Our grape vines were loaded with grapes this year. So much so, that I think the grapes took all of the moisture and left little for the leaves. Either that, or there is something making the leaves turn brown and die off. I really don't know much at all about grapes. Last year we tried to process the ones we got, but that was a great fiasco. So this year, I wanted to try something different.
A while back, I found a strainer/colander like my mom and I used a long, long time ago. It is very simple and works great with little effort and easy cleanup. Much simpler than the seeder/strainer attachment on the KitchenAid we tried last year.
I picked about half of the grapes, leaving the others to ripen a little longer. I was surprised at how many there were. I rinsed them off outside first to get rid of the tiny little crawling critters and discourage the small cloud of gnats that accompanied them to the house. Then I picked off all of the usable grapes and rinsed them again.
The directions say to cover them with boiling water and simmer until soft. I think next time I will use less water. It seemed to really dilute the juice.
After they were soft, I used the colander strainer to remove the skins and seeds from the pulp and juice. Like I said, it was very easy, quick and a breeze to clean up.
Now, to leave the juice in the frig for 24 to 48 hours before straining with a cheese cloth. We now interrupt this process. It was during this time frame that my brother had his accident. I'm not actually sure how long the juice set. I think I got back to it before the 48 hours was up, but I'm not sure.
I tried filtering the juice through three layers of cheese cloth, as the book described, but it just wouldn't go through after a very short period of time. I kept having to rinse the cloth to get anymore through. So, by the end of the juice, I was down to one thickness of cheese cloth.
After the juice set for another day there was a little pulp residue in the bottom of the jar, but it tasted okay. Rather tart, but okay. I was initially thinking to leave all of the pulp in the juice, but the book indicated that it would give the juice an off flavor that was very unpleasant, so I didn't.
This morning we poured up a glass of juice and added a heaping teaspoon of sugar to cut the tartness. It was still pretty tart, but we plan to drink it over the next week or so instead of preserving it. I originally planned to pick the rest of the grapes and get them processed, then take all of the juice and can or freeze it to use over time. This was one of those times that things didn't go as planned. I haven't even checked on the remaining grapes out on the vine. I may get back to them, but I may not.
This has been an interesting spring and summer. It has been an abnormal year and now abnormal has become the normal for us. I am grateful that we have been led to prepare for hard times. We are still comfortable with the stores in our pantry, so I am not stressing over how much of the garden or grapes we are not getting preserved. There will be other harvests and other times. For now, we are taking things slowly as they come. Frank is healing nicely and is able to do more everyday. My brother is doing well, all things considered. We are blessed.
Until next time - Fern
The original title of this post was Dehydrating Grapes. Here is the tale of how it turned into The Grape Fiasco.
There is a grape vine here that is about 25 years old. It came with the house. We have never grown grapes before and don't know much about them besides what we have read. This is the first year it has produced any measurable harvest since we got it up on a trellis.
Since we have had much more rain this summer than we have in the past two years, I was happy to see so many grapes growing and began to think about what I could try to do with them when they became ripe.
I picked them all a few days ago. I had been watching to see when most of them were ripe.
I thought it would be good to try my hand at raisins. So I got out my book on drying foods. I knew the grapes had seeds, but I thought I could cut them in half (so I wouldn't have to blanch them) and take the seed out, put them on the dehydrator trays and be ready to make raisins. 
Wrong! It is basically impossible to get the seeds out of the meat of the grape without taking all of the meat with it. This turned out to be the wrong choice for these grapes. This would work great with seedless grapes, just not with these.
So, on to plan B.
I took all of the grapes off of the vines, picked out the bad ones and put the good ones in a pot on the stove to cook down so I could run them through the strainer (like I did the tomatoes for tomato sauce). I mashed the grapes with the potato masher and was pleased with this small amount of grape mush. Since we had finished canning tomato sauce and completed the regular chores, this was all we did yesterday. Today when I got home from work, I got the grape mush out and heated it up a little so it would be easier to scoop into the strainer. This is only the second time we have used this strainer attachment. We got everything set up, and put a small crock under the
mixing bowl so the juice wouldn't splash like the tomato sauce did.
Everything was set and we started pouring the grape mush into the
strainer. Before we had poured in all of the second cup, the strainer started kind of wiggling and making a
grinding kind of noise. We thought it wasn't put together tight
enough. Well, we don't really know what happened, but the seeds had jammed up
into the screw and mesh strainer mechanism so tightly that it shot off of the machine when Frank
finally got the ring loosened up enough.
Then it took him another 15-20
minutes with an ice pick just to get all of the impacted seeds out of
the two pieces. After he thought he might have it all, he realized the screw piece still had a bunch of stuff stuck in it. What a chore!
In the meantime, I had gone on to Plan C, which didn't work either. I thought maybe I could just squeeze it through a cheese
cloth and call it good. But I realized I would be throwing away a lot of
the pulp that I wanted to keep.
Now, onto Plan D. Hrumph! I got out a fine mesh strainer and started mashing the mush through with a large metal spoon. Now I know some of you are starting to chuckle. We felt like a quick little batch of our first grape butter from our first
harvest of grapes was turning into a major chore and dirtying up everything in the kitchen on a Friday evening after a busy week. And we were still going to do a production pizza run when we finished with this!
Well, it did get finished. After I had pressed it through the strainer, I heated it up again, tasted it, and added a little sugar to cut the tart whang.
Here is our grape harvest for the year. I don't know what I will do with next year's crop. Really, I hope the seedless grapes I planted last year are ready to start producing, because I would rather have raisins. The really funny thing about this whole project is that neither one of us like grape juice or jelly. All that work for one pint of stuff we don't really like. But then again, it is growing here, it is something to eat, it has good nutritional value and it may end up being very important that we eat whatever grows here. There may come a day that we would be happy to eat things we never thought we would. As I was finishing up this grape butter thinking 'all of that work for one jar of stuff we don't really like', I realized how grateful I should be for the chance to learn, make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes and learn some more. It is not always the end product that is most important. It is not always the process of doing something that is important. How you choose to deal with situations and learning opportunities are often more important than the outcome. Take time to enjoy your fiasco's. Sometimes they even taste good!
Until next time - Fern
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