juicing
so I have been trying out an Omega J8006HDC Cold Press Juicer for the last few days. It does some things "okay" and it does a lot of things really badly.
It was my first attempt at buying and using a masticating juicer, but I've been reading for the last month, and have always been fairly mechanically inclined. Some observations.
The yield is low, because there is a powerful 2 horsepower motor, and a short distance for things to travel through. Basically they get dragged by the auger to the juicing screen, and then all the action stops. Until you put something else in there to push it through. This means that if you do things like juice a piece of ginger, and then try to juice strawberries or oranges, you're going to have a sloshy mess inside the device, with nothing happening till you turn it off, open the end cap, rub the ginger pulp off, or feed about a cup of kale through the thing. This, is highly impractical, for making particular recipes.
Additionally, the motor gets so darn hot I'd literally think that it was going to last about six months, no more than that. I turned it off after a particular session of juicing, and went back to the kitchen about 2 hours later, the housing was still warm to the touch, noticably, but not burning hot like when it was in operation. That should be worrisome, I think to anyone that buys something expensive and wants to have it around a while.
Okay then, so as far as the juice itself goes, much straining, teasing the pulp with a spoon against the filter, under it as you go, turning the machine off, scraping the juicing screens filter, re-assembly, pulling plugs of ejected fiber out that are stuck, etc. All in all, a real pain in the behind, but it does make some kinds of juice well. For example, celery.
Back to the yields though, because it's a short travel and the motor is fairly powerful, or at least rated powerfully, and it's attempting to move things through a very small circular space at the end of it all, what ends up happening is instead of actually getting all the yield on a longer travel, you get pulp that's been hammered dry, but then it re-adsorbs the juice that is sitting next to it, at the exit end of the juice screen, before it leaves the pulp ejection hole. This, is the most undesirable aspect of its design.
That said, I'm returning it. I'm going to attempt to have better results with a Hurom H-AA, instead and will be reporting back how that goes.
Interestingly enough, this thing SUCKS at making citrus. I get much better results from my 1941 Sunkist Commercial Juicer. Which, well, is built like a tank, cleans up in under 3 minutes, 5 if you're moving at an extremely leisurely pace, and otherwise performs like a dream.