Hurom Vs A* Slow juicer

Hurom has many versions of slow juicer to date that I have lost tracked.

A* juicer, to awareness, is still selling 179 as their latest model after near 2 years.

Remember I mentioned about a lucky friend of mine who managed to purchase Hurom at @SGD398? She sent me a pic of her orange carrot juice which was chilled overnight...

Isn't it beautiful? Thick, rich, with no separation of juice and pulp. She told me she was using a normal water bottle, non air-tight. I was very impressed because the juice I got from my A* would get separated a little, after sometime...

See my entry on "Oranges once more"

So I supposed these juicers are not exactly from the same factory with different brand labeling. Hahha!

Quote from a forum "you pay peanuts, you watch monkeys..."

Nevertheless, this is not a major issue to me. My family usually finish the juice on the same day. Kekeke!

For those who haven't gotten a juicer, for your awareness ^^

Huron juicer at Suntec Beauty Fair

It wasn't me but a good friend of mine managed to grab this deal!

If I were there I would have jumped into it, too. So for anyone who came across this post, hopefully in time, pls don't miss it!!!

Huron juicer with 5 ceramic knives and trolley @SGD398 this weekend @Suntec Beauty Fair ^^

Pics from my dear lucky friend!

Beetroot and Apples!!

Hello hello...

Finally, I am juicing a new food for the first time... It's the beetroot!!! 

Thanks to sis who decided to go on a 5 day detoxing diet... I am honored to help her by juicing fresh juices for her during these 5 days.

It was celery and cucumber yesterday. Due to time constraint, I didn't take a single pic... Sorry!

So here's today's beetroot and apple juice ^^

I haven't tried any, sis commented that it was really sweet and rich. Glad that she enjoyed the drink.

Tmr will be carrot orange, followed by orange with grapefruit juice... Last day was meant for almond milk. I had suggested that she buy off the shelf organic almond milk. It's nicer than the one I make... Hahaha >,<

2 beets (peeled) 5 apples (seeds/core removed), yielded about 2 bottles of juice.

 

Finally...

It's been a year... well, more than a year to be exact. Time flies... It passes so quickly and sneakily. Posting a 6 - month review about this juicer was just like yesterday.

Sorry that I hadn't been maintaining this blog for the past few months... for a couple of reasons.

To list the main reason, I hadn't try too many combination for juicing... its always the same few types that took place twice a month... The apples. . Oranges... grapes... carrots... soya beans... didn't want to post same thing over and over but rest assured, my juicer is still actively in use. It hadn't turn into any red (mine is wine red colour) elephant as thought by my husband.

This juicer had celebrated it's first birthday recently... It made me very delicious soya milk, which my whole family loved it so much...

I thought I should inform everyone that I'd still keep this blog open though there'd probably not be many posts. .. well, at least until I ever... ever get to juice something that I haven't tried before... so... Thank you for your time. .. and sorry for not being too active here.

Glad that we had crossed our paths... take care, folks, and bye for now ^^

Assembly of the juicer

Per request... Here's the clip, so sorry that it took such a long time for me to finally video it. Hope this is what you needed. Cheers! ^^

Orange juice... Once more

My mom passed me a bag of oranges, which I counted as 11 oranges. Okay... so I juiced them before I did 1 cup of carrots and 1 cup of celery for my parents.

This time, I did something I had not done before... I juiced the fruit from the enzyme making... wahahaha! Too bad that I juiced the lemon together, the juice from the fermented green apples and lemons turned out very sour...

Luckily I did not mix it with my enzyme that's ready for consumption. .. It tasted great ^^

Here's the thick orange juice after 1 day in fridge. I used Lock and Lock brand of container but I didn't think that means airtight... See the pulp separating from its juice? I wonder if other juicer's juice will turn out like this too...

And it still leak since u hadn't sent for repair... I didn't flush the juicer with any water in between. It just leaked... I wonder why but it wasn't leaking few months ago.... :(

And I wanted to share a pic of my first homemade green apple enzyme. Half of it had been sent to my parents home. Here's the other half... just for me! I drank a little bit this morning... and felt so drunk.... burp*!

Leak leak leak...

Okay this is odd..

I thought that the leakage only happened when flushing the juicer in between juicing but I was wrong...

I just juiced some lemons (leftover from enzyme making) without flushing the juicer...

