• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Healthy Canning
  • Home
  • Recipes
    • Recipes by category
    • Recipe Index
    • Drying food
    • Other online sources
  • Equipment
    • General Equipment
    • Pressure Canning
    • Steam Canning
    • Water bath canning
    • Food Dehydrators
  • Learning
    • Learn home canning
    • Home Canning Safety Topics
    • Unsafe home canning practices
    • Home canning concepts
    • Ingredients for home canning
    • Issues in home canning
    • Learning resources
  • Contact
    • Sitemap
    • About
    • Contact Page
    • FAQ
    • Media
    • Copyright
    • Privacy
    • Terms of Use
menu icon
go to homepage
search icon
Homepage link
  • Recipes
  • Equipment
  • Learning
×

Home / Fruit / Canning grapes

Canning grapes

Filed Under: Fruit, Seasonal Summer Tagged With: Fruit, Grapes

Jump to Recipe Print Recipe

canning grapes 002

Home canned grapes have a delicious, wine-like flavour to them.

They are delicious spooned over a bowl of thick Greek yoghurt, or ice cream.

They are also good mixed with some pieces of fresh fruit (such as orange sections and banana slices) for a mixed fruit cocktail — use the juice off the canned grapes as a syrup.

Or, drain and use in savoury dishes such as “Grape, Celery, and Couscous Salad”, or “Pork Medallions with Roasted Parsnips and Roasted Grapes.”

On this page, we work through the USDA procedure for home canning grapes. You may can these in plain water for maximum flexibility, or in sweetened water (see Sweetening Options below.) If you are using table grapes, you may well find they are sweet enough on their own as is.

To be clear, this is a procedure for canning grapes as fruit in their own right: not made into jam, jelly or juice, etc.

Contents hide
  • 1 Quantities of grapes needed
  • 2 The recipe
  • 3 Canning grapes
    • 3.1 Ingredients
    • 3.2 Instructions
  • 4 Sweetening options
  • 5 Recipe notes
  • 6 Reference information
  • 7 Recipe source
  • 8 Cooking with canning
  • 9 Nutrition information

Quantities of grapes needed

Numbers are approximate guidelines.

On average, as a very rough guideline, expect to need about 1 kg (2 lbs) grapes per litre (US quart) jar

  • 6 kg (14 lb) of grapes = 7 litres (US quarts) canned grapes
  • 4 kg (9 lbs ) of grapes = 9 x ½ litres (US pints) canned grapes
  • 1 lug grapes = 12 kg (26 lbs) = 12 to 14 litres (US quarts) canned grapes

The recipe

If you are going to can these in a sugar syrup (see Sweetening Options below), prepare that first and set aside.

Jar size choices: Quarter-litre (½ US pint) OR half-litre (1 US pint) OR 1 litre (1 US quart)

Processing method: Water bath or steam canning

Yield: varies

Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)

Processing time: 10 minutes, all jar sizes

3.64 from 19 votes
Print

Canning grapes

How to safely home can grapes, following tested USDA methods

Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Keyword Grapes
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes
Yield 1 varies
Calories 143 kcal

Ingredients

  • grapes (either white or red)
  • water

Instructions

  1. Stem and wash grapes.
  2. Have a pot of water boiling.
  3. Add the grapes in small batches at a time so that the water will come back to the boil quickly.
  4. Let the grapes boil for 30 seconds, then fish out of pot immediately with slotted spoon or sieve.
  5. Repeat until all grapes are blanched.
  6. Divvy berries out amongst jars, leaving 3 cm (1 inch) headspace.
  7. Divvy blanching juice out amongst jars, leaving 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
  8. If short of canning liquid, top jars up with boiling water from a kettle.
  9. Debubble, top up with more liquid as required to retain headspace.
  10. Wipe jar rims.
  11. Put lids on.
  12. Process jars regardless of chosen size from above in a water bath or steam canner for 10 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.

The USDA also gives raw-pack directions for canning grapes.

If you are canning the grapes in plain water, note that raw packs are not generally advised for sugar-free canning of fruit. Raw packs have a shorter quality shelf life; the sugar acts as a bit of a “fixatif” to help extend that a little.

Sweetening options

[Optional] To can sweetened. You can make a light sugar syrup, following the National Center’s directions for a light or very light syrup.

For sugar-free methods, we’ve had tasty sugar-free results using liquid stevia in the following proportions: Per quarter-litre jar (½ US pint), ⅛th teaspoon liquid stevia. Per half-litre jar (US pint), ¼ teaspoon liquid stevia. Per 1 litre jar (US quart), ½ teaspoon liquid stevia.

You may also wish to try Splenda ®.

Both would leave a clear liquid in the jar.

