
use in place of straight lime juice; store refrigerated
The value proposition here is:
a liter of lime juice from eight limes
refrigerated stability for many days (maybe a week or more)
I haven’t tested the stability part—I now have two jars of the stuff to store—but I can report that the process does produce a significant volume of liquid that tastes indistinguishable (to me) from straight fresh squeezed lime juice. I made a Daiquiri with it, and the drink was quite nice.
I’ll leave it to others to run the numbers on cost differentials (the acids aren’t free). The process was not onerous, although I’m not sure it’s that suitable for home use, except when you’re throwing a large party. The “sustainability” claims for the process for bars is intriguing. Has anyone looked into the “footprint” of the production of powdered citric acid and powdered malic acid?
Refrigerated, the engineered lime juice has not spoiled, but it has perhaps degraded noticeably.
It’s maybe a touch paler than it was.
Taste-comparing it against fresh-squeezed, they are not quite the same:
the fresh-squeezed has a fuller, more floral perfume, whereas the engineered juice smells simply of lime
compared to the fresh juice, the engineered juice tastes more purely of simple/pure acid (which makes sense, because it is that)
I do not think the engineered juice tastes “off” at this stage.
In a Daiquiri, all the above basically applies. The Daiquiri with the engineered juice is slightly paler, and ever so slightly… thinner? It’s still a passable Daiquiri, though, not some degenerate concoction.
I’m happy to see someone else researching this topic. I feel an instinctive aversion to things that feel more like lab-work than cocktail mixing, though the line I draw might be somewhat arbitrary. (I have no problem, for instance, pulling together the many ingredients for a Black Magic, but I have no interest in ever fat-washing anything.) But engineered citrus juice (a term which I far prefer to “superjuice”) has two value propositions that seem hard to ignore:
Possible shelf stability
Relative ease of making large amounts for parties
It sounds like the shelf-stability promise may not be everything a person could want. If I’m going to make a friend a daiquiri, I’m shooting for the best daiquiri available.
But I guess I still need to investigate the relative effort of making, say, 20 ounces or more of engineered lime juice versus juicing 20 limes by hand. (I guess cost matters, too, though probably less than effort.)
I made my first batch of engineered lime juice, and made A/B daiquiris for my wife and two friends to try. (I also tried them, though I couldn’t do so without knowing which was which.) Everyone found the two versions very different, and 2/3 of them preferred the daiquiri with fresh lime juice. The engineered lime was noticeably thinner (I’ve read others comment on the difference in mouthfeel) and also seemed less sharp. I preferred the lime juice version myself, and probably would only consider the engineered version for use in more complicated tiki cocktails.
It does, of course, introduce the possibility that small things about the preparation could influence the product quite a bit (maybe my engineered citrus wasn’t made that well). So I’ll have to try it again. Overall, the process of making the juice was pretty easy, though I found limes surprisingly tricky to peel. I can peel apples and lemons all day long, but the limes I was using at least had much thinner and trickier peels.
If you found the two versions “very different” then I would suspect a flaw with your super juice process. The comparative results should be, at worst, only slightly different.
Mouthfeel will be different, but this is a small nuance and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone eventually comes up with a solution to that. If you found your super juice less sharp, then you probably didn’t get quite the right amount of the acids added. You do need to use one of those tiny gram accurate scales for this (luckily, they’re really cheap). The bigger challenge might be the aromatic difference, particularly if you’re used to lime squeezed a la minute. Of course, few bars do that.
In the end, I see little point in making super juice for home use (unless you blow through a LOT of citrus juice), but for bar programs, it seems to be proving itself, although I have no idea how many programs have adopted it. Ideally, they could adopt it and nobody would be any the wiser.
One thing that amuses me about all this is how making super juice kind of harkens back to the 19th Century when bartenders were compounding all sorts of stuff to serve their customers.
I have an OXO digital food scale and was exacting about my measurements, but I thought the same thing: that a lack of sharpness probably indicated an error in acidity.
I did use a regular blender rather than an immersion blender; I wonder about the peel consistency as a possible source of some of the difference.
But it’s useful to have your report about how minor the difference in mouthfeel should be. I’ll repeat the process and see what I come up with.
