Valiant Jelly

Valiant Jelly (2008)

Ingredients:
5 lbs of Valiant Grapes, picked October 6th and 7th.
1 1/2c water
7c sugar
1 pkg Certo

I weighed out 5 pounds of grapes. Washed, sorted, and stemmed them. Then, i mashed them well with a potato masher. The juice of this mash had an acid tartaric of 1.2% and a sugar content of about 20% (SG 1.074) I put this mush into a pot, added 1 1/2 cups water, and slowly brought it up to 190F, stirring and mashing all the time. I poured this into a cheesecloth*-lined colander to drain the juice. From this, I managed to coax 5 cups of juice out of the pulp.
From here, I followed the instructions in the Certo package. Mixed the Certo with the juice, brought to a boil, added the sugar, returned to a hard boil for one minute. Removed from heat, and sat for 5 minutes. Skimmed foam. Poured into sterilized jars. Processed. This made just shy of 9 cups of wonderful jelly.

• note, the cheesecloth you buy at the grocery store is good for making jelly, but lousy for making cheese. For cheese recipes, use REAL cheesecloth. For this recipe, grocery-store cheesecloth will do.