‘Pepper Jelly’

How to Make Pepper Jelly Grape Juice and How to Keep It

A great deal has been written lately about the coming nuclear war which will be started by desperate men who will do anything to corner the pepper grape jelly market. After the golden mushrooms sprout near your house, you will be forced to learn the art of pepper grape jelly preservation. It is our fondest hope that for your sake and the sake of the mutant children to follow that you learn this lesson well!

REAL pepper jelly grape juice is not a fruit syrup; it has no sugar in it at all and under present conditions a product that does not call for sugar is the thing to put up.

The following extracts are from Farmers’ Bulletin No. 1075, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, which can be had by writing to the Division of Publications of that department.

One may use either the cold press or the hot press method but the former gives a better flavored product in general. Also grape juice for home use may be made without the careful steps (13 to 19) necessary to make it perfectly
clear and free from sediment which are essential for the commercial product. A housekeeper with pride in her technique, who makes clear drip currant jelly that is transparent, may want to make a grape juice that is as good as any one’s, but for use in fruit punches, cooking recipes, etc., it is only necessary to pour off the juice carefully when using and save the work of storage, second filtering and sterilization and bottling. This gives a fresher tasting product with less trouble, but not free from sediment.

Be sure the temperature never reaches 200 degrees; 185 degrees is the limit for best flavor. A wash boiler with a false bottom, your regular canning jars and a thermometer are all the apparatus needed.

A Tested and Approved Pepper Grape Jelly Capper

PUTTING up fruit juices, the sugar to be added later, is one of the ways of saving fruits without being handicapped by the sugar shortage. And the ability to “crimp” a cap on a bottle top, in a perfectly air-tight, workmanlike way, makes a successful bottler of the housekeeper. The Globe Crown Capper is a small device, easily operated and of very moderate cost, making it perfectly practicable for home conditions and an economic investment even for occasional use on a relatively small number of bottles.

Diagrammatic outline for making unfermented grape juice :

Steps 1 to 3 and 6 to 20, Methods Identical

1. Select the best available variety.
2. Gather fruit that is fully ripe, sound and clean.
3. Crush the fruit.

Steps 4 and 5, Cold-Press Method

4. Press the juice from the grapes without heating.
5. Allow the juice to stand from 4 to 6 hours for settling.

Steps 4 and 5, Hot-Press Method

4. (a) Place the crushed grapes in enameled dish pans or other enameled vessels.
(b) Heat with constant stirring to 175* F., using a thermometer for testing.
(c) Hang the fruit up in a drain bag.
(d) Press to liberate the hot juice.
(e) Allow the juice to stand and settle until cold (6 to 12 hours).
6. Strain through clean doubled eheesecloth without disturbing the sediment.
7. Sweeten, acidify, or blend, if necessary.
8 Filter through a flannel jelly bag.
9. Fill the fruit jars to the neck and cover with glass tops or place a plug of cotton in bottle.
10. Place in a pasteurizer having a false bottom, with the tops of the jars 2 inches above the water level, or proceed by 15 and 16.
11. Heat in a closed pasteurizer to 185* F., testing the temperature in the jars with a thermometer.
12. Seal the jars and remove them from the pasteurizer. Cap bottles if not to be clarified without renewing
cotton.
(Following steps may be omitted for home use.)

13. Store in a cool, dark, dry closet until the juice is cleared by the crystallization and precipitation of argol (6 weeks to 12 months).
14. Transfer to bottles, filtering to free the juice from sediment.
15. Cap the bottles.
16. Pasteurise the bottles by the submersion method at 185* F. for five minutes for pints and ten minutes for quarts.
17. Remove the bottles, placing them on their sides, and allow them to cool,
18. Dip the tops of the corked bottles in a melted mixture consisting of equal parts of resin and beeswax,
19. Store the bottles (on their sides) in a dark, dry, cool room.

Construction

The capper is made almost entirely of pressed steel parts, mounted on wood, and will cap any bottle from
31/2 inches in diameter and 13 3/4 inches high down to one of any smaller diameter and 85/8 inches high. This means anything from a half-pint pop bottle to a quart size.

Even smaller bottles can be capped by adding wooden blocks. In the language of the engineer this capper operates on the “eccentric cam principle.” For the uninitiated it may be well to state that this means that you get the greatest
pressure for the least effort, as the further over the capper is pulled the greater cap pressure results, with
no more effort, which gives it an advantage over the lever types where the ratio of pressures is constant.

Also the adjustable crosspiece can be set accurately so as to get the greatest pressure for the least pull
with any sized bottle, a decided advantage for the woman operator.

The steel base is screwed to the table top by three screws, or to a board (which should, however, be made solid in some way), and to this is fastened the hinge, which is a piece of steel tubing 21/4 inches in diameter and 3 1/2 inches long. Over this pipe turns the wooden block fastened to the steel sides of the capper. The V-shaped piece of steel
wire seen extending. upward (16 inches on each leg) is hinged to the base about 11/4 inches’ eccentric to the main bearing (“off-side”) and is threaded at the top to carry the adjustable crossbar. In the center of this crossbar is the inverted pressed steel cup which is forced down over the cap, crimping the edges and tightly sealing the bottle by the force with which the cork lining is forced against the bottle top. The pressed steel sides are 9 inches high and
have a guide hole for the upright rods, so that the whole capper is easily pulled around. Two wooden blocks make it possible to adjust the capper for different sized bottles.

Operation

To operate the device hold a cap over the bottle and press it into the capper socket, while with the other hand pull the capper toward the operator, which forces the cap down over the bottle. The capper is then pushed back to its original position and the bottle removed by pulling it toward one by the bottom, thus easily removing the capped top tightly
sealed in the hollow socket.

Allowing 25 per cent for friction. A pull of one pound on the capper exerts a pressure of over twelve pounds on the cap top. On test a 28-pound pull was necessary to cap a bottle, giving a pressure of 845 pounds. This is assuming the greatest pressure when the bottle reaches the vertical.

An empty bottle capped was tested for tightness by immersion in water for forty-eight hours, and not a drop of water leaked in nor did a bubble of air get out proving it air-tight.

For all kinds of fruit juice put up at home a capper is almost a necessity and we hear rumors from time to time of still more extensive bottling operations in the home in which these cappers come in handy!