Fruit Beverages

Non-Alcoholic Fruit Beverages

Beverages prepared from fresh fruits and served cold are welcome and refreshing in hot weather and are frequently useful during sickness. The citrus fruits usually form the basis of such fruit beverages and can be used alone or in combination with other fruits. The recipes can be varied as different fruits are in season and as use is made of the various canned fruit juices. Sugar should be used with discretion in fruit beverages and water should be added as necessary. The quantities of sugar and water used in the recipes will have to be varied according to the acidity and strength of the fruit juices. Strawberries, cherries, diced pineapple and sliced bananas are used as garnish in fruit drinks.

Lemonade

1/2 cup lemon juice
1 cup sugar
1 quart water
Add sugar to lemon juice and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add cold water, stir well, strain and add more water if desired. Serve very cold.
The juice of one lemon equals 3 tablespoons. Allow 1 1/2 tablespoons juice to each glass. Serves 6.

Orangeade

6 oranges
2 lemons, juice
1 cup sugar
1 quart water
Add the sugar to the juice of the oranges and lemons and stir until the sugar is dissolved. If desired add grated rind of one half lemon and one half orange. Add cold water, strain, and serve cold. Serves 6 to 8.

Strawberryade

1 cup strawberry juice
2 lemons, juice
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups water
1/2 cup pineapple juice or shredded pineapple
Add lemon juice and sugar to strawberry juice, then add cold water and pineapple. Serve very cold. Serves 6 to 8.

Grape Fruit Juice

2 grape fruit,
juice 2 lemons, juice
2/3 cup sugar
1 quart water
Add the lemon juice and sugar to the grape fruit juice. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then add cold water and strain. Serve very cold. Serves 6 to 8.

Fruit Drink

2 oranges 2 lemons 1 grape fruit
1 quart water
1 cup sugar
1 cup shredded pineapple
Add the grated rind of one orange to the sugar and water and boil for a few minutes. Cool and add to the juice of the lemons, oranges, and grape fruit. Strain, add the shredded pineapple and serve very cold. Serves 6 to 8.

Fruit Punch

1 cup water 1 1/2 quarts water
2 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
2 teaspoons tea
4 lemons 2 oranges 1/2 cup shredded pineapple
Add one quart of water to the sugar. Add cinnamon, cloves and grated rind of one lemon. Boil 5 min. Steep the tea with one pint boiling water for 3 min. Strain and add to the syrup. Add the lemon and orange juice strained and the shredded pineapple. Serve very cold. Serves 6 to 8.

Grape Juice Punch

1 pint grape juice
2 lemons
1/4 cup sugar
1 quart water
Add the juice of the lemons and the sugar to the grape juice and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add the water, strain and serve very cold. The strength of the grape juice will vary, hence more grape juice and more sugar may be required.
Serves 6 to 8.

Lemon Cordial
8 lemons
Sugar syrup - 1.5 litres water + 1.5 kilos sugar, boiled together until the sugar has dissolved.

Grate about 2 tablespoons of rind from the lemons before you cut them. Juice the lemons - if you put them in the microwave for a minute before cutting them, you'll get more juice. Add the grated rind and the juice in a large bowl. Pour the sugar syrup over the juice and mix well.

Allow to cool and pour into bottles. Stores well in the fridge for a month. Dilute with cold water to taste and serve with lots of ice.

Orange Cordial - you can use this recipes for many types of fruit
8 oranges or about 1 litre of any other fruit juice - either juiced or squashed.
Finely grated zest of two oranges.
Sugar syrup, 1 litre water to 1 kilo sugar - sugar syrup is always equal quantities of sugar to water - boiled until the sugar has dissolved.

Mix juice and zest with the sugar syrup and allow to cool completely. Will store for a month in the fridge. Serve diluted with water and a lot of ice.

Raspberry Cordial
Sugar syrup - 2 cups water+2 cups sugar
300g raspberries (fresh or frozen)
juice of 2 lemons
2 teaspoons tartaric acid

Make the sugar syrup. Add the raspberries and lemon juice then simmer for 5 minutes. Stir well, and mash the raspberries up a little. Add the tartaric acid, then put the mixture through a strainer and allow to cool. Pour into a bottle and store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Apple Cider and Perry

1. Remove the fruit from your apple tree and wash your apples, discarding all magotty, rotten or mouldy specimens. Do not be tempted to buy apple juice at any point. If you are going to make cider then at least go to the effort of making Cider which tastes of real apples. If you use apple juice you will be disappointed.

Try to avoid cooking apples which really don't produce a great cider. Other than that, 'dessert' apples (eating apples) are all fine. However you may find your cider is oversweet if you just use one particularly sweet variety of desert apple. If this is a problem for you, add some (about 10-20%) crab apples to the pot and you will find they bring the sweetness down very nicely, adding a tart flavour of their own which tastes fantastic.

2. Pulp the apples. There are many ways of doing this. For small volumes you can use an electric kitchen juicer or a blender. The more traditional (and environmentally friendly) method is to stand above a strong bucket half full of apples and hit the apples repeatedly with a heavy object. The boys at newarchaeology.com tried both and eventually settled on using the blender with a grater attachment, so effectively they push their apples through a cheese grater. They say the traditional method was just too much hard work for them. Here are their instructions:

Be careful because cheaper models of blenders and juicers have very weak motors which will blow at the slightest sniff of a pound of Worcester Pearmains. We went for the Magimix Le Duo Juice Extractor from John Lewis. The bigger the motor the better.

3. Now you have to press your apple pulp.

For small volumes a kitchen press such as this is fine, but if you want to make more than 2 or three gallons I suggest you invest in a bigger press. A home made apple press consisted of four G-clamps and two pieces of old melamine board (an old kitchen work surface).

We wrap apple pulp (with all apple presses you have to pulp the apples before pressing the juice out) in cheesecloth and place it between the boards and start turning the screws. The juice drips out on all four sides into a large shallow tray.

After two years we decided that to make cider in the quantities we wanted, we would have to buy a cider press, but for your first experiments in cider making this will do just fine.

4. Pour your juice into a cleaned and sterilized wooden keg from a home brewery supply store. You should fill the keg to the top. Having an only half-full keg is apparently a sure-fire recipe for vinegar.

5. No yeast needs to be added, traditional cider making relies on wild yeasts, so remove the bung on the top of the keg to let some yeast in. The fermentation starts in 1-2 days and you will see white froth bubbling up through the bung hole. Do not panic at this point.

6. Wait for for several weeks until fermentation stops and then replace the bung

7. Leave your cider to mature for at least 8 months and then after tasting a sip to ensure it hasn't gone horribly wrong, invite some friends round to enjoy a strong (we got 9% alcohol) sweet and cloudy glass of traditional cider. Remember not to drink and drive.

You can add brewers yeast at step 4 if there doesn't seem to be enough good yeast in the air. You can add sugar to up the alcohol content and sweetness, but start with traditional cider made the old fashioned way.

Natural cider can be cloudy. If you really need to get rid of the cloudiness, then speak to your local home brewery shop. They will probably sell you a packet of powdered fish bladder (isinglass) or horses' hooves (finings) which are the traditional tools used to remove the cloudiness in beer.

If you find that a batch goes off, you may have too many dodgy yeast strains in the atmosphere. A Campden tablet (available from home brewery suppliers) will solve the problem. Add it to the next batch of apple juice and then wait two days before adding a sachet of brewers yeast. This will pretty much guarantee fermentation goes off without a hitch.

Old 2 litre plastic fizzy drinks bottles will do if you want to produce more than a barrelful of cider.

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