Sana 868 Batch Juicer review

REVIEW – I’ve never been a “juicer.”  I like juice, but juicers always looked like they were hard to clean, took up a lot of space and were noisy.  Plus, I don’t know anyone who has a juicer who uses it past six months.  But I am a sucker for unique kitchen gadgets, and a juicer came along that did way more than just juice.  The Sana 868 Batch juicer can juice, make smoothies, make nut milk and make sorbet.  I gave it a workout and I’m here to report what I found out about this multi-tasker.

What is it?

The Sana 868 Batch juicer is a vertical juicer that features the widest feeding tube on the market and a powerful motor to match.

What’s included?  

• Motor Housing
• Juice Drum
• Hopper
• Auger
• Fine Juicing Screen
• Coarse Juicing Screen
• Smoothie Strainer
• Frozen Dessert Strainer
• User Manual
• Cleaning Brush
• Drum Removal Tool
• Juice Glass
• Stainless Steel Pulp Cup
• Pusher
• Silicone Wiper
• Drum Brush
• Cleaning Brushes
• Recipe book

Tech specs

Click to expand

• Juicing Process: Single Auger Vertical
• Speed: 50 RPM
• Power: 240 Watt
• Voltage: US 120V
• Weight (Base): 11.2 LB
• Weight (Assembled): 14.6 LB
• Weight (Boxed): 22.8 LB
• Weight (Shipping): 24.2 LB
• Dimensions (Base): 7″ x 9″ x 10 1/2″ High
• Dimensions (Assembled): 7″ x 9″ x 18″ High
• Warranty: 15 years

Design and features

For those who aren’t familiar with the juicer game, there are several different kinds of juicers.  Centrifugal ones chop up your fruit or vegetable and then spin the juice out, leaving the pulp and solids behind.  The Sana 868 Batch juicer falls into the other category of vertical masticating juicers.  These kinds of juicers use an auger to press the juice out of the fruit or vegetable.  Generally, you have to cut up the fruit of vegetable to be juiced into smaller pieces, and it’s usually a slower process.  These juicers often cost a bit more, but they produce a very high quality juice that is nutritionally dense and has less oxidation.  They produce a higher yield and seem to do a better job with leafy greens than a centrifugal machine.  Plus they are MUCH quieter.  That by itself was a reason I was eager to try the Sana 868 Batch juicer.  

The Sana 868 Batch juicer overcomes the problem of chopping the fruit or veg into tiny pieces by offering a very large feeding tube.  Usually large feeding tubes are a safety hazard.  If you can get your finger in one, that’s not good.  The Sana 868 has an ingenious trap door system that protects your digits and lets you send a big hunk of carrot down the chute.  It’s pretty brilliant and it takes some of the headache out of your prep.

Assembly, Installation, Setup

Let me just say that the Sana 868 Batch juicer comes with a lot of stuff.  It’s a bit daunting for a newb juicer like myself, tbh.  I opened the instructions (which I try never to do), and I basically followed the diagram.  It’s relatively intuitive and the parts fit together by lining up some dots on the pieces, so it’s not hard.  However, it took me a while to figure out which screen to use.  It turns out they were labeled but it took me a while to find the label, and even then I didn’t understand what they meant by the “blank” screen that you use for frozen desserts.  That’s because the “blank” screen has no screen.  It’s just plastic.  But once I figured that out I was good to go.

Performance

For my first juice, I used the fine mesh juicing screen with the Sana 868 Batch juicer and followed a recipe from the included recipe book and made myself a lemon, apple and mint juice.  I cut the apple up into quarters because I wanted to see how the juicer did with large pieces, but it was fine. One kind of cool feature is that you can vary the amout of pulp in your juice with the Sana 868. If you want pulp, you just leave the juice flap open.  If you don’t want pulp, you can leave that tap closed and let the juicer run for an extra 30 seconds after you’ve put your ingredients in.  Apparently the pulp is still there, but it’s so fine you can’t detect it.  I think that’s pretty cool because one of the things I always thought about juicers was it was a super way to get all the sugar with none of the healthy fiber.  This lets you enjoy much more of the fruit or vegetable.