But it still leak!!!! Oh no oh no... This is so disappointing! I'd better send it for a check or repair...

Folks, please take good care of your juicer... I had entrusted my helper with cleaning up the juicer for some time... unfortunately, she probably overlooked some details... sigh...

Leakage from juicing and Mouldy parts when the assembly was done before drying completely... yucks!

Happy New Year and here's my 6 month Review

It's been 6 months since I owned this A*Juicer, another 6 months before its warranty expired. One of the readers seek for an overall experience I had with this juicer, so, now I should sum up the good and the not so good about it.

Disclaimer: This review is solely based on the one and only piece of A*Juicer slow juicer that I owned for 6 months. It doesn't mean that all of the products would be like what I had. So, in a nutshell, this is just a humble review from my side. ("It" below refers to the A*Juicer in my house)

The Good

• It is quiet, I can juice in the morning when my kids are still sleeping
• It yields more juice than centrifugal juicer that my dad uses
• It is so easy to clean (but not true when you are only juicing 1-2 oranges, I would still use the manual way)

The Not so Good

•  It moves sometimes when juicing hard items (eg. grapes with seed)
• It didn't juice as well as centrifugal juicer when it comes to soft fruits like strawberry or kiwi. In my humble opinion, a blender probably works better for soft fruits just that the blended juice had to be consumed immediately
• It leaks whenever I flush the juicer in between juicing of different fruits... ARGHHH*

The Neutral, or rather, No Idea

• Slow juicer is well-known for the ability to keep juice fresh with its natural enzyme. It is shown on official videos that the juice doesn't get separated after setting aside for some time. Well, this is NOT TRUE for my case. I saw my carrot/ celery/ orange juice got separated into pulp and water layers after some time kept in the fridge. I'm not sure why but this is happening to my juice...
• The version that I own is 179 (with auto lock), not sure if its the lock that is not secured or for whatever reason, it's annoying to see the juicer rocks during juicing and worse, the leakage after flushing.

Overall

• My husband complained that the "real apple juice" bought from supermarket was too sweet, what juiced by ourselves tasted better
• My girl refused to drink "real orange juice" bought from  supermarket but she drank the REAL one that we juiced by oursleves
• My parents who uses centrifugal juicer often bring celery, carrots and oranges for me to juice because they have withdrawal syndrome whenever they think about cleaning their
• It will be a perfect slow juicer that is quiet, easy to clean and easy to use, only if it doesn't rock during juicing or leak during flushing
• The price of this juicer is expensive (let me finish) when it is compared to a blender or centrifugal juicer. However, this brand is selling it at a more reasonable and affordable price when compared to masticating (slow pressed) juicers from other countries

Have you heard of this? The Cabbage Juice

Recently, my husband suffered from stomach ucler. It was a bad experience... So I did some research from the web and came about a few shares on cabbage juice which helps on our digestion system.

According to wiki, Cabbage juice contains L-glutamine and gefarnate, both of which protect the mucous-membrane lining of your stomach. Cabbage juice is also fermented to create probiotics that further help your digestive health. Unfortunately, I did not know how to ferment the juice, so I'd rather not risk but settle with fresh cabbage juice...

Sadly speaking, my husband is not a fan of vegetable juice, so he wasn't even willing to try it out... arghhhh~*

Note: When doing vegetable juice, please get organic vegetables. I bought mine which was not organic from Fairprice (wanted to cook it for soup, initially), so it was soaked in salt water for about 10-15 mins before juicing. I probably drank a lot of pesticide this time so I will get organic one in future for juicing...  :(

I searched from youtube on how to slowjuice cabbage as I know it could jam the juicer easily if its not chopped up correctly. There wasn't many videos on slow-juicing cabbages. The only one was a guy who touched his hair every one and then during juicing and even jammed the juicer. Nevertheless, I had learnt not to cut the way he did it... and yup, that saved me in a way...

The whole cabbage yielded almost 2 cups of juice but also near 2 cups of foam.... I had no clue why there's sooooo much foam from slow-juicing cabbage... no idea! The cabbage was halved and soaked in salt water. First half was chopped up in squares. The remaining was chopped into rectangle blocks.



