A friend of a friend let me harvest from their 80 year old Concord grape vine. I ended up with two 5-gallon buckets worth of grapes on the stems.
Total Yield:
Grape Harvest – 8 gallons
Unfiltered Grape Juice – 3 1/4 gallons (1/2 gallon given away)
Grape Jelly – 1 1/4 gallons
Grape Juice – 1 gallon
Night 1: Steam juicer to the rescue! It took about 3 hours to wash and steam juice all the grapes. I ended up with 3 1/4 gallons of grape juice. 1/2 a gallon went to a coworker who also cans.
Night 3: Filter it up! Lots of sediment had collected in the bottom of the jars. I used my wine siphon to remove all the juice and filtered through 2-3 layers of cheese cloth and a fine mesh strainer. I also did a batch of low sugar jelly, using the recipe on the Ms. Wages recipe pamphlet.
Night 4: Jam session! It took about 6 hours, and most of the time was spent waiting for my jars to sterilize. I did 3 batches of [https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/make-jam-jelly/jellies/grape-jelly-powdered-pectin/](NCHFP grape jelly with powdered pectin) and 1 batch of [https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can/canning-fruits-and-fruit-products/grape-juice/](NCHFP grape juice). I did end up processing the grape juice for 10 minutes instead of 5, because I was tired of sterilizing jars haha.
by itsahobbitslife
6 Comments
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Grape job! It looks like you picked a grape recipe and produced a really grape product! Those PB&J sandwiches are going to taste grape! I always have a grape deal of fun canning, but I haven’t done any grape recipes yet, as the wife isn’t a fan.
Grape.
Where did you get the extra long tubing for your steam juicer? This looks much safer than my set-up.
Love it, just had my own festival of the grape here! Can you tell me more about your steam juicing? I never know when to stop the steam juicer, like when is it “done”? 3 hours seems short to me for that many grapes. I’m in favour of skipping the jar sterilization and just processing for 10 minutes.
So much work! Makes you really enjoy it everytime you crack open a jar.
In northwestern New York State the grapes came in on the first weekend of October. I made juice that weekend and I’m canning jelly today.