What Are Slow Juicers?
Slow juicers are also known as masticating juicers and they simply juice your produce slower for a smoother finish and higher juice yield. The slow juicers are designed to press the juice out of your ingredients with great amounts of pressure at a slow rate. It’s so important to know which slow juicer is right for you because juicers can juice different produce, some easier than others.
What Types Of Slow Juicers Are There?
There are 3 types of slow juices, which include:
- Vertical Slow Juicers
- Horizontal Slow Juicers
- Twin Gear Slow Juicers
Vertical Slow Juices
The vertical slow juicers are perhaps the most popular style of slow juicers to buy. Distinguished by their compact and polished designs and simple-to-use systems, like anything, they have their pros and cons.
Strengths:
- Soft or Hard Fruits
- Root Vegetables
Weaknesses:
- Celery
- Kiwi
- Grapefruit
- Leafy Greens (on their own)
- Cucumber
- Passion Fruit
- Pineapple
Unfortunately, celery is not best juiced in a vertical slow juicer, at least individually, much to people’s surprise. This is due to the amount of fibre in celery and causes many problems such as clogging the auger, making it unable to extract the juice correctly, to extreme cases of parts cracking within your juicer.
Don’t panic if you have already bought a vertical juicer, as said above, celery can be juiced in smaller amounts. Simply cut the celery up into smaller pieces and clean any pulp build-up in the juicers every 5-10 minutes or when any blockages become apparent. However, if you’re wanting to juice solely celery juice or large amounts of celery, then we suggest a different type of slow juicer.
Leafy greens are the exact same circumstances as above, they can be juiced with other ingredients such as root vegetables and will juice to a suitable standard.
Finally vertical juicers have a hard time juicing soft apples, kiwis and grapefruits because of their distinctive thick fibrous structure surrounded by soft juice-flesh. This makes them notorious for clogging and turning to mush in the auger and thus not giving a worthwhile amount of juice for the effort put in.
Horizontal Slow Juicers
Similar in popularity, horizontal juicers are best known for their ability to extract high yields of juice from tough produce. With that being said, it will be clear that they excel where vertical juicers will fail; however like all juicers, they will have their disadvantages too.
Strengths:
- Celery
- Leafy Greens
- Root Vegetables
- Hard Fruits
Weaknesses:
- Soft Fruits
- Kiwi
- Pineapple
- Passion Fruits
- Cucumber
- Oranges
- Grapefruit
Mirroring the vertical juicers capabilities, it may seem surprising that horizontal juicers cannot withstand soft fruit but juice root vegetables and celery with ease.
Reasonings behind the threat of soft fruit for horizontal juicers is that they have conflict shifting the pulp build-up and usually ends with blockages that can only be cleared with assistance. These risks come from produce such as ripe apples, oranges, kiwis and grapefruits to name a few.
Twin Gear Slow Juicers
Alas, we have our third and final slow juicer, the twin gear. Working similarly to the horizontal juicer, only the twin gear uses 2 gears to extract juice, rather than a single auger. Thus making their strengths and weaknesses very similar to their close peers, the horizontal juicers.
Strengths:
- Celery
- Leafy Greens
- Root Vegetables
- Hard Fruits
Weaknesses:
- Passion Fruits
- Pineapple
- Soft Fruits
- Kiwis
- Grapefruit
- Oranges
Functionally, twin gear slow juicers have the same downfalls as horizontal juicers in regards to what they can’t juice easily. Although, their biggest difference is the twin gear’s ability to extract larger yields of juice and press juice more effectively, increasing the overall quality of the juice.
Finding Your Slow Juicer
Now you’ve read up about the different slow juicers and their capabilities, the next step is to prioritise the ingredients you want to juice the most in your slow juicer. What we mean is if you’re wanting to juice a wide variety of ingredients but can stay away from celery, then the horizontal juicers may be your match made in heaven.
However, if juice fasts and cleanses are a part of your juice journey, (juicing ginger, celery and spinach to be specific), you will probably find a twin gear or vertical slow juicer to be more suited to your juicing lifestyle.
Our Recommendations
Hopefully, by now you should be able to confidently go and purchase the right juicer for you. If you’re new to the juicing world completely, browning through the hundreds of different juicers may seem daunting and off putting.
To help combat these thoughts of where to start, we’ve put together a list of our recommendations as juice experts to help make the decision easier and quicker for you. Don’t let our choices put you off browning through the hundreds of other juicers we sell if you’d prefer a specific juicer!
Vertical Slow Juicers:
Horizontal Slow Juicers:
Twin Gear Slow Juicers:
Disclaimer
Please note that there are some ingredients that cannot be juiced at all due to the lack of juice actually in the produce, this will cover things such as avocados and bananas and will quickly become a major blockage that will have to be manually removed. If you are wanting avocado and bananas in your drinks, we advise you to look at our blender selection instead as these ingredients are delicious within a smoothie recipe.
Other ingredients to be wary of consist of pineapple and turmeric. Pineapple can be juiced in smaller quantities alongside other ingredients but too much pineapple, and you will cause damage to parts of your juicer due to thick fibres in the fruit. Turmeric is often thrown into the juicer in larger chunks and this can cause the juicer to lock and break so extra care is strongly advised when using turmeric.