Hale Groves Tangelo (Hand-Squeezed Juice)

Grower: Hale Groves
Variety: Tangelo
Grower website

The tangelo is a hybrid of a tangerine and a red grapefruit (or sometimes a pommelo, thus the name tangelo). The skin color ranges from a dark tangerine orange to a lighter navel orange color. The first thing you notice when you cut into one is that they're loaded with juice. I got nearly twice as much juice from three tangelos as I did from three red navels. They're also loaded with seeds so be careful if you're feeding these to your kids.

The juice is a yellow orange color, similar to a yellow peach. The aroma is sweet with both tangerine and grapefruit scents readily discernible. The flavor of the juice is quite sweet as well. The sweet tangerine taste seems to be the dominant character here, but there is a nice red grapefruit kick as well. The sweetness of this juice along with some of the interesting undertones would make this an excellent choice for tropical drinks like a rum runner or mai tai. I think you could substitute it not only for orange juice in drink recipes, but for pineapple juice as well because of the sweetness. Definitely worth a try.

Hale Groves Red Navel Orange (Hand-Squeezed Juice)

Grower: Hale Groves
Variety: Western Red Navel ("Ravel")
Grower website

So this one definitely falls under the "anything else interesting" category. My inlaws sent us a nice selection of oranges for Christmas. While I'm not a big fan of eating oranges out-of-hand, I could drink OJ all day long. I decided to hand-squeeze some juice from a few of the varieties to give them a taste. I figured I'd give them the old Critical Tastings treatment here. I tried to Google "how to taste orange juice" and "orange juice tasting" to see if there was any expert advice available on juice tastings, but I didn't find much useful info. Maybe we can start our own trend here...

Prior to juicing, I grated off the zest with a microplane. I figured I'd try to get as much as I could from these oranges, so I saved the zest in the freezer for later use. I then gave the uncut oranges a few hard squeezes on the counter to get the juices flowing. Since I don't like pulpy juice, I squeezed the oranges cut-side up over my second hand to catch as much of the seeds/pulp as I can. Squeezing them cut-side down (after removing the seeds) will net you more juice as well as more pulp. FYI - be prepared for your kitchen to smell awesome if you try this yourself. I then put my fresh-squeezed juice in the fridge to chill. (Tip: room-temperature oranges will give you more juice than chilled ones.)

These Red Navels look just like a navel orange in their outward appearance, but when you cut into them the flesh is a pinkish-red, like cutting into a red grapefruit. Interestingly, the juice itself is golden orange, much like any store-bought OJ. There is only the faintest hint of pink. The aroma of the juice is just like a fresh-cut orange (no surprises here). The juice is quite sweet, with fairly light acidity. I do detect a hint of bitterness, but I suspect this is from the oils in the skin that I released by zesting the oranges prior to juicing. It's not too distracting, but I think I'll wait to grate off the zest until after I juice the next batch. All in all, this is a nice sweet juice with a natural low acidity. It may be a bit of work, but it rivals any premium store-bought juice in flavor.