Using a juicer for vegetable/fruit beers?

[ilikethetrees]

My fiancee and I recently got an awesome juicer. This one's a Breville. Great value if you're into making juice. Anyway, as soon as we tried it out I immediately started to wonder about the applications in making vegetable and fruit beers.

Anyone out there used a juicer to add fruit to their beers in a liquified form? Any reason to avoid that?

Seems to me one obvious benefit is that the pulp gets separated in the centrifuge and filter plate of the juicer, taking with it potentially icky vegetal flavors.

I suppose one downside would be that the resulting juice is more likely to have infection-producing pathogens as the inside of the juicer has a huge surface area, though we could always Star-san the heck out of the thing while it's running first.

Could we make our own cider for a hard cider this way? Is 'juicing' somehow substantially different from the crushing normally associated with making apple ciders?

Thanks, HBT! If any of you are in the Chicago area, I seriously suggest checking out this local microbrew fest happening in my are (Oak Park): http://www.sevengenerationsahead.org/index.php/events/oak_park_micro_brew_review/

 

[hopsalot]

I have used juicers to flavor lambics. it works great. when producing a lambic, concern about infection is minimal, at least to me, but in other beers I would heat up to sterilize.