Some may ask about honey; the downside we can see is that honey could make the jar liquid “murky”; generally in home canning murkiness is relied upon as an indicator of something having gone wrong in the stored jars. Honey would also change the flavour.

Recipe notes

The small quarter-litre (1 cup / ½ US pint / 8 oz) jars are handy for baking; you may wish to can some of those jars unsweetened for maximum flexibility when you go to use them.

Note that both red and green grapes will lose their pronounced red and green colours respectively and end up very pale.

canning grapes 007

canning grapes 008

canning grapes 009

Reference information

How to water bath process.

How to steam can.

When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.

For stevia, Better Stevia liquid stevia was the stevia used.

More information about Sugar and Salt-Free Canning in general.

canning grapes 020

Recipe source

Grapes – Whole. United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Complete guide to home canning. Agriculture information bulletin No. 539. 2015. Page 2-16.

Modifications: none.

canning grapes 010

Cooking with canning

Turkey and Grape Salad

Nutrition information

Serving size: quarter-litre (1 cup / 8 oz / 250 ml)

canned grapes nutrition

Per quarter-litre (1 cup / 8 oz / 250 ml): 168 calories, 5 mg sodium

Weight Watchers PointsPlus® and SmartPoints®: Per ¼ litre (1 cup / 8 oz / 250 ml): 0 points (grapes are free on Weight Watchers.)

* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com

* PointsPlus™ and SmartPoints™calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of both registered trademarks.

* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.

canning grapes 001

Tagged With: Fruit, Grapes

Filed Under: Fruit, Seasonal Summer Tagged With: Fruit, Grapes

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kathy

    March 09, 2021 at 9:15 pm

    Can I add brandy to the mix? That is to this recipe for water bath canning, not preserving only in brandy. I thought maybe I could add some sweetness and flavor if it would not compromise the canning. For instance, could I add maybe an inch of brandy to the jar and then fill the rest with the boiled water?

    Reply
    • Healthy Canning

      June 20, 2021 at 6:40 pm

      See here: Adding alcohol to home-canned fruit

      Reply
  2. Ann

    October 04, 2020 at 6:50 pm

    Hi thanks for allowing me to ask your expertises on canning.
    I have a question on grape canning in glass mason jars.
    Someone gave me Recipe telling me to wash purple grapes leave a little stem on each grape put grapes in mason jar and fill with Brandy. That is all that needs to be done. Of course using sterile jars. But no other ingredient.
    I trust the source but I’m saying does this sound right?
    Thank you
    Ann

    Reply
    • Healthy Canning

      October 10, 2020 at 2:57 pm

      We only trust and work with lab-tested recipes.

      Reply
  3. Me

    November 21, 2019 at 7:11 pm

    When did people start canning grapes?

    Reply
    • Healthy Canning

      May 19, 2020 at 11:39 pm

      In 1917, Home Canning Recipes and Instructions, Butler Mfg, Kansas City, MO, gave the following directions for canning whole grapes (page 14): “The white grapes are better for ordinary canning than the purple ones, although the latter may be used. Wash, pick from the stems and pack. Fill jars with syrup and process.”

      Reply
  4. Nicholas Huynh

    April 04, 2018 at 9:46 pm

    How Long do Canned Grapes Really Last?

    Reply
    • Healthy Canning

      April 22, 2018 at 1:19 pm

      The recommendation is, for best quality, use within one year. That being said, that’s a general recommendation that has to cover a broad range of storage conditions including the worst such as stuff in the light, in a hot place near a stove. If you store in a cool, dark place, your storage life will naturally be extended, and you’ll still have good quality. Note that the recommendation is not to discard after one year: instead, the intention is that those jars should be rotated to the front, so they’ll get used up sooner rather than later.

      Reply
If you need FAST or relatively immediate canning help or answers, please try one of these Master Food Preserver groups; they are more qualified than we are and have many hands to help you. Many of them even operate telephone hotlines in season.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

SEARCH

HealthyCanning is a sub-project of cooksinfo.com. Read More…

What's New in Home Canning

What's New in Home Canning

Quote of the day

“Don’t substitute dishwasher canning, oven canning, or open-kettle canning for an approved canning method – boiling water canning or pressure canning.”

— Dr Barb Ingham, 5 Tips for a Successful Home Canning Season. May 2011.
Photo of miscellaneous canning equipment
kitchen window with fruit bowl
Ship with lifeboats
Ingredients for home canning
Home canning learning resources
what is pressure canning. Photo of pressure canners
Steam canning
water bath canning

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • About this site
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright
  • Terms & Conditions

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Contact

  • Contact
  • Media
  • FAQ

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Copyright © 2021