It’s Apple Harvesting Time!
From late summer through to late October, apples up and down the breadth of the UK are being harvested for eating, cooking, drying, mulching, and juicing.
Because we’re passionate about supporting British agriculture, we only use British apples grown on British farms, like the Jonagold apples featured in the video below.
Sit back, relax, and let us walk you through the process of how we turn delicious British apples into our mouthwatering range of real fruit juice products.
The apples arrive at Bensons
A delivery of apples arrives at Bensons. The apples featured here (and wonderfully modelled by our Co-Founder, Jeremy Benson) are of the Jonagold variety, which are typically harvested in September and kept in cold storage for around 8 months. The apples are kept in sealed stores under nitrogen gas at 4°C, with the oxygen removed, to keep them fresh until we are ready to process them. This particular delivery contained a whopping 25 tonnes of Jonagold apples!
The apples are cleaned, prepped, pulverised, and pressed
The apples then make their way to be processed, where they are washed in stages and travel across our conveyor belts to remove any foreign bodies, like mud and leaves, and any very rotten apples. Some bruising and browning of the apples is perfectly fine, and actually beneficial in the cider making process as it is the beginning of natural fermentation occurring. The apples then make their way into the mill, where they are pulverised and turned into mulch, before being passed through a screen, which is like a great big grater that helps make the pressing of the apples more efficient. The pulverised apple then makes its way into the press where all that lovely, delicious apple juice is extracted. Any mulch left over from the pressing process is recycled into use as feed for British cattle, so nothing goes to waste and we continue to support our much needed (and loved!) British agriculture.
The apple juice makes its way to its various processing stations
Whether we’re fermenting the juice to make our famous Eccentric English Ciders, mixing it with other British fruits to make our delicious Totally Fruity or Joosed Fruity Water, or carbonating it to make our bubbly Joosed Fizz, our apples go through a range of precision processes to make them ready for bottling, canning, and labelling before you can enjoy the finished product.
Celebrating British Apples
What better way to celebrate the amazing variety of fruits grown by UK farmers than enjoying some delicious juices and ciders made entirely from natural ingredients using only apples and fruits grown in the UK with no artificial colourings, flavours, or sweeteners.
Shop our range of pure fruit juice products
Do you run a cafe, restaurant, shop, or tourist attraction? Why not stock Bensons The Juicers products and support British produce and farmers?
