Blueberry Preserves

I do things other than mix sugar-laden preserves with the fruit I grow and buy.  However, preserves are easy to make; they maintain quality for a long time (at least four years); and they are a good thing to give people.  Pickled carrots might not be accepted by everybody, but (almost) nobody will turn down preserves of some sort.

That being said, I don't like blueberry preserves all that much.  They're fine, but not as good as peach preserves.  The blueberry flavor is not that strong in the finished product; it's more just sweet.

I got a good harvest this year and did one canner load (six pints) of preserves (the canner will hold more, but six pints is a manageable quantity).

SureJell's package insert has a recipe, but I don't see it at quick glance on their website. It's just four cups crushed blueberries, four cups sugar, one package pectin. This produces three pints, so it could be doubled.   By the way, it's a standard admonition to avoid doubling a jam or preserves recipe because there may be problems with fruit set.  I am happy that I have never had any problem doing that; it's more efficient that way.

Pickyourown.org has a recipe that starts with 10 cups of blueberries (intact), 7 cups of sugar, and 1/4 cup lemon juice, plus water and one package of pectin.  I don't add water but otherwise followed this recipe (bumped up slightly with 11 cups of blueberries, 7.5 cups of sugar, and an extra teaspoon of lemon juice because the recipe otherwise yielded about 5.75 pints the first time I tried it).

Blueberry preserves are just about the easiest kind to make.  Rinse the berries; measure the right quantity; stomp them a bit with a potato masher; heat with pectin and lemon juice; add sugar when it boils; return to a full boil for one minute; then fill jars with 1/4" headspace and process about 15 minutes (I'm at 1200' elevation so added 5 minutes to the sea-level recommendation of 10 minutes).

That's about it.

What did I do with the remaining 15 pounds of berries? I froze some, which can later be turned into pies or even more preserves, and ate the rest fresh.

As I noted last year, blueberries can be cheap at the peak of the harvest (here in Georgia, both Sam's and Costco had them for $4.98 for two pounds in July). That means I saved myself about $50 by harvesting my own bushes.  Considering the time it took, in an economic sense I'm probably not coming out very far ahead. I was picking every two to four days for almost a month, from mid-June to mid-July.  But I like doing it myself (this is not to say that I didn't buy some, as well, and dehydrate them).

Dehydrating peaches

As I mentioned last year, I lost my crop in 2015 due to a late frost.  In late March that year, my temp dropped to a horrifying 23 degrees at ground level one night, wiping out both the blueberries and peaches, which were in full bloom.  I tried spraying water on everything but the hose froze, so I gave up.  I later found out that a few Belle of Georgia peaches survived at the top of the tree.  The killing cold was only at ground level.  However, by the time I noticed them, they were long-neglected in terms of spraying (for disease and insects) and did not mature well.  A few blueberries made it, too, probably due to buds not being open at the time of the freeze.  But I got just a handful (literally) off of five bushes.

This year was back to normal, at least for one of the trees.  As I indicated last year, my peaches were on dwarf rootstock, which various sources have indicated don't have long lifespans.  This was the trees' 16th year in the ground, and the yellow cling continued a steep decline that began a couple of years ago.  It only yielded five pounds--which were good and eaten fresh (bug free)--and the tree will be turned into firewood this winter. It is pretty much dead at this point.  Alas.  The Belle of Georgia produced about 55 pounds, which is somewhat less than the record year.  BG had some issues with the harvest, too, which I'll detail another time.  But I'll take the 55 pounds and be happy.

I turned the peaches into pie filling mix (at the time of processing, that just means putting five pounds of sliced treated peaches into a bag and freezing), peach preserves (made in a fashion similar to the pear preserves  described recently), peach butter, and I also dehydrated some.

It's the same process I follow with apples.  Slice, treat to prevent darkening, and put on the racks in the dehydrator.  I leave the skins on.  I don't peel unless forced.  The result is a very high-quality product that keeps for a long time.  I still have some dehydrated peaches from my bumper crop a few years ago.

I have also canned peaches--as in sliced and put into syrup--but that is probably my least favorite way of preserving them.  They are okay that way, but it is much less work to dehydrate.

