Post #735369 by AdOrAdam on Fri, Jan 16, 2015 3:03 PM

On 2015-01-16 12:16, mikehooker wrote:
It's all grapefruit juice but something went wrong when it went to concentrate. It's just really really bitter and, frankly, tastes disgusting to me. This week I've made a Navy Grog and a Steve Crane Jet Pilot using fresh grapefruit and they were both so much more balanced and better tasting than my previous attempts with that bottled juice.

First all please read this post.

I follow the advice in that post & cut the central stem of the grapefruit out when squeezing at home - I cut the grapefruit in half & use an apple corer to cut the centre stem out.

This way you extract the juice from the flesh but avoid crushing the stem which releases bitterness. I don't think you want the oils from the grapefruit skin in your drink either so I squeeze fruit downwards in a large mexican elbow squeezer.

I've been meaning to share that grapefruit cutting revelation for a while! It's one of the best things I learnt (early on in my tiki experience), I think you can really tell the difference even if the central stem is left in when you squeeze.

I have a theory re commercial grapefruit juices:

I think they just squeeze the entire fruit (probably in a roller type press) which puts the bitterness from the central stem & oils from the skin into the juice.

The 'central stem' taste is much stronger in commercial grapefruit juice. I've probably tried commercial 3/4 grapefruit juices & found this off-putting flavour mikehooker describes.

Juice from the red grapefruit does have subtle differences to the white (it's slightly less grapefruity lingering taste) but it's way better substitute than any bottled grapefruit juice I have tried!

Fresh red grapefruit gets my vote :)