Apple juice is a
fruit juice made by the
maceration and pressing of
apples. The resulting expelled juice may be further treated by enzymatic and centrifugal clarification to remove the
starch and
pectin, which holds fine particulate in suspension, and then
pasteurized for packaging in glass, metal or
aseptic processing system containers, or further treated by dehydration processes to a
concentrate. Due to the complex and costly equipment required to extract and clarify juice from apples in large volume, apple juice is normally produced commercially. In the
United States, unfiltered fresh apple juice is made by smaller operations in areas of high apple production, in the form of unclarified
apple cider. Apple juice is one of the most common fruit juices in the world, with world production led by
China,
Poland, the United States, and
Germany.