Hello everyone,
I only had old stalks of sugarcane to test out my new juicer but I was pleasantly surprised by how much juice I got out of the canes. I juiced two varieties, a green type and a black type. I juiced approx 3.5 feet of green cane which yielded a little over 2.5 cups of juice. I juiced approx 2 feet of the black cane which yielded a little over 1 2/3 cups of juice. The Green cane is about 3 weeks old and was left in my garage sitting there just drying, both ends were completely dried up so I cut them off before washing the canes and juicing. I stored the black canes in my refrigerator in a plastic bag and these canes did not dry up nearly as much. The two varieties of canes tasted very different. I'm not sure if it was because the Green canes had dried up so much and concentrated the sugars or not but the Green canes were super super sweet. The Black canes were also very sweet but the sugars were not as concentrated. The color of the juice was also very different. Some of the color from the black canes came off while juicing and gave the juice a dark colored tint. I see some people shaving off the black skin in order to have a better color juice.
The juicer is absolutely amazing and does what it is supposed to. Its a pain in the ass performing the initial cleanings because there is so much dirt and rust on the machine but post juicing cleaning is much easier. After juicing it took me a total of 15 minutes to clean the entire juicer by myself. I split each stalk of cane in half like Luke recommended in his video and the juicing was extremely easy, so easy that a single person can easily do it by themselves. I ran each piece of cane through the juicer 3 times and I could have run it through another time to get more juice out of it but I was lazy. With each pass of the cane through the machine, I folded the cane in half which made the turning of the flywheel more difficult. The small tray that comes with the juicer can actually hold quite a lot of juice, approx 4 cups of juice.
I still can't believe how much juice I got out of the old canes I used. The juice was extremely delicious, I added some ginger and lime to the juice and also added some ice to dilute down the sweetness, I love sweet things but its almost too sweet without the ice. Overall rating for this juicer is 8/10. It works extremely well for its intended purpose and from what I can tell, it will last a long long time. The only real issue I have with this unit is the finish on some of the stainless steal covers and the handle on the flywheel. This unit is extremely easy to use. There was one video with about 5 people holding this unit while juicing and I believe they had such a difficult time because they did not split their cane before putting it through the machine. With the canes split, the flywheel is easy to turn. It does get more difficult to turn as the thickness of what you are juicing increases but its still fairly easy.
Luke, do you have any info on the new juicer? What improvements is the new unit going to have? I'll post some more pics in a bit.
Simon