Grape Jelly & Juice

Our neighbors, Shari and Matt, have been growing Concord grapes for the past 4 years and last year was the first year they were able to start picking them.  Shari and I decided then that we wanted to try making grape jelly.  A few days later, she checked to see if they were ripe and ready to pick and noticed they were all gone!  No stems, no fruit, nothing.  Not sure what got them...birds, raccoons, kids?  So this year, we made it a point to beat the critters to their royal feast.  The whole process took 2 days and around 3 hours each day.  As always, though, it was totally worth it!

We didn't weigh these, but my best guess is that we picked between 8-10 pounds of grapes.  We removed all the stems and washed them.  We then used a potato masher to slightly mash them down.

Next step was to cook them to soften the fruit.

We then ladled the fruit over cheesecloth taped to a bowl to strain the juice.  With as many grapes as we had, it took 4 bowls to strain everything.  After about an hour and a half, the straining was done and the juice was left out for 24 hours to allow any tartrate crystals to form. 

The next day, the juice was once again strained through cheesecloth to remove any tartrate crystals.  We then measured out 4 cups of juice to start making the jelly.  The smell of the juice was amazing!

The negative to making jelly is that you have to add so much sugar.  If we do this next year, I'd like to try the less sugar recipe where you have to boil it to a higher temperature until it sheets off of a spoon.

A little left over to try on a piece of bread.  Delicious!

We ended up with 7 half-pints of jelly each and 4 cups of juice to drink each!  We added a little sugar to the juice as well to take away some of the tartness, but realized after it had cooled that we added a little too much!  Live and learn!  Next year we'll know!

Shari and I