Blenders & Juicers
Buy and sell blenders and juicers in Costa Rica.
From January to May, while the groves around Los Chiles and Upala are being picked, oranges pile up at the feria del agricultor and a citrus press earns its place on the counter. Juice extractors, centrifugal or slow, take on the carrots, beets and celery, and throw the fibre out where a blender keeps it in. Next to them sit countertop blenders, from a glass-jar Oster to a Vitamix, and personal blenders whose cup becomes the bottle, new in the box or second-hand. On a used one the jar, the cup or the mesh tells you most of the story, and each takes a minute to check.
Countertop blenders and the jar that fits the base:
a countertop blender is a motor and a jar, and the jar is most of the choice. Glass, the classic Oster kind, is heavy and holds no smell; plastic survives a fall on tile, but ice clouds it over the years. Ninja and Vitamix sit at the high-power end, with big plastic jars built for ice and frozen fruit. Jars do not swap freely even within one brand: a Vitamix Classic container will not run on an Ascent base, so match the model on the base plate before paying for a used base without its jar, or a spare jar on its own. A personal blender, NutriBullet being the name most people search, blends in a cup that screws onto the blade and leaves the house as the bottle: right for one drink, too small for a family. A stick blender goes straight into the pot, which suits a soup from one of the cookers. Crushed ice for a frozen coffee is blender work, and the coffee comes from tea and coffee makers.
Oranges for the citrus press, carrots for the extractor:
which juicer suits you depends on what goes into it. For oranges and limones a citrus press is enough, whether a hand reamer, a lever press or an electric cone. A centrifugal extractor shreds carrot, beet or pineapple against a fast-spinning mesh basket: quick, loud, and the juice comes out frothy. A slow juicer, the cold extractor, crushes with a turning auger. It gets far more out of celery and greens, but the chute is narrower and the screen takes longer to wash than the juice took to make.
The plain blender and the slow juicer on the shelf:
a basic countertop blender sits around ₡30,000 to ₡40,000 new, which leaves a used basic one very little room on price; a cracked jar or a tired motor wipes out what is left. The second-hand machines worth chasing are the bigger ones. Juice extractors run from about ₡45,000 for a simple centrifugal model to around ₡150,000 for a slow juicer, and slow juicers often come up barely used, given up over the washing rather than any fault.
A blender dies from the leak under its blade:
liquid that creeps past the seal runs down into the motor, and that finishes most blenders. Run the jar full of water and look for drips underneath and a sticky ring on the base. With the jar empty, turn the blade by hand: smooth with a little resistance is right, grit or side play is a worn bearing. A burnt smell, or a motor that sags as soon as ice goes in, points to worn brushes. Personal blender cups wear out long before the base. Against the light, cloudiness or a web of fine cracks means a new cup, and a cracked tab on the rim means it never goes back on the motor. Once the blade’s rubber gasket works loose the whole blade is replaced, so a gasket sold on its own is not a genuine part. Counterfeit NutriBullets exist too, and a sealed box at a price that does not add up deserves a closer look. On a juicer, the mesh is what you are paying for: torn, crinkled or bent mesh needs replacing, and on a slow juicer look for fine cracks in the auger and screen housing.
The plate under the motor and the parts that came with it:
photograph the rating plate under the base, since the model tells a buyer in Ciudad Quesada or Nicoya which jars and cups will fit, and say whether the jar or cups are originals. Count the tamper on a Vitamix, the extra cups of a personal blender, the pusher and pulp bin of a juicer, and shoot the mesh against the light. A slow juicer that still has its cleaning brush and a screen with no green stain in the holes tells whoever collects it that the last owner kept up with the washing.