Wilser bag tight enough weave for making jelly?

[z-bob]

I'm about to pick this years crop of crabapples from the one good crabapple tree that I know of that's on public land. (there are crabapple trees everywhere here, but this is the only one with edible fruit) I usually use a steam juicer to extract the juice, but it seems to water the juice down more than that old fashioned way of actually adding water and boiling them. (I have made mayhaw jelly before using a muslin jelly bag and that method works well.)

Just wondering if I can use my BIAB brewing bag for a jelly bag, or if it's too loose a weave?

 

[Saunassa]

When I bought my biab from wilser I got a second one. We have five crabapple trees and my wife used one of the wilser bags. She boils the.apples, drains through a collandar with cheese cloth, fills bag with what's left and hangs it. Worked great and she got most of the juice out. I think the jelly came out much redder then her usual boil, and drain through only muslin in a colander. She always let's the juice sit overnight or two in fridge to crash and gets only a small amount of sediment in bottoms of pitchers. 8 cases of jelly last year for 96 pints. By the way that is a heavy.bag to begin with and hardest part is the soak and clean up when done. Start of what I turned into a wine/cider

 

[z-bob]

Had 3 quarts of crabapple juice in my fridge; been there since last year. I strained it and boiled it in case anything was growing in it, and added a few jars of old jelly (still tasted good but turning brown) and 3 gallons of Aldi's apple juice. Fermenting it with Red Start Cote des Blanc wine yeast. Don't know yet if it's going to be yellow, pink, or brownish red because it hasn't started to settle yet.

 

[Saunassa]

Mine ended up with a nice pink color but then again the only apple juice added was to bring it up to the one gallon mark after transferring off the pectin and yeast that settled out after a month or two.

 

[501irishred]

Crabapples? I never thought about eating, drinking, or otherwise using them for anything other than slingshot ammo as a kid. Is the resulting jelly as tart/bitter/sour as the fruit (at least what I remember.....).

 

[Saunassa]

You use the larger apples and not the little ornamental crabs. It is sweet friends from the sugar and has a strong tart apple flavor. If you like rhubarb sauce or rhubarb crisp then you will like the jelly. It will be the color of the one up above with captain Jack next to it as that is 8 pints that did not fully jell poured in there.

 

[z-bob]

The ones I'm using are oblong shaped; about an inch and a half long and a inch in diameter and they grow in clusters. Red skins, white flesh, with a good sweet sour apple taste (more sour than sweet.) The flowers are pinkish-white. When the apples are cooked they turn red (the skins must have a *lot* of color in them.) I suspect they are the variety "Dalgo", also called "Pink Glow".

There's also a slightly smaller red-fleshed crabapple that makes good jelly. Not sure where I ran across those.

Where I work there are some crabapples that look like tiny Red Delicious apples but are sour, and I think they would make good-tasting jelly (probably not good color) except they hold tight to the tree and are hard to pick, and they are so small you'd have to pick a lot of them so not worth the effort. I pull a few off and eat them when I walk past the trees

 

[Saunassa]

Dolgo crabapples are one of the originals and often found on old farmsteads. We have one tree like you mention that are similar to a small red delicious about 2" diameter but sour/super tart and have a heck of a natural waxy coating. Ours is the rootstock from an old flowering crab and those mixed with the crabs do make an excellent jelly. My wife tends to cut those in half because of the size and so they cook down better. Plus they make a really tart apple crisp, sort of like granny smiths.

 

[z-bob]

The ones I was talking about that look like Red Delicious are just over a half inch in diameter. If they were even close to 2 inches I would gladly pick them even if I had to use scissors to get them loose.

I've been reading old recipes about making apple or crabapple jelly. Apparently you're supposed to sieve all the leftover apple pulp and use that to make apple butter. (I've just been composting it, even tho' I have a food mill )

 

[z-bob]

I followed the directions in the Certo (pectin) leaflet, except I didn't cut the ends off the crabs. If I recall correctly, it was 3.5 pounds of fruit and 3 cups of water. Cook for 10 minutes, mash with a potato smasher, simmer for 5 more minutes. Then strain thru a jelly bag.

The resulting mash looked about like applesauce (except for the stems and skins.) I dumped it into a 1 gallon paint strainer bag and hung it up to drain. Got just over a cup of juice -- it was supposed to yield more than 5 cups but the fruit just absorbed the water. I dumped the mash back into the pot and added 2 more cups of water. Then heated it to a simmer and poured it back in the bags and squeezed it. Got almost 2 quarts of clear juice, including the cup or so that I got the first time. I poured it all in tall pitcher and put in the fridge to settle the solids out that slipped through the bag because I squeezed it. (this morning it didn't look like much sediment)

Now I gotta decide whether to boil out the excess water or make jelly just like it is. I will probably boil it briefly to reduce it a little. I think this is still more concentrated than the juice I get from the steam extractor. It's a nice cranberry color.