the best thing about making grape jelly (from concord grapes we picked from a fence row in our neighborhood), is actually the grape juice that was left over. unsweetened concord grape juice is really delicious. add a little fizzy water, and ya got grape soda!
the worst thing about making grape jelly is when a whole batch doesn't set. it was the low sugar batch, which was doubly disappointing. the full sugar batch was so sweet, it seemed to take away from the wonderful, fresh grape flavor. i'm not even a fan of jelly, generally. it just seemed the thing to do with a bunch of grapes. if i'd thought of it, we could have just made juice, and canned that. next year.
we followed the instruction on the pectin box precisely, so we have no idea what went wrong. i think sometimes it just doesn't work. there is a chance we may reprocess the batch that didn't quite set (though it looks better today than it did when we first made it). we have instructions for re-doing batches that don't set. if it were jam, i wouldn't care. blueberry sauce is great on waffles or ice cream. but runny, un-jelled jelly? what are you supposed to do with that? i think the answer is: re-process it.
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