Home-made grape juice!!!

Once again, having a farm share has broadened our horizons. German grapes taste amazing, and are often filled with seeds. I googled several recipes for grape juice, and decided to give it a try. The results were stupendous, and well worth the labor.

Rinse off the grapes and remove them from the stems into a pot. Use a potato masher to break open the grapes right in the pot. Add water- sorry, no measurements from me. We got 1 kg of grapes, and I covered them just barely with water. After the juice was strained, I added a bit more water. I did not put any sugar in the pot because the raw grapes were so tasty. I’m glad I didn’t, but most of the recipes I saw called for sugar.

I boiled the grapes gently for about 20 minutes. I have no idea if shorter or longer is better, because after I turned off the heat and the concoction cooled slightly, I found the flavor to be excellent. Apparently, mashing and boiling allows for more flavor to come out of the seeds and possibly the skin.

I could not locate my cheesecloth anywhere (hello, frequent movers, I know it’s here somewhere). I tried 2 different methods of straining the liquid from the pot: a traditional paper coffee filter, and a tea strainer. The coffee filter worked great for the first few ladles of grape juice, but eventually it got clogged up. The tea pot with built-in plastic filter worked very well.

I can’t rave about the flavor enough. I probably would not go to the grocery store just to buy seeded grapes to make juice with, but as long as fresh from the vine grapes arrive in our weekly farm share, I’ll make juice.