It’s grape season and recently I’ve been given a huge basket of deliciously sweet grapes. So I’ve been eating them twice or three times per day ever since – yet the basket seemed as full as the day I got them! I simply had to come up with an idea of using them faster, because grapes can not be stored forever and I just hate seeing things rot – so what better way of using than turning them into grape juice!

The result was absolutely great. For starters, I made juice out of 2 kilos of grapes, just enough to drink in one day. I used 2 types of strainers to filter the juice, however the result was a bit dense -but in no case less tasty- juice. I thinned it with a little water since it felt bit heavy for my stomach. I guess if I had used a cheesecloth instead of one strainer, the juice would have been less dense. I photo-documented the procedure and here it’s how the preparation goes:

Rinse the grapes well and de-stem the berries. It took me 15 minutes to de-stem 2 kilos of grapes

Mash with a help of a potato masher but not too hard cos you don't want to end up with split seeds (they lend bitterness to the juice)

Slowly heat the mashed grapes in a large pot and let simmer for about 10 minutes. You can mash some more at this point, then remove from the stove

Filter the grapes: here I used a not-so-fine strainer for the 1st filtration

And then I strained them again using a very fine sieve. The filtration is a little messy proceedure -in my opinion, at least- so make sure you're not wearing any fine clothes and don't forget to put on an apron. Once filtered, pour the juice into the prepared jars/containers

I managed to get a good liter of juice out of 2 kilos of grapes

You got to love the color of grape juice

If you let the juice sit for a while, the sediments will have formed on the bottom of the jar/container but that's pretty normal for all the natural juices

We totally liked this juice and I can’t wait to repeat the “exercise” with the white grapes which I’ll be getting next week!