Friday, August 14, 2009

Grape Jelly

I wrapped up my preserving for the season with Champanel Grape Jelly. I am blessed enough to be good acquaintances with the owners of a local vineyard. They are wonderful people who also frequented my Farmers Market stand. I called them up to ask if they would have any grapes for making jelly. A few weeks ago they had been pruning some of the later producing grape vines (a lot of grapes mature around the fourth of July and I had missed that window!) and held a few gallons of grapes for me. (This jelly was made during the last week in July...I picked the grapes up the day after they called me.) The owners love to see Elizabeth, so we had ourselves a nice little visit. Not only were they generous enough to give me the grapes, but I also left with two bottles of her award-winning wine and a jar of their own jelly from a different grape. The wine is fabulous! I'd buy a case!

The grapes.

They were not all ripe, so I sorted them out, choosing the ripest. I needed roughly 3 pounds of grapes to equal the 4 cups of juice for the jelly.

After washing the grapes, I mashed them with a potato masher to release the juice and crack the skins.

Add 1/2 cup of water and bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat to a simmer for 10 minutes.

Then, pour the fruit into 3 layers of cheesecloth, tie closed, and let it drip into a bowl. I'm a little too impatient for this, so I held the bag and squeezed it gently with tongs to get my four cups of juice.


Pour the juice back into a sauce pot and add 7 cups of sugar. Constantly stirring, bring to a rolling boil.

Quickly stir in the pectin and boil for one minute more.

Remove the pot from the heat and ladle into jars. I decided to use half-pint jars for this jelly. They look so cute! (And I was out of pint jars!!) Put lids and rings on the jars, load into a boiling water canner and process for 5 minutes.

Remove the jars from the canner and let them cool. Check the jars after they have cooled to make sure they have sealed. Then store in a cool, dark place until you are ready to try it out!

The photo does not do the jelly justice, because it turns out to have such a pretty deep purple color that is almost transparent. Just gorgeous!
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6 comments:

  1. soccermom10August 14, 2009 at 8:31 AM

    The jelly looks great! I remember my mom and grandma Schneider making grape jelly.....it's a big job!

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  2. JoanneAugust 14, 2009 at 8:59 AM

    Funny, Lisa. When I saw the topic today, I was also thinking about making jelly and juice with Grandma! Sara, I want a jar of everything that you've talked about! I'm putting the pickles into the fridge today and can't wait to try them out!

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  3. AnnAugust 14, 2009 at 2:37 PM

    You are the busiest little bee I know. And, you get it all done with Elizabeth too!

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  4. KarenAugust 14, 2009 at 4:06 PM

    Sure sure are canning alot of stuff! Do you have a cool dark place big enough to store all of it?

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  5. SaraAugust 14, 2009 at 7:46 PM

    There will be jars of things to choose from at Christmas! I like keeping busy and it wears Elizabeth out during the day so she naps good and sleeps good at night! Play hard, sleep hard is our motto!

    I do have an entire shelf in my pantry devoted to just the things that I have put up this year. It is filled to the gills now, but I did get everything to fit! I'm sure I won't have to look very hard for people who'd like to take a couple of things off of my hands to help me make space. :) Wink Wink!

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  6. JoanneAugust 16, 2009 at 11:05 PM

    Might not be the right place, but we tried your pickles today, Sara (I have the hamburger pickles). YUM! Kevin and I both loved them! I was worried that they'd be kind of limp since you peeled them, but they aren't at all! Very, very good! I wonder if mom has tried the other ones yet...

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