Ode to the Blueberry

I've turned into a crazy canning lady, I can't be stopped!!!!
I'm not sure whats got into me this year, but I've really taken a liking to canning stuff. So far I've canned Raspberry Jam, Chili Sauce, Marinara, & now I can add Blueberry Jelly to the list. I really wanted to make homemade Grape Jelly, one of my favorite jam/jellies, but I found it very difficult & expensive to locate unsweetened grape juice. After much debate it seemed only logical to make something more Alaska themed and I opted for Blueberry Jelly instead, plus blueberries are in season and easy to get, so a no brainer!
Did you realize that blueberries aren't blue inside?!? Well I didn't know that until I made this recipe. It is based on a berry jelly recipe in a canning book that I have, but I changed it up a bit based on other recipes I read involving the use of blueberries. This recipe makes 5, half-pint jars.
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Blueberry Jelly
3 1/2 C Blueberry Juice (2 C blueberries = 1 C blueberry juice)
*you will need to boil fresh berries in order to get the berry juice you need, this recipe is for 3 1/2 C juice so you will need 7 C fresh berries* You may be short/over the needed juice, if you are short the juice needed you can add in water to make up the difference.
1 Pkg Pectin
2 Tbsp. Lemon Juice
3 2/3 C Granular Sugar
1/2 tsp. Butter (sub margarine)
1 Jelly bag or Pkg of Cheesecloth
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Carefully wash berries, remove stems, and place in a large sauce pot. Add 1/2 C water for every 4 C berries to avoid scorching them. Turn heat to medium/high and stir constantly until brought to a soft boil. Drop temperature to medium and cover, let simmer 10 min., occasionally stir breaking up berries. Once softened and broken up, remove from heat. Pour into jelly bag or a strainer lined with several layers of cheesecloth and let drip into a large pot 2 hrs or overnight until all of the juices have left the berries. If you force the juice out of the berries, the end result could be cloudy jelly!
Once the juice has been measured out to 3 1/2 cups, combine berry juice and lemon juice in large sauce pot, whisk in pectin until combined. Bring up to a rolling boil and continually stir mixture. Once at a rolling boil, add in all of the sugar, mix until combined. Add in butter (not necessary but will keep foaming down). Mix well and bring back up to a boil, continue to stir and let boil vigorously 1 minute.
After boiling vigorously for 1 minute, you can remove from heat, skim off any foam. Ladle into hot sanitized jars and water bath can them for 10 minutes.

A little strange on the inside, blueberries are only blue on the outside, you should've seen my hands when I was done with the recipe as they were stained a lovely shade of blue for a good day and a half!

Simmering berries getting all saucy in the sauce pot! Here they are straining in some cheesecloth, it took way over 2 hrs for all the juice to be extracted, overnight would probably be best, just lightly cover the top of the pot to keep the bugs out.

Measuring the freshly made blueberry jelly into canning jars. You can see that I made a double batch, I ran out of jars and had to pour the excess into a leftover container, oops!

Yummy Yummy Yummy, fresh blueberry jelly for breakfast, makes me happy!