The Spice Guys
3/327 The Esplanade, Scarness,
Hervey Bay Qld 4655
Juniper Berries
Dried Juniper
Juniper on Tree!
Juniper Berries
The once humble juniper berry is enjoying a renaissance of its ancient
popularity as a seasoning for game, as the country's top restaurants
list venison, squab, pheasant and rabbit on their menus. A few juniper
berries will reduce the wild flavor of these meats and will add the
pleasant tartness long associated with Germanic dishes, such as
sauerbraten, stuffed goose and beef stews. Juniper tea is a centuries
old hangover remedy. From Albania.
Juniper Berries (Urinary) are found on the evergreen juniper shrub,
which grows widely throughout the Northern Hemisphere. New berries
appear on mature trees in the fall, and by spring they ripen to blue.
Because the berries take between two to three years to fully ripen, the
same plant can have unripe green and ripe blue berries at the same time.
In addition to their use in herbology, the berries are used as a
flavoring agent in gin and luncheon meats. The berries’ nutritional
profile and volatile oil make them particularly supportive of the
genitourinary system. They contain vitamin C and other nutrients. Each
capsule contains 400 mg juniper berries.
---Habitat---The Juniper is a small shrub, 4 to 6
feet high, widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere. It
occurs freely on the slopes of the chalk downs near London, and on
healthy, siliceous soils where a little lime occurs. It is a common shrub
where bands of limestone occur, as on some of the Scotch mountains and
on the limestone hills in the Lake district.
The berries are used for the production of the volatile oil which is a
prime ingredient in Geneva or Holland's Gin, upon which its flavour and
diuretic properties depend.
---History---Although these valuable berries are
produced from a native shrub, the berries of commerce are chiefly
collected from plants cultivated in Hungary. The oil distilled on the
Continent, principally in Hungary, is chiefly from freshly-picked
berries. It has, hitherto, not been possible to produce the oil
competitively with Southern Europe because of the relative cheapness of
labour and the vast tracts of land over which the trees grow wild. But
the rise in the price of foreign oil of Juniper berries since the
outbreak of war has directed attention to the possible extended
production of the oil either in Great Britain or her northern colonies.
Sunny slopes are likely to be the best places to cultivate the shrub for
the berries. The yield of oil, however, varies considerably in different
years.
There is a wide difference in the chemical and
physical characters of the oil distilled on the Continent from fresh and
that in England from imported berries, which in transit to this country
have become partially dried.
Commercial oil of Juniper is obtained chiefly
from the ripe fruit and is stated to be in all essential qualities
superior to the oil of Juniper from the full-grown, unripe, green
berries used medicinally, which occurs as a colourless or pale
greenish-yellow, limpid liquid, possessing a peculiar terebinthic odour
when fresh, and a balsamic, burning, somewhat bitter taste.
Juniper berries take two or three years to ripen, so that blue and green
berries occur on the same plant. Only the blue, ripe berries are here
picked. When collected in baskets or sacks, they are laid out on shelves
to dry a little, during which process they lose some of the blue bloom
and develop the blackish colour seen in commerce.
There is a considerable demand on the Continent
for an aqueous extract of the berries called Roob, or Rob of Juniper,
and the distilled oil is in this case a by-product, the berries being
first crushed and macerated with water and then distilled with water and
the residue in the still evaporated to a soft consistence. Much of the
oil met with in commerce is obtained as a by-product in the manufacture
of gin and similar products.
In Sweden a beer is made that is regarded as a healthy drink. In hot
countries the tree yields by incision a gum or varnish.
---Constituents---The principal constituent is
the volatile oil, with resin, sugar, gum, water, lignin, wax and
salines. The oil is most abundant just before the perfect ripeness and
darkening of the fruit, when it changes to resin. The quantity varies
from 2.34 to 0.31 per cent Juniper Camphor is also present, its
melting-point being 1.65 to 1.66 degrees C. Adulteration by oil of
Turpentine can be recognized by the lowering of the specific gravity.
The tar is soluble in Turpentine oil, but not in 95 per cent acetic
acid. Junol is the trade name of a hydroalcoholic extract.
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/j/junipe11.html#med
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