Wild Grape Jelly

I've used this recipe several times and my jelly has turned out perfect each time. I've canned for 30 yrs and this recipe is a great one. I've read some of the reviews on here and there are many reasons jelly won't set. Never double a jelly recipe, if your recipe calls for liquid pectin do not sub powder, they are made totally different and from different things, make sure once you add your pectin you bring it back up to a rolling boil for a full minute, this is a must. Hope that helps for those of you that had problems with this recipe. Happy canning!!

Why I started this project: lots of wild grapes at our summer place and a project for my 3 year old granddaughter. We/I picked tons of grapes: it was a good year! Then I spent two evenings stemming grapes because my mom always did. I used lots less water when cooking them -- I/2 cup per four cups of grapes. Then I froze the whole thing while I waited for my mom's jelly bag to arrive. I let it drip overnight and just squeezed it at the end. The jelly bag is a prised family heirloom -- now I know why my mom stemmed the grapes -- it's easier on the bag! I ended up with 9 cups of juice and started to follow this recipe at that point. I am just finished my first batch, which looks and tastes wonderful!! My mom warned me not to double/triple the recipe -- so two more batches to go. A moment of madness because I had no time to do any of this!

Found a large amount of wild grapes this year, enough for 2 batches but made one large batch. A no no possibly but added a total of 3 pouches of liquid pectin and it turned out perfectly set and it's just the right amount of sugar. Made 12 jelly jars. Thanks

This recipe turned out great, I followed it to the letter. I had found some wild grapes while fishing and wanted to make jelly. I picked about 4lbs of grapes and used the 3c of water and after dripping overnight I ended up with 7 cups of juice! I made two batches of jelly and am still deciding what to do with the last 1c. Each batch I made filled 5 of the 8oz jelly jars, in which I left a 1/4" headspace and water bath canned for 10 mins, per another recipe since this one didn't have the actual canning instructions for a newbie like me. XD Great recipe, will use again. Husband and son loved it.

I found some wild grapes and decided to make jelly. I found this recipe, read all the reviews and researched a couple of other recipes as well. I have made jelly for many years, and just finished making lots of jams using mangoes using powdered pectin and every batch set perfectly. I have used liquid pectin before and know that occasionally the jelly won't set, so I was hesitant to go back to liquid pectin. I also read the review that said hers did not set, but I saw she had tried to make more than one batch at once (major no-no.) The only thing I did differently was the juice prep. I found another recipe in a blog where he used the same jelly recipe, but he did not stem the grapes, and he used a bit more water. Some of my grapes were so small, that stemming them would have taken me forever. I had about 3.5lbs of wild grapes and I used a scissors to quickly cut off as much stem as I could. In the pot I started off with 3 cups of water and ended up adding 2 more cups. (The blogger said he kind of "eyeballed" it. Mashed and boiled. To speed up the straining process, I poured the juice/grape/stem mix through a colander (mine has small holes) and then poured that liquid through my jelly strainer. (yes...this uses lots of pots.) I ended up with just a little bit of mushy fine pulp in the strainer, and it was much quicker than sitting over night. This yielded 6 cups of juice. I made 2 separate batches of jelly, following the recipe exactly ( I might have boiled the jelly for a little more than a minute, just to be sure.) Skimmed and put in jars. Processed in boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Jelly set wonderfully and is a beautiful color. Tastes great, too!