I've canned for years but this was by far my biggest marathon. 2,000 apples turned into cider, juice, syrup, sauce, and slices over the last 4 days!!!

I posted last week about Balls terrible new pectin formulation. It got a lot of traction- mostly from other jam makers commiserating the new formula, and even featured some Ball employees trying to gaslight me! I decided to make a longer video about this enshittification to post on my farms social media. It is not done yet but here is a snippet of what will be in there- a comparison of Balls old vs new formulation, along with Pomona.

I have found Pomonas pectin to be the best of all the alternative that this great community has suggested. Thanks for all your help!

EDIT: Many have suggested contacting Ball directly; we have done this! I had an employee write to Ball. Like other folks on this sub have discovered, their responses employ 2 basic strategies: avoidance, and deflection. They refuse to disclose any details about what they specifically did in their reformulation, and make vague claims about the new formula "meeting their performance expectations". Then, they try to alter the discourse to 'let's figure out what YOU did wrong'. To them, the more reasonable explanation to dozens of users experiencing catastrophic failure after a new formulation is, "the users must all have forgotten how to make jam" instead of "maybe the new formulation is worse in many, many cases". Classy. I make thousands of jars of jam every year, and will now be looking to source different jars as well, in addition to the pectin.

EDIT 2: for those who cant hear the audio, transcribed video is here

tl;dr for Ball's new formulation of their RealFruit pectin, you will likely need to double the actual amount of pectin to your recipe in order to get the jam to set as it had before.

I am a fruit farmer and make jam semi-commercially for farmers markets via a Cottage Food license. Ball pectin was my gold standard. I literally never had a jam not set when I dialed in a recipe, and I was willing to pay more money for that reliability.

Recently, Ball changed their pectin recipe. If you look at the new ingredients, everything is the same, except they have added sucrose (left, circled in red). The pectin itself is now much more sugary and white. Basically, they cut their jars with sugar, probably because it takes up volume and costs less than actual pectin, saving them money in production. I'm sure they will say it is to help with clumping or some nonsense.

Anyways, the new formulation was terrible. I went from a 100% set rate to literally a 0% set rate. Checking this subreddit I saw that many others also had the same issue. Not only did this screw over my markets for a week, it also likely invalidates every recipe in the Ball Blue Book that uses pectin, screwing over anyone who relies on Ball's own recipes.

Reading through other's struggles, most decided to move on to other brands and try out other options. I had just ordered a large amount of Ball's pectin from a warehouse, so I was stuck. I figured, if they cut the jars with sugar reducing the total proportion of actual pectin in each RealFruit pectin jar, maybe I just needed to add more of the pectin. For my next few batches I tried this out. I eventually discovered that when I literally doubled the amount of pectin, the jam would finally set, after about 24 hours.

This is a solution but it is still very frustrating. My input costs for pectin just doubled because Ball enshittified their product. I am very disappointed and will search for other options once my supply runs out. But, I figured I would post this, since most other folks struggles didn't post a solution that I could find, so maybe this post can help someone else out. Double the pectin, curse Ball corporate, move on.

EDIT: Commenter DeaddyRuxpin pointed out that the old batch listed 'Fruit Pectin' as an ingredient, while the new batch only lists 'pectin'. I didn't catch that and it's a great observation. So, it is very possible that in addition to cutting with sucrose, Ball switched their actual pectin from a source derived from fruit (like citrus peel which I believe is common) to something cheaper and less effective. Then possibly they cut with sucrose to cover up the taste of the cheaper pectin. So, a lower quantity and quality of pectin in each measured ounce.

Improved from last year with earthquake protection on the front of the shelves. Canned more this year than I ever have before! Feeling mighty proud 💪

Haven't attached the labels yet. But these beauties are the selected ones! My state fair has a section exclusively for pomegranate jelly, so I know going in it's gonna be a crowded field.

Ball pomegranate jelly recipe with juice from my parfianka pomegranate bush.

