Here's to Cranberry Juice

Recipe for homemade cranberry juice:

-  5 cups fresh or frozen cranberries

-  12 cups water

-  1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

- 1/2 lemon juice

Bring 5 cups of fresh or frozen cranberries to a boil with 12 cups of water, in a large pot.  Make sure to cover with a lid. Wait until you start to hear the cranberries pop (approximately 15 minutes.  Once all or most of the cranberries have burst, pour cranberries and juice/water mixture into a colander lined with cheese cloth and set over a large bowl for the juice mixture to drain into.  Allow to drain completely. Once you have captured most/all of the juice, pour the liquid into a sauce pan, add the 1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar (might need to adjust slightly depending upon how sweet you like your juice)
and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium, stir occasionally for about 15 minutes.  Remove from heat, squeeze the juice from half of a lemon (be sure not to squeeze in any seeds or pulp) and stir.  Allow to cool and pour into a pitcher that holds about 3 quarts (this should be approximately the amount of juice made) and refrigerate. 

* I did not want to wasted the cranberries that I drained (that burst), so I saved them and used half of them in a basic muffin recipe and the other half in a slushy/freeze.

** Also, if you buy the cranberries, granulated sugar, and lemons in bulk for your local discount superstore I figured to make roughly 3 quarts of juice cost about $2.00 to make....even less if you consider that I used the leftover drained/burst cranberries in two other recipes.