Traditional "Know How": Summer Harvest - Raspberry Jelly, Raspberry Wine & Liquor Recipe

This year has been an especially productive raspberry picking year. Staying at home due to a Pandemic has allowed me to keep an eye on my raspberry bushes, along with the help of my son, get a leg up on the birds and bears. I gathered berries every other day for a week and procured a total of about 12 quarts of fresh wild raspberries.

In previous years I've canned them or made pies, but this year I decided to make one of my favorites, raspberry jelly. A pint jar of blackberry or raspberry jelly was going for about $7 a jar at my local orchard market. It was surprisingly easy. I am not a fan of raspberry seeds or jam, so I went the jelly route just on personal preference. Jam is even easier to make.

After picking them I had to remove all the bits of leaves and little stink bugs etc. that were in mixed in the fruit. I found the easiest way for this is by soaking them in water, then lifting bunches out with my hand letting the water flow through my fingers into another big bowl of water. Then doing the same into a strainer. This let the water out so I could put them into recycled berry containers.

I kept them in the refrigerator until I was ready to process.

I first used a blender to puree the berries and extract the juice. I boiled the puree just because I thought I might get more juice out that way. After bringing the mash to a boil for about 10 minutes I strained through a fine mesh strainer and allowed the mush to drip all the juice out for a few hours.

Then, I returned the pan to the heat and boiled the juice until I could not stir it down and my candy thermometer read 225 degrees. Then, I added fruit pectin and canned the hot jelly into canning jars that were boiling for 15 minutes, then returned the filled jars for 5 minutes. Then I removed them and allowed them to cool.

I froze about 3 quarts of berries for later liquor and wine making by placing them in one layer on a baking sheet until they were frozen in my chest freezer. Then I bagged them for long term storage.

Next, my sister and mother kept asking me for raspberry liquor so I looked into it. Luckily, I had a bottle of vodka and decided to give it a shot. First, I pureed about 4 cups of the berries again and poured them into a reused 1/2 gallon glass jug cider came in. I opted to puree though most instructions just said to mash with a spoon or masher. I thought why not blend and maybe it would extract more juice.

I poured the mush into the bottle followed by the full bottle of vodka, labeled it, and brought it down into my cellar where I shook it up every week for a month.

After a month I strained it through cheese cloth and added 1 1/2 cups of sugar. After the sugar was dissolved I poured the mixture into canning jars to age.

The final project was to attempt to make raspberry wine. I read some recipes online and ordered mason jar airlocks and wine yeast. I decided to just go small batch with quart sized mason jars as I had a bunch of canning supplies and jars.

Ingredients per jar:

About 2-3 cups of raspberries

1 1/2 cups of sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons chilled black tea

a squirt of fruit pectin

1/2 a raisin chopped

1/2 packet of wine yeast

My raspberries were frozen for about a week when the airlocks arrived. I thawed them out by placing them in the jar with the sugar at room temperature. The sugar began to extract the juice as they thawed. After an hour or so I used the handle of a wooden spoon to crush and muddle the raspberries in the sugar and add the tea (for tannin), lemon juice (for acid), and 1/2 chopped raisin for some extra nutrients.

Meanwhile I added 1/2 a packet of wine yeast to a small cup and hydrated with water to activate it for 15 minutes or so, swirling every few minutes.

I added the yeast and stirred and then filled the jar to within an inch of the top with tap water.

closed the lid, added and filled the airlock, and dated the jars before moving them to a storage area about 70-76 degrees (my den bookshelf).

In about 5 weeks it was time to filter out both the liquor and the wine as they had stopped bubbling and fermenting. I used a strainer lined with cheese cloth and re-bottled the liquid in other mason jars to age some more. I also started another batch with some more berries from the freezer.