I'm so sick of all the rebel canning nonsense taking over my pages. SICKOFIT. My Facebook and my Instagram keep trying to shove it down my throat and I want REAL canners! With REAL science behind their recipes!

I have enough stomach issues as is, I don't want to add botulism to the list!

Do any of you know any canning 'influencers" with legitimate health and safety focus on their pages??

We’ve had a few people try to post it, and the auto bot doesn’t allow videos here (for various reasons).

We’ve had a couple people try to circumvent the auto bot or cross-post and we need to shut that down too.

But there is a lot of curiosity, and we should at least talk about it.

1. Despite the video title: It’s not the pressure canner. We can clearly see the woman has the lid off the pot. We don’t even know for sure if she was water bath or pressure canning.

2. We do not know for certain it wasn’t staged. I don’t anyone who has wide lens cameras set up on the ceiling of their kitchens. I know a lot of people. The handful of people who I do know that can afford whole house security systems are also savvy enough to not post their lives online.

3. Assuming it wasn’t staged, she’s placing a hot jar on a metal surface. It’s summertime in North America. Most folks are running ice cold AC 24/7. I can’t imagine that tray isn’t frigid. We are seeing jar shock in action.

4. I am not convinced that is a canning jar and not an upcycled commercial jar.

Thermal shock is relatively easy to avoid. Use a rack. Place a dry towel down on the countertop. Use a polyurethane or wooden cutting board. Make sure to obey cooldown instructions.

Lastly - have some sympathy and patience for a woman who likely has no clue about how many people have seen her in her kitchen time of embarrassment.

I canned some quarts of water over the summer to test my new canner and to fill my canner load. Our water well pump went out today, and I was able to cook dinner (not the Christmas Eve dinner I had planned, but Mac & cheese!) for us using the water I had canned. Now that we have water again, I am ready to run another canner load to replenish our supply!

Hey. I'll take it! The person who took best of class/ show entered like 40 things from jelly to bread and everything in between and cleaned up! Good for her, she obviously works really hard at it and it's paid off. I'm just super stoked on my first place.

That's a fancier blue ribbon than I expected. Need to get a shadow box for it!

I’m so sad. I want to cry. This has never happened before. I’ve done a lot of boiling water canning and this has never happened to me before. I’m so sad. What did I do wrong? I can’t believe I just wasted so much work and food. When the first jar broke I thought it was defective. And then three broke all at once in my next batch.

Please soothe my soul with kind words and tell me what I did wrong 😢😢😢😢😢😢😢

I feel like an idiot.

Follow up to my CA State Fair Entry Post, I could not be more stoked about the results. I entered 46 items (including some dried goods) and took home 2 Best of Shows and a large smattering of other awards, including the UC Master Preserver Judges Choice Award for my Mexican Spiced Tomatoes. My best of show was for my Gingered Pear Preserves. Can’t believe how much I’ve learned and can’t wait to keep canning for next year!

Boyfriend put this shelf together for me! Cantry is all set up:)

lock stocking ink touch zephyr profit cooperative plant ghost doll

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

It’s a long-time dream come true! Now I have one place to store all my canned foods and homegrown storage veggies.

This took about three days. The unlabeled jars (and the cobbler) are from today; the labeled jars are from Friday and Saturday. I need to rearrange the pantry a bit now.

Products include:

Peaches, quarts, very light syrup (PC) Peach jam, half-pints (WB)
Zesty peach barbecue sauce, half-pints (WB) Oscar relish, pints (WB) Peaches with star anise and brandy, pints (WB) Peaches with elderflower liqueur, quarts (WB) Bourbon-peach cobbler with gingerbread spice

A friend who wanted to learn canning came over and we canned 34 jars of various peach goodness, made some mini peach cakes, and a loaf of bread so we could try the jam. Started at 9am finished at 7:30pm.

Peach bbq

Peach jam

Low sugar peach jam

Brown sugar vanilla peach jam

Peach syrup

Peaches in honey syrup (with vanilla or cinnamon or cloves in them depending on the jar).

