How to Make Blueberry Juice Concentrate
If you have an abundance of fresh blueberries, but you don't know what to do with all of them, you can make some concentrated blueberry juice and freeze it for future use. Using just a few household ingredients and about 3 hours of your time, making juice concentrate is easy. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- 5 lbs. fresh, dark blueberries (the darker the berry, the better)
- 8-quart stockpot
- 3 1/2 cups of fine granulated sugar
- Large metal strainer
- 1 potato masher
- Large plastic container
Instructions
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1
Rinse the blueberries in the large metal strainer with cold water to remove any debris, bugs or pesticide. Shake the strainer to mix the berries while rinsing.
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2
Fill the stockpot with the blueberries. The berries should fill the 8-quart stockpot a little more than halfway.
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3
Pour cold, purified water over the berries in the pot until the berries are submerged about 1 inch under the water.
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4
Cover the pot of berries, and simmer for about 2 hours, checking frequently to make sure there is enough water in the pot. If needed, add water to the pot, one cup at a time, to avoid scorching.
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5
Using the potato masher, thoroughly mash all of the blueberries in the pot. The liquid level should rise to about 3 quarters of the way full.
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6
Place the metal strainer over a large container, like a 1-gallon ice cream bucket, and carefully pour the stockpot of mashed blueberries into the strainer.
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Use the masher to squish the blueberries into the strainer. This further extracts liquid from the pulp. There should be enough liquid by this point to fill a 1-gallon container.
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8
Pour the resulting liquid into the stockpot, and place the stockpot back onto the stove. Bring to a rolling boil, whilst stirring in the sugar. Let the liquid boil for about 2 minutes, then turn off the stove.
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9
Let the liquid cool. Pour the liquid into containers of your choice for freezing. For every 6 oz. of this blueberry juice concentrate, you can make about 2 quarts of blueberry drink.
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Tips & Warnings
Freezing the concentrate into ice cubes, and adding two cubes to a cold glass of water, makes a delicious and refreshing summertime drink.
Wear gloves; blueberry juice can stain.
References
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Comments
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kmarvin
Aug 17, 2009
I used a gallon of frozen berries, picked locally, that were a year old and it turned out fine. Would be better with fresh I'm sure but I needed to use these up. Frozen berries are "jucier" so I didn't need to add as much water or mash them quite as much. Frozen skins burst easily when thawed.
