Dark Purple Grapes

Grapes are in season at the local grocery stores. After seeing a story on KBS World News (Dish TV channel 9394) about the health benefits of eating purple vegetables and fruits, I decided to buy these grapes at Kroger's.

Tour of Huber's Winery - Starlight, Indiana

Today, I got to go on a tour of Huber's Winery in Starlight, Indiana. It is an interesting place to visit to see where they create so much wine, port and brandy.  I found the place to very clean and organized. It was interesting to see the only still at an Indiana winery. Learn more at their web site: huberwinery.com

I forgot to ask if they ever make any grape juice or jellies.

Making Concord Grape Jelly

I made my first batch of concord grape jelly earlier in the week. As the process moved along I took some pictures of some of the steps.

Here are the cleaned, ripe grapes taken from the stem. I weighed them at a little over 9 pounds.


The recipe called for taking about 4 pounds of grapes and mashing them with a potato masher to get the pulp and skins separate.


I then placed the mashed grapes in a pot and cooked them till they boiled and then simmered them for about 10 minutes.

After they started boiling, the grapes look like this. A purple, frothy mixture that is ready to be strained.

I used a screen to filter the juice out since I could not find any cheesecloth in the store. It takes about 10-20 minutes to strain. I mixed the grapes around from time to time to get the juice flowing.

This picture shows heated grapes being strained or waiting to be strained.

Here is about 32 ounces of grape juice with out any sweetener. I did not take pictures of the boiled lids, the sterilizing of the canning jars, the adding of the pectin and sugar to the grape juice, the mixing of 4 cups of sugar to the pectin/grape mixture. Also I could of taken picture of pouring of jelly into the jars but it would be hard to hold the camera and pour jelly at the same time.

The jars have jelly in them with lids and screws applied. I then boiled the jars for 5-10 minutes and then removed them with tongs. They jelly then cooled off.

I had some jelly left over that did not fill an entire jar so I poured in this one and used it to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

It is a lot of work to make jelly and grape juice but rewarding to have fresh food. In retrospect, I could have gone to the store and bought some jars of jelly for about $5-10.

Ripening Grapes

The grapes are looking good this year. You can see one grape is getting ripe.

Growing Concord Grapes

The grapes are plentiful this year but we will see if it stays that way by harvest time.

The cherry harvest was good so far with enough for 4 pies.