We’ve had a couple reports from people about problems with the Tribest Slowstar vertical masticating juicer, so we decided to do a little investigating as we’ve never run into any issues ourselves with this particular juicer.
The first reported symptom is juice leaking through to the base of the juicer. The second is pulp building up heavily under the auger, to the point where the juicer actually jams and must be disassembled and cleared before continuing.
Both of these are serious problems, but we’re happy to report that we’ve got a good idea about what’s causing the issue that is the cause of these problems, and that Tribest is shipping out replacement parts that solve these issues to anyone affected for FREE.
We got our hands on a couple juicers that were exhibiting the problems shown above, and determined that the main cause appears to be the silicone gasket in the center of the juicing bowl in older Slowstars.
The latest Slowstars are shipping with an updated gasket design that solves the issues mentioned above. If you have an older Slowstar that you think might be affected, we’ll show you how to tell if your juicer has the problematic older style gasket.
The problem stems from the design of the silicone gasket in the center. The older style gaskets can come in either white or red, and they look like this:
As you can see, this older gasket design doesn’t actually seal down against the center post of the juicer, since there is space between the gasket and the post (indicated by the arrows above). This allows juice to escape through the gasket under pressure, especially since the silicone is thin and flexible. Compare this to the updated gasket design:
The updated design presses down with force against the center post, making a tight seal the juice cannot escape through. The updated gasket also seems to be made from thicker and firmer silicone.
We tested both the older design and the updated design to see how they compared.
The older design resulted in the pictures found at the top of this page: juice leaking through to the base, and pulp building up under the auger. We didn’t experience any jamming, but we imagine if we had continued juicing with a larger quantity of produce (we used approximately five pounds of carrots, kale, grapefruit and celery) it would have continued to build up to the point where the juicer could no longer operate.
The new design (after juicing a similar quantity of mixed produce) resulted in the following:
As you can see, there was no trace at all of any juice making it through to the base of the Slowstar, and much less pulp building up under the auger. This is consistent with our trouble free experiences with the Slowstar.
If you see that your Slowstar has the older style of gasket, call Tribest and they will ship to you for FREE a new juicing bowl with the updated gasket, and another juicing screen.
We couldn’t quite tell if there was an updated shape or design to the bowl and screen that was helping prevent pulp from building up under the auger, but the replacement parts shipped by Tribest will take a Slowstar with leaks/jamming problems and make it work trouble free.
Please note that when you call Tribest asking for the updated parts to be shipped out to you, they will need your Slowstar’s serial number, so have it ready.
We hope this article helps resolve some of the confusion out there about the Slowstar juicer and potential issues with it. All of the Slowstars we sell are now confirmed to have the updated parts, so if you’re thinking about ordering a Slowstar you won’t have any of the troubles mentioned here.
We’ll have a full review of the Slowstar coming soon; when it has the updated parts, we’ve found it to be an incredibly powerful and quiet juicer that makes short work of anything you can throw at it!