I agree about the relative inapplicability of super juice for home use. As I mentioned before, I’m interested in it mostly for parties, where the preparation for serving a more complicated cocktail along the lines of a black magic can take several hours.
Yeah, the OXO digital foods scale is not gram accurate. Not even close. (I have one too.) For measuring powders and stuff you need one of the gram accurate “jewelers’ scales” like those from AWS, Fuzion, et al. They are tiny and battery operated and should come with a protective lid. Amazon sells a bunch of them for around $10 a piece. (It’s also useful for cooking and measuring tea or coffee.) I particularly like this slightly more expensive version:
It defies my intuition that minute differences in grams could have such a large effect in a recipe of this scale, but my intuition on this subject may be under-informed. I’ve ordered the one you mentioned from Amazon (which seems to be significantly cheaper on Amazon… I’ve tried to check all the visible details and it really seems to be exactly the same model) and will use it for the next batch I try. Thanks for the tip!
I used the excuse of our annual block party this weekend to finally try my hand at making some superjuice. I used roughly the same method as Martin listed in the first post for lime superjuice, except with a regular blender. I also made a batch of lemon superjuice, using only citric acid.
I did make one modification to the recipe, which I haven’t seen anywhere else. I had read that the “oleo citrate” (the water/acid/peel puree, before the fresh juice is added back) could be used on its own as a direct juice substitute, and would have an even longer shelf life than the recombined superjuice. But that seemed off to me because there’s absolutely no sugar in it, and my understanding is that lemon and lime juice are both roughly 1-2% sugars by weight.
So I added that proportion of sugar to the oleo citrates (after reserving some as a control sample). The flavor difference was minor when tasting directly, but I think the added sugar improved the body, and got the viscosity closer to real juice. (But I wasn’t scientific about it, and may have just been confirming my own biases)
Then I combined the oleo citrates with their respective juices, so the superjuices should all have had the 1-2% sugar content of regular juice.
Many Daiquiris, Gimlets, and Brambles were had at the block party. I didn’t do any side-by-side tests with real juice, but I also got no complaints about anything tasting off.
I still have some superjuices left over, so I’ll try to side-by-side some cocktails with real juice this week, and also see how long it lasts for me without losing flavor.
Yeah! I’d never heard of succunic acid. I’m interested in the stuff for acid-adjusting, but I imagine it could turn out to be the dot on the “i” for lime superjuice, too. Let’s keep an eye out for someone testing it out.
I did a search for lime juice on here, and I hope I am in the right spot. I want to squeeze/freeze some lime juice the day before xmas so when guests come over all I have to do is defrost them and put into a squeeze bottle. I made the mistake of squeezing them more than 24 hours in advance and the result was not good. So, I am thinking to squeeze, freeze, then defrost and pour into a bottle about 20 hours later so I am ready to roll once guests arrive in need of a tropical cocktail - is this reasonable?
I am guessing I can scale this down to half the batch? My issue is I have to get the citric & malic acid off the internet. The ones in the supermarket by the canning stuff has been expired by 2yrs or more (if it even expires, but still). So my only other question is, other than the sugar, how is this different from lime cordial or oleo saccharum? That too will last a few days, and you are going to use sugar anyway, so why go thru the trouble of the malic/citric acids?
I am getting the citric & malic acid today from Amazon that I need to finally try this. I saw “Educated Barfly” do it exactly how Martin said in his original post. I have a couple of questions before I begin, forgive me if I missed it, I did try to read thru all the posts but there are a lot. 1) can I do a half batch (4 limes, 22g of citric, 2 of malic, etc) or does it not scale right? 2) do you use the same amount of super juice as you would in a cocktail, say 1 ounce, or do you use less? Thanks!
Scaling should be perfectly linear, so yes, you would use 22g and 2g, respectively. It is absolutely essential you use a gram accurate scale or you will not get what you want. Kitchen scales are not up to the task. You must use a jeweler’s scale (see above).
Yes, superjuice is a 1:1 substitute for regular squeezed juice.
I dont know if the scale is “cartel” grade but it is an Escali and seems to be fairly accurate. The jewelers scales seem to be in the $100 range, so if it’s a bit off, I guess I will just play with the proportions accordingly on the next round. Thanks!
