Easy Grape Juice

Easy Grape Juice

Choose ripe, tight-skinned, preferably green seedless grapes or purple concord grapes once they reach optimum eating quality (you can tell by tasting them, if they are very sweet they are ready.  You can also tell if they are ready to pick if the seed inside has turned a darker color.  Once the seed is dark and the grapes taste very sweet, they are ready to harvest).  Stem, wash, and drain grapes.

Fill jars with 1 ½ cups of grapes, ¼ cup sugar and fill the rest of the jar with boiling water, leaving 1-inch headspace. Have lids simmering in hot water.  Add lids, tighten rims, and process according to the recommendations in Table 1.  With where I live, I process my quart jars for 30 minutes.

 

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If you don't have a juice steamer, this is such an easy way to bottle grape juice.  The final juice isn't as flavorful as juicing the grapes, but they taste wonderful and it's really easy.  Guidelines are from the National Center For Food Preservation.  Our grapes are ready to harvest at different times depending on the weather that year.  They are generally ready 1-2 weeks after our Lemon Elberta Peach tree.  It has been as early as the end of August and as late as the end of September.