The grapes of wrath

I don't know if any of you remember me mentioning that we had grapevines in the back yard.  I watched my friend Angie make grape juice last year and unfortunately for her she had to ship grapes in from Utah in order to make it.  So I decided to take advantage of my situation and make me some free grape juice. Granted they are not those purple grapes from Concord, MA but they are good enough.  Yum yum!

 I picked four gallons of grapes and there was still a lot left on the vines.

Rinsing them off

Bubbles! My bubbles!

Then i mushed em

And boiled em 

And strained them.

 I did it without a juicer I might add, just a piece of cheesecloth.  Try that for extra culinary street cred.  Just sheer blood sweat and tears...  Well maybe just sweat.  It was pretty hot

Sanitizing the jars

I don't have a canning pot and the biggest pot I had BARELY covered the tops of the jars.  I had to keep filling the pot up with water to the to keep the tops covered in water.  The boiling water kept splashing out of the pot and put out the fire on my stove three times by the time I was done.

Filling the jars.

Here's question for all of you canning people... What does the "canning rack" do?  I didn't have one so I crumpled and punched holes through an aluminum pie pan and put it in the bottom of my pot.  It seemed to work, nothing went wrong but I just wonder if I could have done without and had just a little more room.

Reboiled and FINISHED!  I ended up with 10 jars of wonderful vacuum-packed grape juice! I'm so proud of them I don't know if I will be able to eat them.  I think i will just look at them, forever.  *sigh*