WHAT
This article discusses juicing... Cucumbers..   I came back from the grocery store with 7 BC Hot House grown english cucumbers.  {Hot house grown, with no herbicides, and using biological controls (predatory insects) , when possible}..   I reccomend using organic whenever possible, or at least pesticide-free produce.

WHY
I decided to write this article for one of our guests who is thinking about purchasing a second juicer to juice leafy greens and cucumbers. 

I started out by weighing the cukes, the weights are shown below.

I decided to use Cuke #4 , #6 and #7.  #6, and #7 were trimmed down to equal the weight of 4, to give me a starting weight of 14 ounces.

The following juicers were used

1. Twin gear juicer- (Green Life Style Juicer) Made by tribest, leaders in twin gear technology.
2. A new style "all purpose" single auger juicer  (Omega 8001/Oscar)
3. Centrifugal ejection juicer-  The Juiceman II (It still works great after 5 years)

HOW
With the twin gear machine, the cuke was cut down the middle lengthwise to make 2 long strips.  The strips were fed into the juicer at a moderate speed to ensure the juicer did not backup and had adequate time to juice.  The pulp that came out of twin gear juicer was put back through  the machine a total of 5 times to increase the yield.

With the single auger machine, the cuke was cut down the middle lengthwise to make 2 long strips.  These strips still did not fit into the feed chute so they had to be cut again to yield 4 long strips.  These strips were fed into the juicer at a moderate speed to ensure the juicer did not backup and had adequate time to juice.  The pulp that came out of single auger  juicer was put back through   the machine a total of 5 times to increase the yield.

With the centrifugal ejection machine, the cuke was cut down the middle lengthwise, to make 2 long strips.  The strips were fed into the juicer at a slow pace.  If the produce is pushed in too fast, yield will be less.  The cucumber was put through the machine once, and the pulp discarded. (with this extraction method, it would be almost useless to feed the pulp back through the machine, since very little additional juice would be extracted)

RESULTS

As you can see all the juicers performed fairly well on the cucumbers.

SUMMARY
The Twin Gear provided the most juice on cucumbers.  It produced 8% more than the centrifugal ejection unit, and 16% more juicer than the single auger juicer.  It was able to produce this much juice because I fed the pulp that came out of the machine back through the machine a total of 5 times. (each time, the pulp would become less moist).   The juice was smooth with little pulp. The cleanup on this unit wasn't too bad, it cleaned relatively easily.

The Single Auger produced the least juice.  This was a disappointment, as the "newest" style juicer on the market was reported to perform as good as the twin gears.  Well in juicing cucumbers, this is just not the case.  The juice was more pulpy than the juice of the twin gear unit.   The cleanup on this unit is pretty intense.  The screen has many holes, and takes a good scrubbing to get clean, there were a total 6 pieces to clean (aside from the pulp and juice catch bowls)

The centrifugal ejection Juicer- performed well.  It produced only 8% less juice than the Twin Gear Juicer, and it did it on the first shot.  The juice had little to no pulp.  Proving that this juicer would juice the fastest, and also is the easiest to cleanup. (3 main parts to clean)

PLEASE NOTE
This test ONLY shows  the QUANTITY of the juice produced, and NOT the quality.

If I had to rate the quality of the juice produced, based on my experience, I would rate the twin gear and the single auger having the highest quality of juice produced, because of the LOW RPM that is used while extracting the juice.   Generally the lower the RPM, the lower the oxidation.  The centrifugal juicer provided the highest RPM, thus the highest level of oxidation.

Furthermore, I believe the twin gear juicer extracts the most nutrition out of the produce since it literally "presses" the juice out of the produce, next up would be the single auger juicer, and finally the centrifugal ejection juicer.

IN CLOSING
The above results were our results using our methods.  Your results may vary.  There are many factors when juicing which may affect yield. Some factors include: the quality, water content  and age of the produce.  The statements in the above article reflect my opinions which are based on my experience with juicers and juicing.

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