Grape juice

Hilda harvested the last of the carrots this week. They were pathetic due to neglect. We had them planted in the drier “upstairs” garden, but they suffered from the flood of the lower garden nevertheless. See, in a normal year, we only have to weed the beans once. After that, they shade out the weeds. This year, however, the beans never fully recovered from the flood. But hope springs eternal, and we kept weeding and weeding, waiting for the moment that they would take off. Probably should have just ripped them out and been done with it, although we did that with the peas and had to pull the weeds in the space they had been in to keep them from going to seed.

Anyway, the carrots were puny, but we were able to put together a chorus line.

A chorus line of carrots

Labor Day is usually when the grapes are ripe. We all remembered our grape juice marathon two years ago, and we all knew that there were only three jars of this juice left in the root cellar.

The last three jars of juice from 2016

Terry and I were at the Minnesota State Fair last Labor Day. As far as anyone could remember, we did not make grape juice. Terry and I started picking grapes Saturday morning. When we had a good amount, Terry washed them off, and Dad and I started sorting through them and pulling them off the stem. They weren’t as ripe this year, which was odd given that the summer had been so hot, but good because they were not thoroughly infested with picnic bugs. In fact, they were relatively bug-free, perhaps in part because of recent heavy rains.

Sorting and de-stemming grapes in the garage

We weren’t too far into the process when we remembered about washing the Mason jars. Hilda’s dishwasher was full, so I volunteered to do them downstairs. I went to the root cellar to pull out every narrow-mouthed quart jar I could find. Imagine my surprise when I found 15 jars of grape juice labeled “17” in the corner. We had put up grape juice last year after all.

15 newly discovered jars of grape juice from 2017

I went to the vines to consult with Terry. We decided that he would pick only the biggest clusters that were easy to reach. “I’m not pissing around on my knees anymore getting the ones at the bottom,” were more or less his exact words.

Picking the grapes off the stem put the phrase “Grapes of Wrath” in my mind, and consequently, the song in my head. Grapes of wrath—what the hell does that mean? What’s next? The Wine of Vengeance? And where were the grapes of wrath stored? “He has trampled (was that right?) out the [two syllable blank] where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Legend has it that the lyrics came to Julia Ward Howe in a dream, so perhaps expecting it to be coherent is asking too much. (And it’s “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Which makes even less sense.)

Hilda helped with the de-stemming until we had enough grapes to start the juicing process. First, she crushed the grapes.

Crushing the grapes

Then—this is the hard part—she let the grapes simmer 190°F and no higher for 10 minutes. The Blue Book is cautions strongly about letting the grapes boil.

Simmering the grapes

Straining is next. That’s the most time-consuming step. I suggested that maybe cheese cloth would be faster than the flour sack towels Hilda usually used. She tried it, but it was still slow. She got new cheese cloth after using it twice and, she confided toward the end that she was used fewer and fewer layers as time went on.

Straining the juice through cheese cloth

In theory, one is supposed to refrigerate the juice overnight to let the sediments fall to the bottom, then carefully ladle off the top, heat again to 190°F and no higher, then can. In practice, we have found that there is sediment in the bottom of the jars no matter what you do before canning them, so screw it. We just put it in the jars right off the bat.

I planned to roast a chicken for supper and offered to share with Mom and Dad so they could finish up with the canning. They took a break to eat when I delivered, but kept at the juice until after 9:00. A long day. We ended up with 20 jars, which figures out to 5 gallons. Now we  have to remember to drink it.