Both ways of cutting worked fine for the juicer, both needed to be pressed occasionally to ensure that the leaves went down the juicing unit. The cubes were a little too fat for the feeding hole, the rectangle blocks seemed to be fed more easily. (Just a small comparison to share with all)

Here's the clip on chopping up and slow-juicing cabbage. Before juicing the cabbage, we did carrots and celery, so please don't feel odd when you see orange pulp in the video. HohOHo~*



One thing to mention is that after rinsing the juicer with plain water to clear away the carrot juice done earlier on, leakage was observed when juicing the cabbage. (Not sure if you can spot that but I tried to zoom at it towards the end of the clip) 

The pulp was reasonably dry at the output of the juicer, some was stuck inside the juicer but no big issue when it came to cleaning up. Cheers!

Here it is, my first cabbage juice. This is good for cleansing your digestive system. If you want to try it out with your juicer, be sure to drink it the same day when it is juiced, before food, preferably empty stomach for better absorption and please, buy organic... Good luck!

Hey Vege Vege... Tried Tomatoes Carrots and Cucumbers!

After so many rounds of orange juice. I had finally juiced something which I had wanted to do so long ago, even before I got this slow juicer. I had no idea why it took me so long to do it when these ingredients could easily be found from any markets...

It's tomato - carrot - cucumber juice! Wahahaha... The first vegetable juice i did was carrot and celery. This is the second. Very cooling...

Fresh carrot juice is unbelievably sweet, must try!

Fresh tomato juice has a very rich taste... only those who loves tomatoes will be able to take it. BTW FYI, tomato is good for skin...

Cucumber juice is super refreshing and cooling. It's either I have them sliced and lined on my face or I juice them to share with everyone at home ^^

Having them together... well, only me and my girl drank it. Wahahaha! It was the colour that turned my husband off. He didn't even gave it a sip... I was glad that my girl actually tried it. She even took a second sip! hee hee!

I had a mixing bowl of washed and chopped carrots, tomatoes and cucumbers. Portion was purely agaration as I bought them in packets from supermarkets and juice them all!

Here's a clip on the juicing of these rich-A & refreshing combo. I think the juicer shook a little when carrots were threw in... Hmmz... Not sure if that's normal...  (-_-")

So many fruits...

Now, my kitchen was left with an extra watermelon, half a bunch of bananas, a small bunch of red S/L grapes and 3 apples... What's more exciting was that my mom brought a bag of oranges (I didn't even want to count how many there were) for me to juice...

When I talked about my mom and oranges, it brought back fond memories of my mum making orange juice for the family... Okay, not really fond for her but it's fond for me and my siblings since we got to drink it... Hee! Hmmz.. and did I say she make the juice manually? Yup, by halving the fruits and squeeze them using a manual orange/ lemon juicer. Actually I tried it a couple of times when I need to juice just 1 or 2 oranges for my girl... It's not too bad if its just 1 or 2.. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't lazy to do it manually but I was not satisfied with the amount of juice yielded when doing it manually. I remember that it took around 3-4 medium sized oranges to fill a big mug when my mom did it... (Great work, Mom!)

Today, before I set off for a short trip, I decided to get my helper's help to pose as my model (again) so that I could record the juicing clip for sharing. This time, we did a mixture of fruits... hmmz, yes a mixture but not really a mixture... Oh, it's getting confusing! See below...

Part 1 - Apple and Red Grapes (for my girl)
Part 2 - Oranges (just oranges, for the family)

And we did this without having to rinse/wash the juicer during the transition. WuhoO~* And yup yup yup! I finally managed to video juicing the oranges... I thought I did but I realized those were just pictures earlier on. OOps!

Ready? Let's start with the apples and grapes! (Tips on juicing apples: Not everyone read every entry of my juicing diary, so I'd echo it here... Remove the seeds when juicing apples as they were toxic.) These grapes and apples yielded a bottle and slightly more of apple-grape juice. Yummy~*

Here's on the oranges... (Tips on peeling oranges: I was probably the last to know but in case if you didn't know either, here's an effective way by using knife to 'slice' the skin, then simply peel it off. That won't hurt your nails so badly if you were to peel the skin directly using your nails... Not sure if you got what I meant but I video it anyway)

These small oranges (about 20?) yielded about 2L of juice... WuhoO~*

So in the end, nope, I did not juice the bananas... My girl loves it as it is... I could probably make banana smoothie if there's leftover... Wahhahhaa~*

Watermelon!

