Part II - Grape Jelly
After spending a day picking and juicing grapes at my husband's family's vineyard, I ended up with 3 gallons of red Frontenac grape juice. Most of the juice was destined to become wine, but my goal was to learn to make grape jelly. After a little research, I realized that just 5 cups of juice would make 8 or 9 half-pint jars of jelly. A little quick math gave me 76 jars of jelly from my three gallons of juice. Um.... this should be interesting.
Needless to say, if you want to make grape jelly, you probably only need about 5 cups of juice to start with, maybe 10 if you are feeling ambitious. If you need to acquire juice for making Jelly, you can purchase grapes and extract the juice at home as described here. If you purchase juice, look for no sugar added. I did a lot of online research on Jelly making and the recipes seem to be pretty consistent. The method I used is from pickyourown.org/grapejelly.htm with some slight modifications.
I hadn't intended to start a Jelly factory, but I decided that my ideas of using my small pot as a canner wasn't going to work out for this big of an endeavor. I always think 'homemade' is going to be so much cheaper than store bought but my tendency to buy every gadget for the project usually proves that theory wrong. Even the estimate from pickyourown.org shows that it will probably cost $1.30 per jar of jelly if you have to buy the jars. I also bought a canning set for another $35. If I divide that among the 8 batches of jelly I'll make at about 8 jars a piece, my cost should be around $1.85 a jar. That is still a pretty cheap Christmas gift, and the tools in the set were really handy. There was a magnet on a stick for pulling the lids out of hot water, jar tongs for moving hot jars, a jar wrench which I used to hold hot jars while I tightened the rings, and another pair of tongs that can join my others in the drawer. OK, I feel better now that I've justified all that.
As long as we are on the topic of supplies, you will need jars. I like the half pint jelly jars that are 'quilted' for decoration. I did a little searching and for those in Central Iowa I found the best selections at Dahl's. Wal-mart had a basic selection, and Target was pretty limited. Dahl's had just about every kind of jar I could ask for, including cute little 4 oz. jars perfect for smaller gifts, you know, when you don't like someone a whole jar of jelly worth. In my case I should have plenty to go around. New jars come with new lids and bands, but if you already have a stash of jars, make sure to buy new flat lids as they are only made to seal properly once. Another handy item is cheese cloth if you are making your own juice. Pickyourown.org shows a jelly strainer, but I didn't go quite that far in my equipment investment.
You should have juice, a canner or a big pot, jars, lids, and rings. You will also need plenty of sugar and pectin, and a little lemon juice. Let's make jelly!
The worst part about canning jelly is the canning part. Once you've got all your equipment, there is still plenty of preparation. To make sure your jelly doesn't spoil, the jars and lids need to be sanitized. Before getting started I ran all the jars through the dishwasher and used the sanitize cycle. One tip was to keep the jars warm so they don't break when you pour in hot jelly. It was difficult to time the finish of the dishwasher cycle with my jelly finishing so the jars would be warm. By the time I got to the third batch I needed more jars than I had run through the dishwasher anyway. The more traditional way to sanitize jars is to boil them for ten minutes. I think this was actually easier anyway, especially since I had the canner full of boiling water anyway. I used a smaller saucepan to bring the lids near boiling. That served to sanitize them and soften the seals. OK, now we can make jelly, I swear.
First, to prepare the juice I placed two layers of cheese cloth in a colander and poured the juice through. This isn't necessary if you buy the juice, but I would recommend it if you press or extract your own. I've seen some directions saying that you can make grape jam if you don't strain the juice. After seeing how much came out of my juice, I decided to stick with straining it instead of trying it both ways. It made for a nice clear juice (and pretty jelly).
I ended up making four batches of jelly using about half my juice. One piece of advice I saw several times was not to make big batches of grape jelly apparently the pectin doesn't set well. I'm guessing it has something to do with how long it would take to get the juice boiling. I might consider trying a double batch next time, but I'd hate to ruin it.
The next step was to measure out my sugar. For five cups of juice, most recommendations for regular pectin said seven cups of sugar. This is why you get more jelly than you had juice. Seriously, seven cups!
Another helpful hint that I used was to mix my pectin with a quarter cup of sugar. Supposedly this helps to incorporate the pectin into the juice smoothly. Also, a lot of directions call for a box of pectin. I happened to find it in a plastic jar instead. For this particular pectin, six tablespoons were equal to one box of pectin. From the pick your own reference they recommended about 20% more than most recipes. I used seven tablespoons to start with.
In true test kitchen fashion, I tried out three different kinds of pectin. The fist was regular Ball brand pectin. The mixture came to a boil and I was able to use a spoon out of the freezer to test if the mixture was gelling. When it had thickened it would slide off the frozen spoon in thin sheets. After reaching a boil the mixture didn't gel right away, so I added an eighth Tablespoon of pectin. This seemed to work really well.
