The Trials and Tribulations of Hand Juicing

Here at Twisted Alchemy, we know the pain that goes into the hand-juicing required for excellent cocktails. That’s why we curated our line of hand-squeezed, cold-pressed 100% citrus juices. We know that cocktailing should be a labor of love. But in our quest to bring you the freshest cocktails, we believe you should be far more focused on the love than the labor.

As any bartender knows, there is no faster way to discover the untold number of seemingly microscopic cuts that exist on a person’s hands than to manually juice a lemon. No matter the method, it seems as though little droplets of juice will always find their way into the cracks of dry winter hands, or the papercuts you didn’t realize were there, or, for those of us working in kitchens and bars, the scrapes required to create the wonderful and delicious things we do. There is some satisfaction to citrus juicing- from the bright colored hulls of oranges and limes and lemons piling up, to the almost tropical scent that reminds you of how much vitamin D you’re lacking. Food service workers might be tempted to recall their encounters with an industrial juicer fondly (though most likely will not). There is something relaxing about the repetitive whirr and clunk of a machine doing a job your hands might have otherwise done. There can be a sort of meditative spirit that overcomes the bartender at the juicer.

That is- until you glance down and discover just how little juice one lime holds.

At Twisted Alchemy, we know exactly how much juice is in one lime. And we know it’s not enough. That is why we hand-curate, prep, juice, and press thirty of them to bring you every single bottle of Hand-Squeezed Cold Pressed 100% Persian Lime Juice. As a bartender, you could cut, juice, and clean twenty two blood oranges, and likely ruin all your white clothes, or you could simply crack open our Cold Pressed 100% Blood Orange Juice. We select all our fruits based on ripeness and juice quality, rather than looks. This way, we are able to provide a consistent juice yield, so that you never feel the disappointment that comes from juicing a juiceless dud.

Beyond the frustration of hand juicing is the seemingly inescapable waste. It takes up to six years for a lemon tree to mature from a seed into something capable of producing the bright citrus we love and rely on. When we hand juice, plenty of this pulp remains in the discarded shell or clinging to the inside of the juicer. And whatever juice that laborious process yields is often tossed- it’s estimated at least 10% of all citrus will spoil before it’s used. Our cold pressing process wastes less by exerting thousands of pounds of pressure to release the maximum amount of juice from our fruits. All of our bottles undergo an innovative process called High Pressure Processing, in which they are passed through a chamber that exerts pressure onto them to stop the growth of bacteria, yeasts, and mold- meaning our juices stay better for longer. Never again will you have to toss away juice you spent hours producing because it expired too quickly.

At Twisted Alchemy, we don’t think delicious cocktails need to be grueling. The joy of cocktailing doesn’t need to be mediated by the pain of juicing. One bottle of our Cold Pressed 100% Eureka Lemon Juice can replace twenty four lemons, your juicer, and all the band-aids you might’ve needed. And because our juices are all standardized for pH and Brix, your cocktails will be better, and easier, than before.