Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The Juiceman appears to be a great value at first. This appliance looks and feels sturdy and comes with two types of juicer. One is the classic "spinning cone" that you press a half a citrus against. It's essentially a motorized version of the glass juicer that we have just about all used at one time or another. The other juicer function is the "juice extractor" which is the configuration pictured in the Amazon website photo. This is the way we spent our testing time, in this configuration, and we were frankly kind of disappointed. The Juiceman produced juice, but it produced a LOT more pulp. I found I could get about as much juice by hand squeezing the pulp at the end of an extraction than the extraction itself. Seemed odd. We followed all the instructions, and our observation is that the recipe yields in the instruction book are optimistic at best. In general, it seemed to take us about twice as many apples to make a cup of juice as suggested in the book. It seemed to take about three times as many carrots. In talking with friends who had more experience with this kind of unit, we found that they had a couple of recommendations: 1. Make sure you have only the freshest, juiciest fruits and vegetables and that you soak carrots and celery in water before use; 2. The several times more expensive juicers exist because they work better. Upon checking some web sources, we found that most of the folks who are really happy with their juicers, whatever the brand, seem to gravitate towards the $300-500 kind. Wow! This Juiceman is $79. So, a way to look at it is, how much extra fruit and vegetable can you buy for the added couple hundred dollars? Probably enough that you'll get tired of juicing before you make up the difference. A poor way to look at it, I'm sure, but here is why I say this.
The Juiceman is not fun to clean. Juicing carrots seemed to leave a glaze on the surface of the extractor cup, which is a spinning steel and plastic bowl inside the machine. It has sharp spurs on the bottom of the cup to grind off bits of fruit and vegetable which are then centrifuged against the fine screened sides which allow the juice to fly out into the collection area of the unit when in operation. We went through half a Costco bag of carrots, four apples, a bunch of spinach, four large celery stalks, etc. This required emptying the pulp bin about four times. We got well under a pint of juice altogether. In fact, the four of us were using shot glasses to share the output. When we finished and I went to do final cleaning, it was very hard to remove the filmy glaze on the bottom of the extractor cup. I soaked it overnight in water. The next day, it was still had to scrub off. I used a toothbrush for the task. They supply a cleaning brush in the kit, which is essentially a stiff toothbrush, too. The other parts didn't have the filmy glaze, but there are a lot of parts to clean. The next hardest cleaning task is the plastic labyrinth that leads the juice out of the spout on the front of the unit. You absolutely need a brush or other implement to reach into these spaces to clean unless you have skinny fingers. Whatever you do, don't let this plastic thing sit after use - you need to clean it immediately. The rest of the pieces are more or less like cleaning a food processor.
I suppose the bottom line here is that I now appreciate why commercial fruit and vegetable juices are not cheap, especially the "organic" health food types. If you must have this kind of appliance, do a lot of checking beforehand and buy enough juicer that you'll be happy with it. This one is not enough unless you have other uses for all the pulp and have enough time to be inefficient about producing juice.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Juiceman JM480S 1.1-HP 2-Speed All-in-One Automatic Juice Extractor and Citrus Juicer with Integrated Pulp Container
Enjoy all your favorite fresh juices with ease with an all-in-one automatic juice extractor and citrus juicer combined. With 1.1 HP (800 watts) of power and high/low speed control, you'll enjoy maximum juice extraction on all your produce from berries to rind-on pineapple. The citrus juicer attachment features 2 juicing cones for small and large citrus fruits. An integrated pulp container takes up less space on your counters, while a custom juice pitcher makes measuring or serving easy. The 3-inch wide mouth feed chute lets you juice more with less precutting, while the snap-up juice spout helps keep drips and spills off your counters. All this, plus dishwasher-safe parts for easy cleaning and built-in cord storage.
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