Grapes everywhere!

*note, there are lovely pictures to accompany this post, but Blogger is being stupid and won't allow me to post them.  I will edit and add them when it is behaving itself.*

This past weekend was a busy, messy one. 

We picked Concord and Niagara grapes at a vineyard/orchard, where the insects swarmed us and our hands became so very sticky.

After having dinner with Honeybunch's folks, we went to a county fair a few towns away to oogle bunnies, chickens, goats, sheep, and gigantic mythical-looking draft horses.  It took all my self control to not come home with a Lionhead bunny rabbit in a cardboard box.  We put our cold fingers deep into the wool of some beautiful black-faced sheep, and ate fried pierogies (yes, we washed our hands in between).  We didn't get home until after midnight... and upon waking Sunday morning found that we had four gigantic bags of grapes to deal with. 

We washed, destemmed, and crushed them all.  Crushing grapes by hand is a very uncomfortable affair... the acid in them burns your hands after a while.  So Honeybunch came up with a creative solution.  He got a paint mixer attached for his drill and whizzed 'em up in the fermentation bucket.  It worked quite nicely, and this morning I pitched the yeasts into the buckets of soon to be Niagara and Concord wines.

A word on Concord wine:  I'm not a huge fan of the varieties I've tasted, including the ones we've made ourselves.  It's either too dry for me, or if sweetened, it tastes like cheap table wine.  However, we brew it specifically to mix with other wines to create new varieties.  One of the wines that has gotten rave reviews from us and our foodie friends is a mix of our spiced honey wine and the dry concord we made last season.  It adds a deep, rich "red" flavor to an otherwise sweet white mead... When mixed together, bottled, and allowed to mature, it becomes a complex and full-bodied off-dry wine that everyone seems to enjoy.

Some of the Concord grapes I reserved to make grape jelly.  It turned out simply delicious, a perfect replica of the purple sweetness I enjoyed on sandwiches as a kid.  I used the Ball Blue Book pectin-added grape jelly recipe.  In the future, I'll probably use a recipe calling for no-sugar-added pectin and sweeten it to taste, because I was quite honestly horrified at the amount of sugar this liquid pectin recipe called for.  However, it gelled nicely and tastes wonderful, so no regrets, right??   I doubled this recipe and ended up with just shy of 8 pints.

4 cups of concord grape juice prepared for jelly
(grapes washed, destemmed, crushed, add about 1/4 cup of water per quart of pulp, cook until soft, then strained through cheesecloth for hours until all the juice has dripped out.  I'm impatient and only let it drip for a few hours, squeezing the bag every so often, but that can make the jelly cloudy *though mine has always turned out clear anyways.* Measure your juice after all of this has been done and adjust the quantities in the recipe as needed)

7 cups sugar
1 packet liquid pectin

Place the juice in a nonreactive pot, add the sugar, stirring to dissolve.  Bring to a rapid boil over high heat, stirring constantly.  Add the pectin, stir, and boil hard for 1 minute.  Pour the hot jelly into your hot prepared jars, remove air bubbles, wipe rims, apply lids and rings, and process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes for half-pints (I used pint jars and processed for 15 minutes). 

It took about 16 hours for the gel to set properly, so don't panic if the jars cool and it still looks runny.. check again in the morning!