Canning Grape Juice

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     Okay everyone, here is what happened!  Anita texted me and asked if I'd seen the deal for 18 pounds of grapes for the produce place for only $6.  I told her that I had but wondered what I would do with all of those grapes!  My husband and I could only eat so many fresh grapes by ourselves!  Then Anita, being the smart and talented woman that she is, mentioned juice or jelly.  "But,"  I replied, "I thought that you needed Concord grapes for that!  These are Red Grapes!" Guess what, we each bought a flat of grapes anyway, and do you know what happened?  Turns out you don't need only Concord grapes to juice them or make jelly!  I haven't made any jelly yet, but if the deal is still available, I may get more grapes for that adventure!  For today, if you click the Read More button, I'll tell you all about how I made delicious, sweet grape juice from Red Grapes! 

•  Luckily for me, these grapes were incredibly big and sweet!  They were at the peak of ripeness, which meant I needed to process them right away! So, I washed them up really well and picked out any that were beginning to grow mold or were a bit squishy.  There weren't many.  Also, when washing produce, a bit of vinegar in your water is a good idea.  
•  I picked all of the grapes off of their stems and dropped them straight into my large jam making pot, even though I wasn't making jam.  I actually filled 1 and 1/2 pots with these grapes.  Or in other words, 1 large pot (about 8 quarts) and 1-4 quart pot.  So, 12 quarts of grapes in all.  I had already frozen some of my grapes in snack sized bags to use as nature's popsicles this summer! 
• Over the grapes, I poured about 3 cups of water to the large pot and 1.5 cups to the small pot.  I'm sorry, I didn't really measure.  You will want to put enough water to keep the grapes from burning to the bottom of the pot and to steam them a bit to soften the skins.  I put the lids on the pots and turned the heat up to medium and allowed them to steam until the grapes were softened.  It probably took about 15 minutes. 
• When the grapes were soft, I mashed them with a potato masher.  The skins and the pulp should me covered with lots of juice by now.  Once mashed, I simmered them a little longer, just to get the juices really flowing. 
• At this point, you will need to strain the juice from the pulp.  You can do this in two ways.  

1. Use cheese cloth in a large strainer and strain into a big container.  Allow the cheese cloth to sit and continue draining over night.  The next day you will need to discard the pulp and then restrain the juice through a coffee filter to remove any remaining sediment from the juice. 
2. I used my yogurt strainer.  My yogurt strainer will hold 1 gallon of milk when I make yogurt.   It has such fine mesh and works amazingly for these types of projects.  It is really large and held all of the pulp, but not all of the juice.  So, after I put the first pot of juice and pulp into the yogurt strainer, I poured the juice off into another container.  Then, I added the second pot of pulp and juice and allowed it to strain the rest of the way over night.  I put the original juice that I poured off in the refrigerator over night as well to allow any remaining sediment to settle to the bottom of the container.  My yogurt strainer isn't currently available on Amazon, but there are other choices here.  I suggest getting the largest one you can find.

• The next day, strain your juice again, as mentioned in step #1.  Here is another perk that comes with using your yogurt strainer, There was barely any residual sediment in my juice!  It was clear and beautiful!  If you do get any sediment, dispose of it.  The sediment will add a bitterness that burns the throat that you won't enjoy. 
• Now, pour the juice into a clean pot.  Begin to heat it up. My grapes yielded over 5 quarts of juice.  Now is the time to taste your juice and see if you want to add any sugar.  I decided that I wanted very little sugar, but I was afraid that it wouldn't be quite sweet enough if I added no sugar.  Silly me!  I added about 1/3 of a cup to start, then I tasted it.  It was so sweet!  I shouldn't have added any sugar!  Those grapes were perfect for juice!  
• Next I added the juice to  clean and sterilized regular mouth quart jars and put them in the canner and processed them for 20 minutes! 

     I thought about designing labels for you, but I decided that we would probably be drinking up this juice pretty quickly, so I didn't bother!  I'll label the jars on the lids.  I'm really hoping to get some more grapes to make more juice, and hopefully some jelly as well! 

     Even though making this juice was a 2 day process, each part of the process wasn't really that time consuming.  It was just a matter of letting the juices drain from the pulp.  I'm so glad that I didn't let any of these sweet and delicious grapes go to waste!  Our family will really enjoy the "fruits" of my labors. 
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Other things I've canned or made from the produce place! 

• Cherry Tomatoes and Pickled Peppers
• Peach Mango Salsa with Avocado
• Blueberry Juice​
• Preserving Cilantro
• Canning Cherries in Honey
• Fig Jam