For the second batch I used a lower sugar pectin which meant I could use up to half the sugar. I used four cups of sugar with five cups of juice, two tablespoons of lemon juice, and only four tablespoons of pectin. This batch reacted very similarly to the first. The spoon test worked and the mixture came to a boil nicely. One thing I noticed with this batch was that it didn't seem to congeal evenly. There were some pockets of almost clear gel. I was a bit skeptical, so that was my only low sugar batch.
For the third batch, I tried Sure Gel brand pectin. I went back to the original seven cups of sugar and stuck with five cups of juice and two tablespoons of lemon juice. I used about a box and a quarter of pectin. This batch reacted very differently. It foamed and bubbled nearly out the top of my stock pot after adding the sugar whereas the Ball brand pectin didn't bubble excessively and stayed in the bottom quarter of the pot. The directions on the box said to bring the mixture to a hard boil that you can't stir down then boil for one minute. After one minute I tried the spoon test. It was very runny so I added a tablespoon of pectin and boiled another minute; it still wasn't any thicker. This went on for several more tablespoons and quite a bit more boiling. I finally decided just to put it in jars and see what happened. Low and behold, as I was putting it into jars (and dripping all over my sheet pan) it seemed to be thickened and congealed.
For the final batch of the day I took a chance and followed the directions on the box. I used the same recipe as in batch three, still with a box and a quarter of pectin. I brought the juice and pectin to a hard boil then added the sugar. It still foamed quite a bit. This time I only boiled the mixture for one minute once it reached a hard boil.
For all four batches I poured the finished mixture into jars then wiped the rims so that a good seal could be formed. The jars should be filled to within 1/4" of the top of the jar. I used my nifty magnet to pull the flat lids out of the not quite boiling water an placed them on the jars and screwed on the bands. The jar wrench was great for holding the hot jars. The directions said to then submerge the jars in the hot but not boiling water in the canner. I tried this method first but found that it took quite a while to get the pot back to a boil. For the other batches I had the water boiling before I submerged the jars.
You will want to refer to the directions on the pectin to determine how long to boil, or process, the jelly. At a Central Iowa altitude that was five minutes from the time the water returned to a boil. You wouldn't need the basket that goes in the canner but it was helpful to lift all the jars out at once. Besides to lift the jars out of the water, don't try to use the basket to carry them. It doesn't seem very sturdy and the jars can topple. Use the jar tongs to lift the jars onto a towel to dry and cool. They will need to sit for 12 to 24 hours to cool before you store them. During the first several minutes you will hear a rewarding plinking sound of the lids sucking down onto the jars as the contents inside cools. Out of 38 finished jars of jelly only one didn't seal. I put that one in the fridge to save it. If they don't seal properly they won't keep.
So, the results? I've had two ultra-scientific taste tests. The first was a comparison of batch two which was the low sugar batch and batch four which was the one minute boil with more sugar. The two of us unanimously voted for the low sugar jelly which was surprising. This taste test was also proof positive that we can make any event about food. My friend Meredith and I packed our jelly and bread, hopped on our bikes to cheer her husband on as he ran the Des Moines Marathon. Congratulations on your first marathon Jason! At mile 22.5 I don't think the runners had an appreciation for our jelly picnic.
The second taste test was only slightly more scientific. We tasted all four batches side by side and this time we had six testers. The results were a bit divided. My dad who I just learned claims grape jelly as his favorite jelly flavor had a strong preference for #4 and really disliked the texture of #3. Especially toward the top of the jar #3 was much thicker and had more of a commercial texture. His second favorite was #1 and his third choice was #2. He did say he would gladly accept any of them for his birthday, Christmas, and any holiday I would like to invent. For the most part, the rest of the group preferred the low sugar version, #2, so I think I have my winner. The lumps that I saw when I made batch #2 weren't noticeable in the finished product. I also learned not to over boil the jelly. I preferred working with the Ball brand pectin since I didn't have to worry about it boiling over and I had confirmation that it was gelling. One other note was that since my juice was frozen, I was pouring juice out of the containers as it thawed. That may have influenced the strength of the juice in each batch. The lower sugar batch seemed to have the most grape flavor possibly because it was more concentrated, but likely because it was slightly less sweet, but it was still quite sweet.
When it was all said and done, jelly making took quite a bit of time (for four batches) but was easier than I expected. I'll definitely finish making the rest of my jelly. By my calculations I should end up with 68 half pints of jelly!
You used the Frontenac grapes, right. Have you compared them to a conventional jelly grape like Concord?
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