Would anyone actually juice a watermelon when all you need to juice it is to simply eat it?! Haa...

Well, I know someone who does but I don't understand it...

This is the first time I have ever thought of juicing the watermelon... for the main reason (or excuse, maybe)... I hope my elder daughter would try a little of it ^^

When I told my husband that I'm going to juice a watermelon... He jokingly remarked that doing it would be an insult to the watermelon... hahahaha!

I was at the fairprice yesterday but the watermelons are sold at $6+... I dropped by Giant this morning and quickly grabbed 2 of them (Malaysia red seedless watermelon) at $2.50 each! Yippee ^^

Special thanks to my helper/model so that we can have the clip for today's juicing ^^ I had used fine strainer. One whole watermelon with skin removed, then coarsely chopped. This yielded more than 1.5 litres of watermelon juice. I had tried some, it tasted rich and sweet. Yummy! ^^

 

(Tips on choosing watermelon - heavy and with very defined lines)... Have FUN juicing!! ^^

Red grapes, Rose Apple, Oranges

As my girl wasn't used to chewing grapes with its skin, it took some time to remove the skin and seeds before the grapes could be fed to my big baby.

On the other hand, she couldn't finish the  whole big apple but only 1/4 of it as most, I had to eat lotsa apple leftover each day.

Left with many grapes that were very ripen and an apple in the fridge... I decided to juice them when I made orange juices today.

Sorry, no pics as these were very common fruits ^^

10-20 big red grapes and 2/3 big apples (core removed), yielded about 1 cup of juice for my girl (to ease her constipation).

5 big Africa oranges ($2.45 for 5 from Fairprice) yielded 2 1/2 cup of oranges for my husband and I ^^

All in less than 20mins. Really convenient and effortless to juice different batches together.

(Side note: the grape and apple juice seemed to separate into pulp and water layers after a while)

Kiwi...

Kiwi, strawberries... Such soft fruits are probably not suitable, in terms of its volume, when it came to slow juicing.

Earlier this week, my girl rejected her first try of kiwi fruits. It's probably too sour, instead of sweet, that she didn't like it.

So today while we were juicing oranges, I thought of mixing the kiwi into the juice for my constipated girl.

If worked, she finished the juice... But to be frank, there's only very little amount of juice from this big kiwi... Sigh... I didn't waste the pulp, I ate it! Yes, I know it may sound/seem gross... But it's still fruit, right?

Sticking with juicing oranges, apples, kind of crunchy and juicy fruits, instead of expensive soft fruits... Hmm... At least my girl took it in its juice form ;p

Back from confinement

I had certainly kept really quiet on this blog for a while... Not that I had forgotten it but I just 'graduated' from confinement ^^

And the very first juice I craved for after 40 days of warm longan dates tea... Was the chilled Orange Juice!!!

My elder daughter loves the orange juice... Probably the first type of juice that let her learnt the word 'juice'...

The difference in this batch was that I had added a little bit (abt the size of a thumb) of ginger... Yes! Ginger, as I had plenty of leftover from the confinement...

Verdict? This tiny bit of ginger overwhelmed the 15 small African oranges used in juicing... So, lesson learnt. If you intend to include ginger to boost the nutrition value of the juice, use just 1-2 slices and that would probably be more than enough in terms of the taste...

Good luck when you try it.. Haa! Really glad to be back to juicing... WuhOO! ^^

Something to try for... The what butter?

My husband loves peanut butter...

He got curious and asked if the slow juicer could make some peanut butter when he saw me juicing the almond nuts previously...

This question really make me ponder, so I did some research over the web and found a video on youtube... This juicer reviewer guy (raw food something..) demo the making of peanut butter using heavy duty slow juicer...

The keys are:

1. The slow juicer has to be heavy duty or it will damage the motor since it will be done without water and no pre-soaking required
2. The peanuts are best to be roasted nuts so its oil content will make it easier during the juicing process and the pulp will become the peanut butter
3. When 'juicing' peanut butter, it's best to open up the silicon slot underneath the juicer to allow better pressure flow in releasing the pulp from the unit

This is really an interesting finding and I hope to try it one day.... The only concern in my mind is, I wasn't sure if A*Juicer is a 'heavy duty' juicer that suit this making... Nevertheless, I thought I should share with you what's on my mind with the potential juicing project... Haa!

Let me know if you have tried it! Cheers! ^^

There's something to share about APPLES

I have no idea what to juice recently... a trip to the supermarket didn't pack much back...

Fruits are getting more expensive nowadays...

And have you seen or are you are even aware of the ROSE apples in the market now? They are called the "Rose" apples... rosy red, not waxy and absolutely sweet!

 The first rose apple I ever tried was many months ago when my parents got them from cold storage. Those apples were small and selling at almost $1 each at that time...

BUT Seriously SWEET!

Since then, we would look out for only Rose apples... not crunchy kiwi apple, good-bye to fuji apples, seen some envy apples from US or NZ... but we ONLY buy ROSE apples!

There seems to be a season for such great fruit... the rose apples that we manage to get now no longer taste that sweet as they used to be, though still better than the almost tasteless CN fuji apples...

Speaking of apples, I should probably get some cheap ones for juicing since I heard that i may help to ease constipation in kid... Green + Red, perhaps! Hope this help!

(And my girl loves juice!)

Some days later

It's been sometime since I last post entry about the usage of my juicer...

It's been more than a month since I got this juicer...

That doesn't mean that I haven't been using it... Haa! I had made soy bean milk (coarse strainer), almond milk (coarse strainer), orange juice (fine strainer) and banana smoothie (fine strainer)!

Sorry, no pics as I was in a rush when making all these (on different days of course!) Just a quick tip to share with all as one of my lesson learnt...

When making Banana smoothie...

Tip#1 Do not freeze the entire banana, try to peel them before freezing
Why is this so? Because when the skin turned hard, it's challenging to peel the skin properly...

Tip#2 Keep the rubber unblock at the bottom of the juicing unit
This allows the 'pulp' which is the smoothie to come off unit more easily

I'll share some pics next time when I do it correctly next time... Anyway, it tastes pretty good this batch... so just some pointers to note.... Cheers~*

Sadly.... my 4th warranty registration...

It's not that the juicer is having any problem now... Also, under my care, I was almost confident that it probably won't need for any servicing within 1 year...

However, it took really too long with its warranty registration process...

The juicer was received on 3rd Jun, I tried the first online registration about a week later, so probably 8th or 9th Jun? I forgot...

I received nothing... so I tried again.... and again.... and after the 3rd time, I sent a feedback to the company but nothing was received. Lucky enough that my ex-classmate was working there so he tried to find out for me and kept me posted on the progress...

This evening, upon request, I did my 4th online registration... and here's the screenshot, just in case if it went missing (again)....

Hope it can be settled soon... Cheers!

Updated on 7/3: So I received a confirmation that my warranty registration is processed. Now, I'm waiting for my e-recipe ^^

Day 20 - Grapefruit Juice

It's been a week of haze, really bad haze and very luckily, our first blue sky in this week...

Even if its for 1/2 a day, it's happiness to see such clear sky... Beauty of nature!

After some researches from web about drinks that help to cleanse our lungs... I learnt that we should cut down on diary intake and focus on anti-oxidant fruits/teas... 

Lemon with water in the morning with empty stomach, some cranberry, grapefruit or carrot juice... Mint tea... Ginger... Blah blah blah... Would help a little...

So I grabbed some grapefruits from supermarket on Friday morning before the haze hit 401 that 'grey and smoky' Friday.

Here's total of 6 grapefruits, peeled and separated into smaller pieces for feeding to the slow juicer...

My first time juicing grapefruit... 

BTW, I tried a new app 'LINE Tools' which I just installed recently... To check on the noise level, not sure how accurate but just to share...

Before juicing (normal noise level in my kitchen with doors and windows closed)

When A*Juicer was turned on but without feeding of fruits

And this was when the grapefruits were fed into the juicer... Somehow ard the similar range...

This portion yielded about 5 Cups of juice. (FYI, I used fine strainer) It was a little bitter and sour... So I added some maple syrup to neutralize the taste... Pretty good!

No video as it's very similar to my post on juicing oranges...

Here's the pulp...

And not forgetting the cleaning part... Nothing much left with the centre screw so cleaning was not too tedious...

Take care, folks! Hope we can all pull through this hazy period... And may all the dengue mosquitoes be eliminated entirely!

Stay safe and healthy!! ^^