Home › Preserving › Grape Juice (Wash the grapes pick them)
Grape Juice (Wash the grapes pick them)
Wash the grapes, pick them from the stems, and dispose in a "waterless cooker" or in a very large double boiler; as the grapes heat, crush them with a pestle; let drain in a jelly bag, then reheat in a saucepan to the boiling point, turn into the sterilized jars, and finish as all canned food. Or turn into the cans, set in a cooker or boiler, adjust rubber rings and covers, and tighten the covers when the water boils.
Remove the last of the juice by pressure, or add water to the pulp; let boil about fifteen minutes, then drain again; can this to use in jelly, but do not forget to either "boil down" or add less sugar.
Pasteurized Grape Juice (U. S. Department of Agriculture) Grape juice is satisfactorily pasteurized without appreciable change of flavor when it is heated to a temperature varying from 165° to 176° F. If the temperature is allowed to reach 200° F., the flavor of the juice is changed for the worse.
For home use there are a large number of varieties of grapes which will make a pleasant and healthful drink. No matter what the kind of grape, however, only clean, sound fruit should be used, and it should be well ripened, but not overripe. The grapes should first be crushed and pressed. The subsequent procedure depends upon whether a white or a red juice is desired. For a light-colored juice, the crushed grapes are put in a cloth sack and twisted until the greater part of the juice is extracted, one person holding each end of the sack. The juice is then put in some convenient form of double boiler in which it does not come into direct contact with the fire but is surrounded by hot water, and gradually heated to a temperature close to 200° F. As has already been said, however, it should not be allowed to go over this point. If no thermometer is available, it is best to heat the juice until it steams and then to take it from the fire before it is allowed to boil.
It should then be poured into a glass or enamelled vessel and allowed to settle for twenty-four hours, after which it can be drained from the sediment and run through some form of cloth filter. The strained juice is then put into clean bottles and sterilized once more in a water bath. An ordinary wash-boiler with a thin board on the bottom for the filled bottles to rest on is a convenient home device for this purpose. After sterilization, the bottles should be corked immediately with new corks, the corks having been previously soaked for about thirty minutes in hot water.
For red juice, the crushed grapes are first heated to the same temperature as before and then strained through a clean cloth or drip bag without pressure. Thereafter, the process is the same as for light-colored juice.
Grape juice should be stored away in bottles or jars that are not too large, for after these have been opened, the juice is likely to spoil.
If properly made, however, the juice should keep indefinitely as long as it is kept in sealed bottles. In this respect it is, of course, like other canned goods, which should always be used as soon as possible after they have been opened.
Of the various varieties of grapes common in this country, the Delaware gives a juice of delicate aroma and excellent flavor. The Concord is darker, with a sprightly taste and well known aroma. The Catawba, Isabella, and Salem grapes also yield an excellent product. The California varieties produce a very sweet juice, but in many cases there is little characteristic flavor. For home use, however, the kind of grape that is most abundant in the vicinity will, of course, be used.
Strawberries Canned to retain Color Hull and weigh the berries. For each pound of berries allow ten ounces of sugar and one fourth a cup of water. Cook the sugar and water to a thick syrup, let cool a little, then pour over the berries, washed, drained, and put into fruit jars. Fill the jars to overflow, adjust the rubbers, and screw down the covers loosely.
Set the jars on the rack, in a steam-kettle, covered with folds of cloth or paper, and surround with water at about the temperature of the jars. Bring slowly to the boiling-point and let boil ten minutes. Tighten the covers and let the jars cool in the kettle. Store in a dark, dry, and cool place.
Two methods sit side by side here: the author's own quick hot-press method and the U. S. Department of Agriculture's pasteurizing directions. The USDA text is the more careful of the two, and its one real rule is the temperature ceiling.
- The hinge: keep it under 200FThe USDA text says grape juice pasteurizes without appreciable change of flavor at 165 to 176 F, and that at 200 F the flavor is changed for the worse. Heat until it steams and pull it off before it boils. The author's own instruction to reheat "to the boiling point" is the weaker of the two methods for exactly this reason.
- "Waterless cooker"A heavy lidded pot of the 1910s designed to cook on retained steam over low heat. Any wide, heavy-bottomed pot with a tight lid does the same job here, since all you are doing is softening the grapes enough to release juice.
- Double boilerUsed not for gentleness of flavor alone but because direct heat scorches sugary juice on the pan bottom. A stainless pot over low heat with frequent stirring works if you watch it; do not use aluminium or bare iron, which react with the fruit acid.
- The 24-hour settlingNot fussiness. Grape juice throws out potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar) crystals and dregs as it cools, and racking the clear juice off the sediment before the final heating is what keeps it from being gritty and cloudy in the bottle.
- Corks are the weak pointCorked bottles sterilized in a wash-boiler were standard practice then and are not reliable now. Use standard canning jars with two-piece lids, or bottles designed for pressure sealing, and process in a boiling-water bath following current USDA times for fruit juice rather than the vague "finish as all canned food."
- Red versus whiteThe difference is mainly heat before extraction: heating the crushed grapes first pulls color out of the skins, while twisting the raw fruit in a sack gives the pale juice. The red method also drains without pressure, and free-run juice taken without pressure tends to be clearer and less astringent.
- The second extractionThe watered, boiled pulp yields a thin juice worth keeping for jelly, as the author says. Her warning matters: that juice is diluted, so it needs reducing or a reduced sugar ratio, or the jelly will not set.
- Grape varietiesDelaware, Catawba, Isabella and Salem are American labrusca and hybrid grapes, still grown but rarely sold in supermarkets. Concord is the one you will find, and it makes the juice most people recognize as grape juice.
- YieldThe original gives none. Reckon roughly 3 to 3 1/2 lb of grapes per quart of finished juice, more if you press only lightly.
- The strawberry recipe tacked on the endTen ounces of sugar per pound of fruit is a heavy syrup by modern taste, and ten minutes of boiling will still leave the berries soft. Strawberries hold color better with the cold-pack and cooled-syrup approach used here than with open-kettle cooking, which is the point of the method.
Unfermented grape juice as a household staple is a comparatively young thing, and an American one. The technique of pasteurizing pressed grape juice so it would keep without turning to wine is generally traced to Thomas Bramwell Welch, a Methodist dentist in Vineland, New Jersey, who in the late 1860s wanted a non-alcoholic communion wine; commercial success came later, under his son. By the time this book appeared the U. S. Department of Agriculture was publishing farmers' bulletins on the subject, which is why a government text sits verbatim inside a domestic cookbook here, and why the language turns suddenly technical about thermometers and filters. Two forces were pushing at once: the temperance movement, which wanted a respectable drink for the table and the church, and a grape crop centered on the Concord, credited to Ephraim Bull of Concord, Massachusetts, in the 1840s, that was too foxy and too acid to make wine anyone outside America wanted to drink. Bottled juice solved both problems at the same time.