I tried sea berry of the bush and thought only Europeans would like this. Awesome report, I'd like to try seaberry juice.

I forgot to mention straining the juice before adding sugar in order to get rid of the skins and seed pieces!

theaceofspades: I'm always finding more things that are not so great fresh, but become wonderful when processed in the right way. Of course there are already many familiar examples of this: cranberries, lemons, currants, quince, jujube (I much prefer them dried), pie cherries, even some canefruit and certain grapes.

I thought the same thing about seaberry off the bush as you did the first time, but it sure exceeded my expectations as a juice.

I've seen harvesting was done cutting some branches off and freeze it, then knocking off the berries. Here, I probably can wait for the freeze and knock it off on the bush on a thorny plant, I'm aiming for the thornless bush first for easier picking.
Haven't had many berries yet but in the future I want to try to blend into apple juice.

In my peak seaberry harvest year, I picked about 40 pounds total from 3 female plants. I counted the berries in one 8oz. cup and calculated I had plucked about 90,000 berries. It took parts of several days.

You can go lighter on the sugar, especially if you put some stevia powder in the sugar. Stevia extract powder is now in major grocery stores.

Your 4 to 1 water to juice ratio is plenty high; I used 2.5 to 1, and that was with pure seaberry juice, not whole berries.

Your description of the odor and flavor is interesting; I experienced a cantaloupe-type odor and a cantaloupe/apricot flavor.

Your growing conditions are far different than here in mild Portland, Oregon. I found that if I left berries on past mid-September, they would begin to decay and have a poor flavor. Like any fruit, there is an optimal harvest time.

I will be very interested in any reports about freezing and shaking seaberry branches in the home environment. Combining with apple juice would be interesting, I found combining with orange, apricot nectar, and mango juices to be pleasing.

Seaberry juice, when extracted from an auger-type juicer, is a very efficient process. It results in a juice that has a high oil content, and any drink made solely from it will settle into layers in the container: a pigmented, oily layer and a clear layer. After more than a few minutes, the drink needs to be stirred to re-blend the components. For that reason, mixing with thicker juices mentioned above works best.

I tried Seaberry juice,about 60% juice to 40% water and also some made into gelato at One Green World earlier this fall.It had a somewhat medicine like flavor to me.Mixed with other juices like those mentioned above may help.I probably will not be growing it though.Brady

konrad,
not sure about letting the berries freeze on the tree, we've had plenty of freezes (low of 15 so far), and still leaves on the tree, and the berries not coming off the branches very easily. We'll see if the continuous cold of the freezer does the trick.

larry gene,
thanks for the additional info... Yes, the climate here is quite different than that of Oregon, things almost never rot on the tree, even rarely on the ground! Every branch I harvested from had last year's berries still on it, dried like raisins, and with a pretty good flavor too (does this mean the freezing to loosen the berries idea won't work -- I don't know).

Bradybb,
that's quite a bit heavier on the juice than what I did, I wonder if that's the difference. I like the ratio I used because it tastes great and stretches the berries. I will admit that after tasting the fresh berries, I was expecting something like you describe, with some off flavors, but was pleasantly surprised by the finished juice. It seems like the plant is worth growing even without appreciating the berries, for it's nitrogen fixation, bee forage, toughness and ornamental qualities.

Yes, a 60% seaberry juice solution would be medicinal, as would a similar concentration of lemon or lime juice.

Freezing would not loosen the berries--it simply allows you to whack the branch on a solid surface without crushing the fruit. Probably works well in an industrial environment where large troughs or pans are available.

Hard to say what was in that OGW gelato recipe. The seaberry ice cream I have made was very good.

This plant sounds very interesting. Can it be started from seed or can you buy plants?

Dale

Both. Plants in this area run about $20 and are presexed as male or female. Seedling plants take years longer to determine sex and even then fruit is often sparse.

To second larry gene's response, they are widely available from edible landscaping type nurseries, if not from local nurseries in your area. They are apparently fairly easy to start from seed or cuttings.

One Green World carries a whopping 20 different female varieties from Europe and Asia!

a quick look at OGW's website has no listing of any sea buckthorn.

ahh my bad, its under berries, not trees and shrubs.

So, larry gene was right, for the most part... Freezing the berries did not make them fall off, but did make them easier to strip off the cut branches. However, they were still too tenacious to strip by whacking the branches as larry gene proposed. These were late season berries that I left in the freezer for at least two weeks. I'm beginning to wonder if one of the traits of selected varieties might be ease of harvest, making this cut-freeze-whack method actually work.

My guess would be the freezewhacking method is entirely dependent on the thin little berry stem breaking. The colder the storage temperature, the more brittle the stem. The sooner the post-freeze whack, the better.

So dipping a fruiting branch into liquid nitrogen should have the best results;)

And as I glance at Google search results, it looks like the freezing is just a commercial tactic to reduce loss of berry juice during hand or mechanical picking.

http://www.google.com/search?q=freezing+harvesting+%22sea+buckthorn%22&hl=en&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images

gives some interesting results, including one person who inverted a cut branch and squeezed all the berries off.