concord grape harvest

grapes_vine_closeupFeels good to be harvesting fresh grapes in early November. After a couple days of October snow, we’ve had mostly rain and not too cold with brief glimpses of sun in between allowing the grapes to ripen on the vine.

grapes_harvested

 

These are from a friend’s orchard. Fresh off the vine they have that iconic “grapey” taste — delicious. I’m making Concord grape jelly.

Concord Grape Jelly

First I washed, de-stemmed, and ran the grapes though a juicer.

grapes_cleanedMy juicer left a lot of juicy-looking pulp, so I put the pulp through a manual food mill to ring out the rest of the juice. I poured the resulting juice through a cheesecloth-lined strainer to clarify it for a clearer jelly. I ended up with 8 cups of fresh Concord grape juice in the end.

I put the 8 cups of Concord grape juice in a large stock pot, added 12 cups of organic cane sugar, and brought to a boil. Once boiling, I added 4 pouches of liquid pectin and brought it back to a boil for a minute.

grape_jelly_jarsSkimmed off the foam, put the juice in sterilized mason jars, cap it, and water bath can for 10 minutes. That’s it — lots o’ grape jelly!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

3 × 2 =

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

© 2023 Planet B Gardens
%d bloggers like this: