When I was a kid, orange juice concentrate was a freezer staple. It's just a tube of highly concentrated juice you can mix with 3 parts water and have a pitcher of ice-cold orange juice ready to go. It's a simple but brilliant idea: why pay for the inconvenience of a bunch of extra water when you can supply your own?
Well, I recently learned that you can also get apple juice the same way, which was exciting. I like orange juice, but the main time of day I want to drink fruit juice is as soon as I wake up, and I can't have orange juice that early because the acid will fuck with the absorbtion of my medication. So I've been drinking more apple juice, and being able to get it in frozen concentrate form is perfect.
It doesn't take up much space in my freezer, I can stock up, and it's cheaper than any of the bottled apple juice options at the store. What I can afford is going to be made from concentrate anyway, so home-mixed shouldn't taste any different—or at least, that's what I thought.
One thing I found odd is that the mixing instructions say to first open the tube and microwave it for 60-90 seconds to thaw the juice. All the OJC I used to drink came in a cardboard tube with aluminum end caps, but the apple juice comes in a microwave-safe all-plastic tube. The idea still seemed strange to me: the directions didn't say to set the microwave to defrost mode, or to lower the power—just nuke that sucker full-blast, it says. Wouldn't that affect how it tastes?
Well, I tried it, and it was easier to get out of the tube and mix, but it definitely tasted off. It wasn't undrinkable, but something wasn't right. I couldn't put my finger on what: maybe the chlorine from the tap water had some effect, or maybe the freezing process affects the quality in a way that doesn't come across with orange juice.
But I drank all of it, and for the next batch, I ignored the directions and just mixed it straight from frozen. It was a little harder to get out of the tube, but I just levered/scooped it out with a spoon. Some of the frozen chunks didn't dissolve right away, but I just stirred it a little longer. Et voilà, it tasted indistinguishable from any concentrated apple juice I'd get out of a jug. I don't know why they tell you to cook it for a minute to save 60 seconds of extra scooping and stirring. Just mix it the old-fashioned way and there are almost no downsides.
My only caveat: it sucks that they ditched the recyclable packaging for a plastic tube. I don't know if they did this because they wanted to make it microwavable, or if it's cheaper this way and the microwavability is just a side-effect. If it's the former, it's a swing and a miss. If it's the latter, I'd be willing to pay a few cents extra to get it in not-plastic. I wish it came in the traditional cardboard tube.
But if you'd be buying plastic jugs of apple juice anyway, give frozen a try. It's less plastic, it'll save you money, it's less effort to get home, it's easy to stock up, and if you ignore the cooking directions, it tastes great 🦝