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Grape Juice
10 pounds grapes 2 pounds sugar 1 quart water Wash and stem the grapes; put them in a preserving kettle and crush slightly. Bring to a boil and cook gently for half an hour. Strain though cheesecloth or jelly bag, pressing out all the juice possible; return to the fire with the sugar; cook for fifteen minutes; strain again; reheat and pour into sterilized bottles, thoroughly heated. Put in sterilized corks and dip the neck of the bottle in hot sealing wax.
A straightforward hot-extraction grape juice, sweetened and bottled. Everything here works except the closure, which is the one part of the method modern practice has abandoned.
- The seal is the weak pointCorks dipped in sealing wax cannot be relied on: fermentation pressure pushes corks out, and wax cracks as the bottle cools. Follow current tested home-canning guidance for the closure and processing step rather than this instruction.
- Grapes to useThis is written for slip-skin American grapes, Concord above all. Ten pounds is in the region of a peck by volume and should give something like 3 quarts of finished juice, depending on how hard the pulp is pressed. Seedless table grapes give a thinner, less aromatic result.
- Do not boil hard"Cook gently" matters. A hard rolling boil drives off the volatile aroma that makes Concord juice taste like Concord, and extracts bitterness from skins and seeds. The recipe brings the fruit to a boil and then asks for gentle cooking; keep it barely bubbling until the fruit collapses.
- Half an hour is generousThe grapes give up their juice in 10 to 15 minutes once crushed and hot. Longer extraction darkens the color and pulls more tannin from the seeds.
- Sugar is optionalTwo pounds to ten pounds of fruit produces a sweet drink by modern palates, closer to a cordial. Ripe Concords need little or none; the sugar here is for flavor, not preservation.
- Why it strains twiceThe second straining catches pulp and the beginnings of tartrate. Better still, let the strained juice stand cold overnight and pour it off the sediment before the final heating, or the finished bottles will throw gritty crystals.
- Cheesecloth versus pressing"Pressing out all the juice possible" gives the highest yield but the cloudiest juice. Letting the bag drip unsqueezed gives noticeably clearer bottles.
- The easy alternativeStrained, sweetened juice keeps about a week refrigerated and freezes well in headspaced containers, which sidesteps the bottling question entirely.
Unfermented grape juice as a bottled commodity is generally traced to Thomas Bramwell Welch, a dentist and Methodist communion abstainer who in 1869 applied Pasteur's heating method to Concord juice so his congregation could take a temperance sacrament. His son built it into a business, and by the time books like this one were compiled, "grape juice" had become a respectable household drink with a temperance halo attached to it, promoted for invalids and children alike. The Concord grape itself is an American breeding success of the 1850s, hardy enough to crop heavily across the Northeast and Midwest, which is why so many turn-of-the-century canning chapters assume a glut of grapes in September and give recipes by the ten pounds.