Best Apples for Juicing (and How Many You Need per Glass)

The best apples for juicing are crisp, juicy varieties: Fuji, Gala, and Honeycrisp for sweet juice; Granny Smith and Pink Lady for tart juice that balances vegetables. Avoid soft, mealy apples like Red Delicious, which give cloudy, flat juice and clog the screen.

One medium apple yields about four to five ounces of juice, so a 12-ounce glass of pure apple juice takes three apples, but you’ll rarely want that much; half an apple is enough to sweeten a vegetable juice.

Apples are the most useful fruit in juicing because they make everything else drinkable. The right variety matters more than people expect: a Granny Smith and a Red Delicious are almost different ingredients once they’re juice.

Here’s how the common varieties compare, how many you need, whether to peel or core, and how to keep apple juice from browning.

Apple Varieties for Juicing, Compared

My two go-to apples are Granny Smith for vegetable juice and Fuji for anything I want to taste like a treat. If I could only have one, it’d be Granny Smith, because its tartness fixes green juice, carrot juice, and beet juice alike, and it’s low on the sugar scale as apples go.

Sweet vs. Tart: Which Do You Actually Want?

Think of apples as the seasoning for vegetable juice. A tart apple (Granny Smith, Pink Lady) adds brightness and cuts through earthy or grassy flavors; it’s what makes kale-celery-cucumber taste clean instead of like a lawn.

A sweet apple (Fuji, Gala) rounds things out and is the better choice when you’re getting a skeptic or a kid to drink green juice.

Sugar-wise, the difference is smaller than the taste suggests. A Granny Smith has about 10 grams of sugar per 100 grams; a Fuji has about 12.

Tart apples taste less sweet because they have more acid, not dramatically less sugar. Either way, half an apple in a 12-ounce vegetable juice keeps the glass under 10 grams of sugar, which is the target in how much juice should you drink a day.

How Many Apples Do You Need for Juicing?

• To sweeten a 12-ounce vegetable juice: half an apple. One if you like it sweeter.
• For a 12-ounce apple-forward juice (apple-carrot-ginger): one to two apples plus three or four carrots.
• For 12 ounces of pure apple juice: three medium apples. Roughly a pound. (Which is why I don’t recommend it; that’s 35 grams of sugar in one glass.)
• For a week of sweetening one juice a day: four apples.

Yield depends on the juicer. Centrifugal juicers do well with apples; cold-press juicers get slightly more from crisp varieties and can struggle with soft ones. Either way, a medium apple (about 6 ounces by weight) gives four to five ounces of juice.

Prep: Peel, Core, or Neither?

Don’t peel. The skin has fiber-bound nutrients and plant compounds, and it juices fine. If the apple is waxed (shiny, slightly tacky), scrub it under hot water or peel; the wax tastes off.

Don’t bother coring. Quarter the apple and juice it, seeds and all. Apple seeds contain a compound that releases tiny amounts of cyanide, but the quantity in a few seeds per glass is far below any concern; you’d need to crush and eat a cup of seeds for it to matter.

If it bothers you, core them. It costs 20 seconds per apple and changes nothing else.

Cut to fit. Wide-chute juicers take a whole apple; most others want quarters. Feed apple pieces between softer ingredients to push greens through, per how to prep produce for juicing.

Why Apple Juice Turns Brown (And How to Stop It)

Apple flesh browns the moment it meets air, and juice does it faster because the juicer exposes so much surface. It’s harmless oxidation, not spoilage, but it looks unappetizing and signals that vitamin C is fading.

Two fixes: add half a lemon to the batch (the acid and vitamin C slow it dramatically), and store the juice in a glass jar filled to the very top so there’s no air pocket.

Pink Lady and Granny Smith brown slower than Fuji or Gala. More in how long fresh juice lasts.

Buying and Storing Apples for Juicing

Buy firm apples with no soft spots; a mealy apple makes cloudy, flat juice. Bagged apples are cheaper than loose and fine for juicing since looks don’t matter.

Store them in the fridge crisper, not the fruit bowl; apples kept cold stay crisp for weeks, while apples on the counter soften in days. And keep them away from your greens: apples release ethylene, which wilts spinach and kale faster.

Organic is worth it for apples if it’s in the budget; they’re thin-skinned and you’re juicing the skin. If not, wash well and juice anyway. The full ranking of what to spend organic dollars on is in best fruits and vegetables for juicing.

Four Apple Juice Combinations That Work Every Time

• Apple Carrot Ginger: 1 Fuji or Gala, 4 carrots, a thumb of ginger. The beginner favorite.
• Green Apple Cucumber Lemon: 1 Granny Smith, 1 cucumber, half a lemon. Clean and bright.
• Apple Kale Lemon: 2 sweet apples, 4 kale leaves, half a lemon. Your first real green juice.
• Apple Beet Ginger: 1 Braeburn or Pink Lady, 1 small beet, a thumb of ginger, half a lemon. Deep red and earthy-sweet.

All four, and more, are in the easy juicing recipes for beginners.

Apples for Juicing FAQ

Your This-Week Plan

• Buy two Granny Smiths and two Fujis. Juice the same cucumber-celery base with half of each on different days and notice the difference.
• Stop peeling and coring. Quarter, wash, juice. Reclaim two minutes a morning.
• Add half a lemon to any apple juice you’re storing, and fill the jar to the top.
• Move the apples to the crisper, away from the greens. Then see the beginner’s guide for the routine.

This article is for general education and isn’t medical or nutrition advice. Apple juice is high in natural sugar; if you manage diabetes or blood sugar, keep apples to a small share of a vegetable-based juice and check with your provider. Fresh juice is unpasteurized and should be consumed promptly.