How is Tropicana made?

Bennie-Mac said:
There are two whole oranges in every glass of Tropicana according to an advert I saw recently. I've squeezed oranges, and there is not actually a huge amount of juice in them, so the other 60% of the glass must be filled with quite a lot of crap. I'm not suggesting you literally add crap though, just pointing out that replicating the taste would be pretty hard without all the additives, chemicals and sugars.
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They could just be talking about a really small glass. Food companies often pull that kind of trick... just looking at the size of a suggested serving for a bowl of cereal.
 
Doctor McNinja said:
They could just be talking about a really small glass. Food companies often pull that kind of trick... just looking at the size of a suggested serving for a bowl of cereal.
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it would hardly be a trick, the trick would be if it was a bigger glass, then they could say "ten whole oranges in every glass"
 
yer_averagejoe said:
This - you'll need some really good fat oranges. The best ones tend to be the ones that are the hardest to eat I think, because they have a thinner, more fiddly skin.

I'm guessing here but rather than press your oranges, I'd just peel them, blend them and then squeeze through a sieve. the not too fine a sieve because bits are best.
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NO!!! Don't blend them, the white bits will make it taste awful not to mention the seeds if they get blended. Just peel and squeeze if you're doing it by hand, if you're using a orange juicer just cut it in half and juice it. Hand squeezed is the best though. Back home we used to pick oranges by the bag full and juice them fresh off the tree. These oranges are juicy, when you cut them the juice starts to flow out unlike the ones over here when you squeeze them for ages and only get a tablespoon of juice.
 
apatia77 said:
I recon they use different type of oranges than the ones you would normally buy in a supermarket. When I used to work in a small coffee shop the oranges we would get would produce different tasting orange juice each time so it’s all down to oranges you use.
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They are different.
 
Hire 15 Filipino youngsters for next to nothing, to repeatedly headbutt a table covered in nectarines. The ensuing mixture of juice, pulp and blood should then run off into containers, much like the effluence of an autopsy.
 
Taken from wikipedia

Making the juice

Tropicana works with more than 12 established Florida groves, which are selected for sandy soil conditions and advanced irrigation practices.[11] The company is the largest single buyer of Florida fruit and processes about 60 million boxes of fruit. Once the fruit is picked, oranges are hand graded and any fruit that doesn’t meet quality inspections is removed.[12]
The oranges are then washed and the orange oil is extracted from the peel to capture the from-the-orange taste, which are later blended into the juice for consistent quality and flavor. The oranges are squeezed and the fresh juice is flash pasteurized. Tropicana developed flash pasteurization to minimize the time the orange juice is exposed to heat while providing maximum nutrition and flavor.[11]
Oranges have a limited growing season, and because there is demand for juice year round, an unspecified quantity of juice (some or potentially all) is deaerated[13] and then stored for future packaging in chilled tanks to preserve quality. The aseptic tanks protect the juice from oxygen and light and hold the liquid at optimal temperatures just above freezing to maintain maximum nutrition. It has been reported that deaerated juice no longer tastes like oranges, and must be supplemented before consumption with orange oils.[13] Tropicana also uses orange juice from Brazil to supplement the Florida crop.[11] Pulp may be blended in at this point, too, depending on the product.[11]
Tropicana's carton and plastic packaging are engineered to maintain quality and freshness. The company's packaging materials ensure the juice stays fresh inside the package by preventing outside moisture and light from affecting its quality.[11]
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Pestilence said:
Hire 15 Filipino youngsters for next to nothing, to repeatedly headbutt a table covered in nectarines. The ensuing mixture of juice, pulp and blood should then run off into containers, much like the effluence of an autopsy.
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this is how they make their blood orange juice. True story.
 
The question is not how to make orange juice, the question is how do they always taste the same round the year.

As we know we get seasons, you will only get oranges when it is in harvest so half the year is the northern hemisphere, half the year the harvest is from the southern hemisphere.

Now how are they always taste the same?

If you crush a batch of oranges you will immediately know they taste different to tropicana (better than Tropicana actually), and if you buy another batch a few weeks later and make juice with that it taste different, may not be hugely so but I can tell.

You can even buy unpasturised orange juice in supermarkets, cost like twice as much as Tropicana with a ridiculous short shelf life which taste like home made orange juice.

Where am I going with this?

I am guessing Tropicana must add something into it, or some sort of control method in order to keep it tasting the same all year round.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
The question is not how to make orange juice, the question is how do they always taste the same round the year.

As we know we get seasons, you will only get oranges when it is in harvest so half the year is the northern hemisphere, half the year the harvest is from the southern hemisphere.

Now how are they always taste the same?

If you crush a batch of oranges you will immediately know they taste different to tropicana (better than Tropicana actually), and if you squeese a batch even a few weeks later it could taste different, may not be hugely so but I can tell.

You can even buy unpasturised orange juice in supermarkets, cost like twice as much as Tropicana with a ridiculous amount of shelf life which taste like home made orange juice.

Where am I going with this?

I am guessing Tropicana must add something into it, or some sort of control method in order to keep it tasting the same all year round.
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Could this be to do with the amount of time they keep it stored? I was told that OJ is stored for quite a while, maybe they vary the length of time it's left before sale so it produces the same taste?
 
I saw a program on TV about orange squash and they make that by extracting the oil from the skin (which has the most flavour) and balance it with sugar.

From that wiki article it sounds as though Tropicana do the same thing, so they aren't lying when they say it's made from 100% oranges but they are heavily processed.

It's not like it's purely the squeezed juice and nothing else.
 
Raymond Lin said:
The question is not how to make orange juice, the question is how do they always taste the same round the year.

As we know we get seasons, you will only get oranges when it is in harvest so half the year is the northern hemisphere, half the year the harvest is from the southern hemisphere.

Now how are they always taste the same?

If you crush a batch of oranges you will immediately know they taste different to tropicana (better than Tropicana actually), and if you buy another batch a few weeks later and make juice with that it taste different, may not be hugely so but I can tell.

You can even buy unpasturised orange juice in supermarkets, cost like twice as much as Tropicana with a ridiculous short shelf life which taste like home made orange juice.

Where am I going with this?

I am guessing Tropicana must add something into it, or some sort of control method in order to keep it tasting the same all year round.
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I guess you didn't read what apatia77 just posted.:p
 
The difference between "not from concentrate" juice like Tropicana and "fresh" is pasteurisation. It would be vary hard to pasteurise at home.

No sugar is added to either.
 
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