So Many Grapes

Currently, I'm drowning in grapes.  They smell soooo good, and my hands are soooo purple!

But to back up a bit, here's (mostly) weekly pictures to update since my post a couple months ago about the grapes.

week 11

 week 12

week 13

 

week 14

starting to turn purple!

week 15

week 16

are they ready yet?

(They were purplish, and tasted good if a little tart)

week 18

very purple

At week 18, there was no doubt they were ripe and ready to harvest. They could be smelled from ten feet away--smelled just like Welch's grape juice. And no matter where I looked in the grape arbor, there were tons of clusters of deep purple grapes.

Time to get picking!

Half of the grape arbor is all I picked last week; that yielded over two bushel (baskets in photo below are 1/2 bushel size).

From that approximate 2 1/2 bushel, I took about 1 3/4 bushel and used that to make a batch of jelly, and a batch of grape juice.  Which meant washing, stemming, and cooking the grapes, then straining them down into juice.  Lots and lots of juice.  I used the juicer attachment for my Kitchenaid for that.

2 of 3 bowls of juice

The juice had to sit overnight in the fridge before being strained a second time through cloth (my piece of cheese cloth wasn't big enough, so I grabbed a piece of unbleached muslin from my fabric stash).  It's now naturally dyed, LOL.

It took several hours to strain all that juice, and that's where/how I got my hands stained purple.

Really, it was an all day endeavor doing the second straining, then making and canning the jelly and the grape juice.  Tiring, but rewarding, and the kitchen smelled oh so good during the process.

7 half-pints and one 4-ounce jar of grape jelly

8 quarts of grape juice

If you've done the math throughout this post, you may be wondering what happened to that other 3/4 bushel of grapes.  Those went to DH's project: downsizing and recreating a heirloom family recipe for wine.  This something he's wanted to do for many years, but hasn't gotten around to.  But since we have a plethora of grapes out in the garden, there's no time like the present!

His Dad, Uncle, and Grandfather (all deceased) used to make homemade wine.  They used mainly concord grapes, as that was what grew on the homestead/farm.  The original recipe calls for over 7 bushel of grapes and makes 50 gallon batch.

We don't have a big enough fermenter to make 50 gallons, nor do we have 7 bushel of grapes (we do have probably 5+ as I still need to harvest the other half of the arbor).  So DH did the math to cut the recipe down to a manageable 5-gallon batch and will use our homebrew equipment for it.

Currently the grape mash is in it's first fermentation (10 days according to the old family recipe) on the kitchen counter.  All that's in the bucket is crushed grapes (unwashed, to use the natural yeast on the skins) and they are happily burbling away while the yeast eats the natural sugars in the grapes and creates alcohol.  After the first fermentation, the mash will be strained to remove the skins and seeds, then the juice will be put into a carboy for its second fermentation (with some water and a bunch of sugar added) then placed down in the basement where it's cooler and darker and the wine can age for a few months.

We'll know next year how it turns out.

Meanwhile, yesterday, DS2 and Surprise came and picked their own 3/4 bushel of grapes to take home and make wine with.  It should be interesting, as they are the same grapes DH used (same variety grown in the same place), to see if the wines come out identical or how much difference the water (tap water, different wells) and sugar (most likely a different brand) make in the final flavor.