Thoughts on Tattler versus Metal Disposable Canning Lids

Tattler lids are made of plastic, have a rubber gasket, and are reusable.  They cost a lot in comparison to single-use metal lids, but can be bought in bulk for less than a dollar each (if you do a lot of canning, keeping in mind that a lid is unavailable until the jar it is on is opened, you might need 200-500 or even more.  Buying large quantities makes sense).  I do not know what their lifespan is, but I have seen 10 times mentioned as an average; there's probably a distribution in there somewhere with some being worn out sooner, some later.  I suspect the gasket is the first-to-fail component in most cases, and replacement gaskets can be had for less than $0.28 each.  The Tattler site itself says they are "indefinitely reusable".

Is this cost-effective?  If you assume $0.73 for a wide-mouth lid and you get 10 uses out of it, that's $0.073 per use.  If you can stretch that to an average of 15 uses with a replacement gasket, that cuts the cost to $0.067 per use (these numbers are for illustration only: as noted above, the real average lifespans may be higher or lower; I haven't hunted down any source that cites actual data).  For comparison, metal wide-mouth lids can be had for about $0.20 each if you look for them (full sticker price is higher).  Mills Fleet Farm has them for $2.35 per box as of this writing, and I got them for $2.44 per box at Wal-Mart last week locally.  So the lid cost to do 15 cycles with Tattler (including a replacement gasket) could be about $1.00 versus about $3.00 with metal lids.  These are averages: some Tattlers might become unusable after the first use, while others might be going strong after 20 uses. To be redundant, there's a distribution of lifespans--I don't know what the parameters are.  User practices probably matter, too.  If one reusable lid plus two gasket replacements lasted for 30 uses, the cost for reusables versus metal lids would be about $1.29 versus $6.00 for disposable metal lids.

So far, so good.  I got some reusable lids a few years ago and started experimenting with them, getting generally good results.  I then got a box of 100 EZ-Seal lids when they were on sale one time.  Reusable lids do require a bit of finessing to operate (even the EZ-Seal ones, in my experience).  There are more-detailed descriptions of the process elsewhere (an example is here).  Basically, the lid can't be tightened with the ring as much as you might normally tighten a metal lid when first putting them in the canner.  When you take them out, you have to tighten them down all the way so they can form their vacuum as they cool.  It is a challenge to get the lid loose enough to vent, yet tight enough to prevent contents from leaking out during processing.  The EZ-Seal lids are advertised as not needing this special handling, but I have found that they show signs of excessive pressure if tightened as much as I do with metal lids (i.e., the center of the lid is domed a bit when processing is finished).  I tighten all of them when removing from the pot (this is easily accomplished with kevlar pot-handling gloves).

They aren't as easy to label, but the picture above shows how I deal with that: I just write on the jar with a Sharpie.  The writing can be removed with a little alcohol or, in many cases, it will disappear in the dishwasher.

Now for the rest of the story.  My failure rate with reusable lids has been higher than that of metal lids.  I have been canning for about 10 years and have gotten pretty good at the basics.  I think I have had a failure to seal or a lid come unsealed in storage with metal lids, but if it has happened, it has been only once or maybe twice.  In other words, it's a very rare event.  I do a fair amount of canning: 96 jars so far this year.  I'm very confident in saying that my failure rate with metal lids is 1% or less.

With reusable lids it is more like 20% (or maybe even more).  My first several uses, I did not have any failures.  Since then, I have had a few.  I might have had a reusable lid fail to seal when the jar was first cooling once or twice, but most of my failures have been in storage.  A jar that is sealed after the jar first cools is discovered months later to have come unsealed.  An initial failure to seal is disappointing.  However, having to use a jar right away is less serious than having to throw out something later.

Two recent failures:  As I recently mentioned, I made pear preserves for the first time.  I put up six pints.  Two jars had reusable lids that had been used before without problems.  Both sealed initially, but a day or two later, I noticed one had come unsealed.  I was a little unhappy about that but put the jar in the refrigerator and went on my way.  After reading comments about reusable lid failures to seal in a recent post on Rural Revolution, I decided to check my reusable lids in inventory.  I found one on a quart of pickled peaches that had come unsealed. I debated what to do with the jar.  The peaches had been made in mid-July, and they could probably sit at room temperature for that long without harmful spoilage (they're pickled in pure vinegar).  I wasn't sure, however, and in the end I tossed it.

That is a major loss.  I put up the equivalent of five quarts of pickled peaches this summer and lost 20% of that because of a lid failure (some were in pints; I put up eight jars total--only about three or four were sealed with reusable lids).  This also diminishes the cost advantage of the reusable lids, because 20% of my growing, harvesting, and processing time went down the drain (though if I started valuing my time in monetary terms I'd buy pickled peaches at an apple orchard in Georgia or off Amazon rather than do them myself).  I would've been willing to pay quite a lot to avoid losing the peaches.

