I tried to make OJ from concentrate once…all I got was a headache!
Minute Maid to phase out the frozen OJ concentrate cans of OJ & lemonade after 80 years
Used to make juice from frozen concentrate all the time. Although our favorite brand was Donald Duck.
Growing up in the 1960s that’s the only way we got orange juice in middle America. We had to remember to take the can out of the freezer the night before, otherwise we would have to hold it under running hot water to try to thaw it. Fast forward a few decades, when I’m still buying frozen orange juice concentrate, when I see the pasteurized ready-to-pour bottles were on the shelf, for about the same price, and I never used frozen again. That matches what the article says about the timeline when usage “froze” up.
I still buy the frozen lemonade concentrate when we have company over for a picnic in the summer. I think it just tastes better, but is that a false memory? Thankfully the local grocery store has its own branded version.
We use the frozen limeade to make frozen margaritas. Hopefully the other brands won’t all follow suit.
It is just another ploy by the Duke brothers to corner the market…
I remember when OJ was on sale for $2 a gallon. Concentrate is if anything more expensive than regular generic orange juice from what I’ve seen.
I get by on sunny D.
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed. For years now, frozen concentrate has been vanishing from stores. The reason is that they now just sell the juice in a bottle already made, and there isn’t a market anymore like there used to be.
I used to love those cans. You can buy a half dozen, stick them in the freezer where they last forever and take up very little space, and when you want juice you just open one up and dump it in a pitcher with some water, stir until it all dissolves, and boom, you have juice. Now, you buy a bottle or carton of premade stuff which costs more, and it takes up a lot of space (so you only buy one, maybe two at a time). You’d think there should still be a place for the old frozen juice cans because of all that, but I guess I’m in the minority. 
Better yet(as to storage) the powder.
Little packaging. Small. Stores easily. No heavy jug.
Quality product? That’s another story.
Last time I saw frozen OJ outside of a store, a housemate was using it in an orange chicken recipe.
For a long time, the cans of frozen concentrate were the primary way that juice was sold. In the case of orange juice, the “high” quality stuff was the bottled/carton stuff, but it was expensive. At some point, I think there must have been a shelf-life or packaging change, because bottled/carton juice became the pre-eminent format, and the concentrate became some kind of relic that took up space at the bottom of one freezer in the frozen food section.
Anyone know what changed?
For the past 20 years when I think about FCOJ I think of this.
It’s not a matter of quality, it’s the fact that it’s not the same thing at all. You might as well ask people to drink milk or soda. Powdered drinks have absolutely nothing to do with frozen concentrate. When you dissolve frozen concentrate into water, it is nearly identical to what you’ll get in a bottle or carton of juice. The concentrate is real juice with water removed from it and then frozen (hence why it’s called “concentrate”), and when you reintroduce water to it you are back to having real juice.
Drink some real lemonade from a bottle, and drink some powdered lemonade mixed into water, and tell me they’re the same thing.
The concentrate even often has stuff like pulp in it (for folks who like that sort of thing).
“Turn those machines back off!”
I’ve tried to figure it out, and I have seen theories ranging from supply line problems due to Covid, to tariffs, to the cost of machinery to make concentrate being prohibitive. But I haven’t seen a definitive answer. It might just be something as simple as folks not buying it as much anymore, and the market driving the change. It might also be that pasteurization has improved (both in terms of a quality product and cheaper) for premade juice to be shelf stable for a long time, and so people prefer to buy that. But I really don’t know.
I don’t know exactly what changed, but the article does mention “improved pasteurization processes” that helped make bottled orange juice the preferred format.
And hence my problem with it. The process of pasteurization, and apparently also de-oxygenating, gives it a long shelf life but significantly degrades natural flavours. There’s a supermarket near me that bottles their own fresh-squeezed orange juice, and it’s so much better than any mass-produced stuff, but it’s expensive and the shelf life is only a couple of days. They have their orange-squeezing and bottling machine in the middle of the produce section, and the bottles of fresh real juice are invitingly laid out on baskets of crushed ice. It’s quite a nice setup.
Which makes me wonder how frozen OJ compares with the mass-produced bottled stuff. They wouldn’t have to worry about pasteurizing for shelf life, but the manufacturing process to make concentrate might impair flavour even more. And unless you use filtered or spring water, it might also be tainted by the taste of tap water, which I hate.
Anyway, as a matter of practicality I buy ordinary bottled orange juice and put up with it – it’s not terrible at all, just not nearly as good as fresh-squeezed. I might even be willing to pay the considerable premium for fresh-squeezed, but the very short shelf life makes it a non-starter.
A friend of mine back in high school used old OJ cans as curlers. They were the perfect size. Wonder what she’d have to use now?
Two additional posibilities:
- A cultural (driven by marketing?) component in which frozen from-concentrate juice is seen as poor person’s juice. I remember as a kid (80s and 90s) the feeling that orange juice in a carton/bottle was a special, better juice that I might only get at friends’ houses.
- Convenience. We prefer things that come in their own re-sealable containers. Who, in their formative young adult years, gets in the habit of keeping one or more pitchers/jugs for juice? You’ve got to keep it, wash it and store it in perpetuity, whether or not you have juice in your home. Frozen juice might be more convenient for a family who is shopping on long cycles and actively maintains a pantry of consistently consumed items. But it’s less convenient for someone who shops more frequently, and just wants to be able to drink juice now without having to prepare it.
IMO it’s about 90% this. Nobody under 50 thinks they have time or inclination to plan ahead. Convenience is everything. A bottle you buy, use up, and throw away or recycle is convenience personified.
In fact, many juices you buy at a store are from concentrate, so exactly identical to you doing it yourself. The original oranges were squeezed, the juice concentrated, shipped across the country, and then reconstituted closer to the final retail location.
The products that do not do this will market them as “not from concentrate”. The term “100% juice” just means the they didn’t dilute the concentrate with more than the equivalent amount of water originally removed.
You’ll also see that some 100% juice is adulterated with other juices. Something with lots of cranberry pictures on the label and marked as 100% juice, will be 30% cranberry juice and 70% apple juice.