Vertical Single Auger Juicers, How To Get The Best From Them

What they are and how to get the best from yours, a few years ago there was a leap forward in juicer design, the old favourite, the single auger juicer was literally turned on its head by Hurom, giving us the first vertical single auger juicer.

The Vert or vertical slow juicer as it is now known is taking over juicing and rightly so, these juicers offered an advance in feed tube size, processing speed, flexibility AND gravity assisted juicing.

Some come with grinding screens or a separate grinding attachment that allows the juicer to effectively be a multi-task kitchen tool capable of juicing, grinding, making sauces, milks and even baby foods, anything that benefits from homogenising into a gloop! Sorbets and ice creams for example!

Slow is the new…. desirable quality.

Most non-centrifugal style juicers (here at juiceproducer we stopped selling centrifugal juicers for the domestic user some years ago) benefit from being ultra-slow turning, currently our slowest turning device is the Juiceproducer KT2200 juicer at 47 rpm. This allows the juicer to be a cold press machine, chomping up then squeezing the produce to ‘wring’ the juices out, this give several advantages, precision, flexibility but above all, great nutrient retention.

How to drive your juicer

Like any technical precise device, the vertical cold press juicer need good driving to get the best from it, so here are our tips for getting the best out of your vertical juicer.

1) The verticals LOVE juicing things like carrot but can trip up ejecting the stringy fibre of things like kale and celery, so alternate the produce you feed in to assist the juicer to clear any blockages.

2) End on a carrot, yup, finish your juicing session with a carrot, this will act like a chimney sweep and scrub through the juicer removing any stuck produce. If you finish the juicing session with cucumber or a ripe pear, you will probably open the lid to quite a mess!

3) Let the juicer run at the end of the juice session then tap it on the side and even pour a glass of water through it, along with the carrot trick, this will all help with clean up.

4) SOMETIMES with the verticals, pulp can wedge itself in the cavity of the auger and the central turret of the bowl, this give the appearance of the auger suddenly being welded in place, which in turn holds the screen, wiper cage and bowl down. To avoid your vertical slow juicer becoming stuck, dismantle it straight away, if it is stuck, run the unit in reverse, if that doesn’t work let the machine dry out for 2-3 hours with the lid off. This will reduce the volume of the offending pulp and should make the juicer easier to take apart.

Slow juicer augers getting stuck down is more likely after a longer juicing session, say three litres in one go, or more, if you are juicing a lot in one go, pop the auger out halfway through and clear the pulp from it. This will help too!

5) When doing grinding tasks please be cautious, the load generated by juicing apples is a LOT lower than the load generated if you grind coffee beans. The juicers are very precise; this gives dry pulp, but makes for a grinder with VERY tight tolerances. Feed grinding items in very slowly and back up if there is any cracking or pinging noises as these will be coming from the loaded up areas of the juicer.

6) The vertical slow juicers are spectacularly efficient on the electricity consumption front, most only consuming between 100 and 300 watts, they are geared down, like a mountain bike in first gear, but if they do stop, hit reverse as soon as you can then proceed again. We recommend splitting all but the smallest carrot long ways, to prevent ‘locking up’ from happening.

OK that is our round up for using your shiny new Vertical Slow Juicer; this design is where it’s at in juicing right now, with new designs coming out all the time! The latest generation of vertical single auger juicer have evolved to handle leafy greens better than the very first versions (launched in around 2009) Fit and finish have improved too offering less pulpy juice production AND class leading yield!