Grape Jelly

A friend of mine recently bought a property that had a nice row of grape vines.  Unfortunately the vines have been let go.  They did not buy it in time to prune and get the vines back to shape this year but they did produce some grapes.  She said I could go pick them.  The grapes must have ripened a week earlier than some other grapes in our area.  When I went and picked most of the grapes had already dried up.  I did get enough though to make a pie or jelly.  I decided to make some jelly since I used our grapes for pie and juice.  My family prefers jam over jelly but one jelly that they do like is grape jelly. It  is very easy to make. 

You start out the same way as you do for juice. Wash and destem your grapes.  Cover in water and cook until tender.  Then pour grapes through a jelly bag and let sit until all the juice has come through.

Measure out 5 cups of juice.  Add to this one package of powdered pectin and bring to a boil stirring constantly.  Then add 7 cups of sugar.  Return to a boil and boil for 1 minute.  Skim off the foam.  This jelly made a lot of foam.  So I had a lot to skim off.  Then ladle jelly into clean sterilized jars.  Fill leaving 1/4 inch head space.  Wipe rims with a clean wash cloth.  Adjust lids and process in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes.  This yields about 8  8oz jars of jelly.  I ran out of jelly jars so I used two pint jars.  This jelly will taste great on toast and home made rolls.  No PB&J's at our house.  My kids are allergic to peanuts!!  But they do eat butter and jelly sandwiches!!