If you have ever seen a beauty berry bush in full bloom, you would certainly understand how this amazing bush got it’s name.   It is absolutely beautiful when it is at the peak of it’s season.

The Beauty Berry bush is a deciduous shrub that has green leaves that grow outward from the center of the bush. On these branches, between the green leaves grows a bright purple hard-shelled berry. The berries typically come out in late summer, early spring. It can grow up to 3-5ft tall.

I love this bush. We bought our house in September so this bush was in full swing at the time we settled on it.  We have one large bush near our back door and I just love it. Look at that purple color!

The vibrant purple/magenta berries are small, perfectly round, and just plain beautiful.  They are not toxic but do not have a particularly great taste right off the bush.

Throughout the last couple years while researching how best to care and prune this bush, I came across recipes for Beautyberry jelly.  This year, I finally tried to make some, and it was really easy!

The flavor is sweet and spicy, not hot but like a sweet cinnamon.  It really is quite different and unique.  I definitely recommend trying it if you have a bush in your backyard.

Here are the ingredients that you will need:

• Beautyberries
• Sugar
• Pectin
• Water
• Cheesecloth
• Canner
• Jars, lids, and rings

Beautyberry Jelly

I checked out a couple recipes when doing my first batch.  I wanted to get an idea of ratio between water, berries, pectin, and sugar.  I had a small amount of berries and many of the recipes called for at least double to amount of berries I was going to use. 

If you have more berries, use this recipe and adjust amounts accordingly.

Step One:  Pick your Beauty berries. This is the hardest part of the entire process. The berries are so small, it takes a lot of picking to get enough to make a batch of jelly.  Even when you think you have picked enough, double it! I assure you.  We had to go back out several times to even get 3 cups of berries.

Step 2. Clean berries by removing leaves, sticks, bugs, etc.  You should be left with a clean bowl of beautiful berries!

Step 3.  Bring 3 cups of beautyberries and 4 cups of water to boil in a large saucepan.  Stir and smash berries while they boil for about 20 minutes.

Step 4. Spoon berries out of the water and strain through a cheesecloth.  Squeeze as much juice out as possible.  We were left with a little over 1 cup worth of pure beautyberry juice. 

The juice was so pretty!

Step 5: Add juice back to the saucepan and bring to a boil.  Make sure you keep a lid on this while it is boiling, you do not want to cook off your juice, especially if you are working with a small batch.

Step 6: Add 1-2 Tablespoons of pectin and stir into juice.

When looking at a different recipe and trying to make it fit with my smaller batch, this was the ratio they used:

2.5 cups of berry juice to 1 envelope of pectin to 4 cups of sugar.

I had about 1 cup of berry juice and I used about 2 Tablespoons of pectin, and 1.5 cups of sugar. 

You do not want to use too much pectin! Less is definitely more.

Step 7: Add sugar and stir into juice mixture.  We used about 1.5 cups.

Step 8: Once sugar is dissolved, pour mixture into already sanitized and heated jelly jars.

Step 10: Make sure you have a headspace of 1/4” and screw lids and rings on tightly.  Process in a waterbath canner for 10 minutes.

 Make sure you pick as many beautyberries as possible!!

Step 11: Enjoy on toast, biscuits, etc.   The flavor is perfect for fall, it takes like a sweet cinnamon.  Enjoy!!