To see how fibrous food juiced with the Sana 868, I later used the fine mesh screen and juiced a kale, celery, carrot and apple juice.  I consulted the instructions and it said the max amount of fibrous foods that you could do in a session was 500 grams, which is about a pound.  It also said that you should remove the kale stems and chop carrots and celery up a bit more than usual and you should soak everything in water for 30 minutes before you juice.  I followed all of those instructions and had no issues at all, but it seemed like a lot of prep to me.  Maybe all juicers ask you top prep like that?  I wouldn’t know.  I did discover that I could shove an entire half an apple down the chute with no problem, though.  

For my next task, I made some almond milk with the Sana 868.   In fact, I did it twice because I wanted to make sure I followed all the directions correctly.   I soaked some almonds overnight and then poured them into the feeding tube.  I kept the tap closed so the machine could grind the almonds and screen them as fine as they could be, but I found the resulting milk had quite a bit of sediment.  It settled out, but it is something to keep in mind if you intend to do this.   You could pour it through some muslin or something if it bothered you.  Personally, I thought it took quite a lot of almonds to make not that much almond milk, so I think I would just buy it at the store if I was into this concoction.  It tasted great, but I felt like it was a bit wasteful unless you found a use for the almond meal that was left over.  I bet could use it to make marzipan or bake with it, because it looks alot like almond flour.  Cleanup was not a big deal for this either, although little bits of almond did require a little more attention with the brush than with an ordinary juice.

I have to admit, the real reason I wanted the Sana 868 Batch juicer was to make sorbet. Ever since Dr. Patel said I should maybe begin to look at my cholesterol, I knew I had to find an ice cream substitute for my day-to-day frozen dessert needs.  I’ve tried making sorbet with a high powered blender (too much scraping the sides).  I’ve tried a certain machine that rhymes with bananas to make it (WAY too loud.  Like I-wore-earplugs-when-I used-it loud).  This machine has earned a place in my kitchen for the way it pumps out sorbet.  There is nothing else like it.  You just shove your mostly frozen fruit down the Sana 868’s chute and out comes a soft-serve like frozen fruit confection.   Are there still blackberry seeds?  Yes.  But if you did it with something without tiny seeds it would be absolutely perfect sorbet. 

I wouldn’t be doing my Gadgeteer review job if I didn’t also try out the smoothie functionality.  The Sana 868 makes a “healthier” smoothie than a blender because a blender injects air into the juice, which can separate the nutrients and make the ingredients stratify and oxidize.  The Sana 868 Batch juicer mixes the pulp back into the juice without all that oxidation.  I did a smoothie with banana and some berries and it came out OK but it needed a stir because you could see the banana in the bottom of the glass.

I was surprised by how little cleanup I had.  I always thought that was the drawback to juicers:  lots of pieces, lots of little things to clean.  However, the Sana 868 Batch juicer comes with a lot of little cleaning helpers that they don’t list in their “included parts.”  There are silicone wipers built in and a separate special  drum brush that cleans the screens.  They also included three other brushes to get into the nooks and crannies if you need to.  The fibrous juice and the almond milk required the most cleaning effort, but it wasn’t that hard.  The sorbet, the smoothie and  the lemon/apple/mint juice  required just a rinse.

The build quality of the Sana 868 Batch juicer seems quite solid and it features a powerful 240-watt motor.  I never really had to un-jamb the juicer.  Occasionally when I make sorbet it will stop (I think because I’m often shoving an entire frozen banana down the chute), but I just used the reverse function switch on the back and then pressed forward again and I was back to making sorbet.  There is a white gear that appears to be plastic or nylon or something in the bottom of one of the parts that worries me, but Sana has been making juicers for a long time, and with a 15-year warranty, I probably don’t need to lose sleep over it.  It comes with some really quality accessories like a tempered glass juice pitcher that I will probably use for a lot of things in my kitchen besides juice.  It also has a stainless steel pulp container.  

What I like about Sana 868 Batch juicer

• practically silent
• makes a healthier product than other juicers
• Looooong warranty

What needs to be improved?

• better labeling on the screens

Final thoughts

So far I haven’t found a better sorbet maker, so the Sana 868 Batch Juicer has earned a place on my counter just for that.  

Price: $499
Where to buy: Sana USA and Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Sana USA. Sana USA did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.