The standard recommendations to deal with failures to seal--make sure the jar rim, gasket, and lid are free of anything that might inhibit the seal, tighten upon removing from the canner, etc--are okay insofar as they go, but they don't really make the case for reusable lids in my kitchen.  I did all of those things.  I might have missed something, but I did the best I could.  I may just lack adequate quality control to get failures with these lids down to an acceptable level (I would probably be fine with 5%). Maybe food or syrup is getting between the band and jar during processing.  My failures have mostly or exclusively been with previously-used lids and gaskets--that might be a factor.  If so, that erodes the cost advantage.  One other thing I will link to without much comment because it's from a source that obviously has an incentive to call reusable lids into question (i.e., Ball, maker of metal single-use lids): plastic lids don't vent as well when heating and may "may lose half their vacuum over the course of a year."  This is consistent with my experience, where I get a seal initially but it comes unsealed some time after initially cooling.

Cost is the primary factor in favor of the reusable lids, but having lids available in the event of a shortage is another.  Apparently there was a widespread shortage of lids in the 1970s, when reusable lids were first developed.  However, both of these factors can be mitigated.  Buying metal lids in bulk may reduce costs further from what I cited above, and metal lids can actually be reused once if you really want to.  This is nowhere recommended; the NCHFP notes that the gasket material gets deformed by the jar lid on first use, so doesn't reliably seal a second time (contamination is not a factor--the lids can be cleaned after the first use, and the heat processing takes care of contamination if any is present).  I have tried reusing metal lids to see if it works, and I have a failure rate maybe somewhat higher (perhaps double) than with new lids, but I don't have enough data to say much more (while the gasket may be deformed the first time, simmering it before reuse may soften the gasket and help it re-form to a new jar lid).  My observed failure rate with once-used metal lids has been much lower than my observed failure rate with reusable plastic lids, however.

My point in bringing this up is not to advocate for routine reuse of metal lids, but to observe that if you kept once-used lids that were in good condition and stored them somewhere, you'd have a buffer if there was ever an interruption in supply of new lids.  The storage life of lids seems to be quite long and probably exceeds five years.  In other words, I have put up 96 jars so far this year and will do more before the end of the year (applesauce, apple pie filling, and cranberry sauce at a minimum).  I could buy 500 metal lids today and then 100 per year going forward, and always have a substantial inventory on hand, plus a growing stack of once-used lids to fall back on if things got desperate for one reason or another.  With rotation, the lids would never be over five years old.

Which approach makes more sense--reusable or single-use?  That depends on one's individual failure rate with each type, the importance of cost, and other factors.  There's no single best answer.

Canning Pears

I canned some of the Kieffers (as part of my evaluation process to determine if I want to get a tree this winter to plant to go along with the Magness and Seckel).  The procedure I followed was pretty much the same as for peaches except that I did peel them.

It turns out I may not have needed to do that.  Jill Winger notes on her Prairie Homestead blog that she does not peel them and gets good results.  Contrary to the advice of the NCHFP, I raw-packed, as Jill did (though I did use a light 1:3 syrup, contrary to Jill's approach of using plain water).  It's not a safety issue; the NCHFP just says that raw pack yields poor quality.  The NCHFP recommended 25 min. for hot-packed quarts; the recommendation for raw- vs. hot-pack peaches is +5 min., so that's what I did, adjusting another +5 min. for altitude.

I timed it.  I spent about two minutes per pear, nearly half of which was peeling.  Peeling was also pretty messy, spending a spray of peach juice droplets over the immediate area.  I quartered them rather than leave them as halves, because the stem fibers and cores were easier to remove as quarters.  I just cut both of those parts out with a knife, then used the melon ball to dig out any remaining parts of the core (I'll see later if I was successful, but so far I seem to have managed pretty well with the pears I dehydrated).

As the photo shows, they resist browning well after a dunk in an ascorbic acid solution.  The contents of the bowl above had been out of the water for about an hour when the picture was taken.

Time start to finish for about 10.5 pounds, which yielded 5 quarts, 1 pint was about 3 hours, which is pretty standard.  It works out to about two pounds per quart, which is fairly typical (albeit more than with apricots, which are apparently not as dense). Even though packed cold/raw, they didn't shrink down much after processing.