Making your own juice in a 'Saftmaja'

Hannah and I are always looking for ways to make our own things. Whether it's DIY gear, planting food or like in this case...making juice. We found a 'Saftmaja' (aka a Steam Juicer) at a thrift shop in our local town for the humble price of 50 SEK (about 6 USD). It might not be the newest model but it defenitely does the job.

It's easy to use, water in the bottom part and fruits or berries in the top part. The steam from the boiling water will make whatever you have in the top part drip down to the middle part where it will stay until you tap it. We have a few rhubarb plants at our place and rhubarb juice is one of my all time favourites. My dad and my grandmother make the absolute best rhubard juice but they do it in a different way than I did it this time. I picked about 2 kg of rhubarb, cut them into pieces about 2-3 cm and put them in the top part of the steamer with a sliced lemon and about 1.5 kg of sugar. It took about one hour to extract the juice from the rhubarb with this method.

The Opinel no.7 is a great harvesting knife

We got 2.5 L of rhubarb juice concentrate, so we'll be fine for a little while. It was pretty tasty, but not as good as grandma's, but she's a tough competitor.

And I realised just as I was done harvesting the rubarbs that they would probalby be better in a week or so. Well, lesson learned! Next time I'll try my grandmothers recipe instead.