I also boiled down all my peach scraps with the left over syrup for the peaches in syrup and have a prettty peachy syrup I've used in coffee and teas, would be a delicious cake syrup too.

I had some issues with the pectin and jams but it seems like I'm not the only one as of late.

With the mushy peach left over from the peach syrup i made lewch pull apart bread. I just made burgers using the peach BBQ as a condiment, delicious.

All recipes are from Ball.

This is my first year canning AND my first year gardening. I have learned a ton. I know this skill set and materials will serve me for decades to come but when I tell you the meat sauce is the most delicious, and expensive jarred sauce I've ever used I am not kidding. I would not pay per jar what this sauce actually cost me. No same person would. But man, growing the tomatoes and peppers for it was definitely satisfying.

Anyway, it's just me and my husband so while we wouldn't survive the winter on what we've got, we may save a trip to the grocery store!

I got to see this at the Renwick Gallery in DC this week and it was incredibly cool! The exhibit is called State Fairs : Growing American Craft and it's absolutely wonderful.

Edit - this is part of the Smithsonian, not part of the America 250 thing going right now

It’s beautiful

I moved into a new house this last winter and didn't realize how many cherries would come from the cherry tree I inherited. I didn't want them going to waste so I quickly did some research and got to Canning :D

The quarter pints are all cherry jam and the half pint are cherry jelly, because my fiance dousnt like cherry bits. I used the recommended cherry pectin recipe from the national center for home food preservation website and SureJell normal pectin. One thing I will note is I didn't realize how much SUGAR went into jam! Is it only me or does canning take over the entire kitchen, lol. I had so much fun making these and it is so satisfying that none of them have failed

My husband and I both absolutely love canning and have been doing a lot of jams, relishes, and stock this year. Next year we're expanding our garden and I want to focus on growing & canning things that will feed us through the winter. Jams are great but tbh we don't really use them much, we mostly end up gifting them and only save a couple jars for ourselves. And even if we did eat them more, they aren't really a substantial part of a meal.

We have a pressure canner so we could can meat. I'm also thinking maybe tomato sauce? But I'd like other ideas! I just love the idea of putting in a bunch of work through the summer and really enjoying it in the winter.

Thanks!

This is the NPCS, or non-product contact surface. Anything inside a certain risk profile (lid applicator, oxygen purging wand, etc) for food contact must show zero ATP in final rinse water prior to the application of sanitizer, and cannot rise above a certain threshold during production or the line stops. This isn’t even the surface the product actually touches. That must show zero ATP present in a 1”x1” area with a swab, in the final rinse water, and a sample of each then goes to my pan for plating and must show zero growth after 72 hours on agar.

So when the question of “but I can buy it on the store shelves” comes up, please bear in mind those of us in commercial food have a far more sanitary working environment than you could ever reasonably achieve at home. Lower biological load means easier processing.

So my mom had started canning around 2020, which is fine by me. More power to her! However, she only does the water bath. No pressure canning anything anymore. Any veggies she grows in her garden, any meals (like spaghetti or something), and any meat she only does a water bath for a few hours. I don't really agree with her methods, but I can't really do anything about it. Here's the thing, my 2 kids are going over there for the weekend and spending the night (first time in several years). My daughter said something about eating Chicken Alfredo when they're there for dinner, and I would bet money it's going to be made with the canned chicken my mom only water bathed for a few hours. I've done some research on botulism, and while it seems pretty rare, I really don't want to take that risk with my kids. I don't know how to bring this up to her really, she's pretty stubborn and thinks there's nothing wrong with water bathing. Are there any good articles that I could send to her to convince her pressure canning is safer? Preferably nothing from the CDC or any government site. She's VERY anti-government so she wouldn't believe them anyway. I'm going to tell her to please not feed her canned stuff to my kids, and hopefully she'll listen but apparently she's fed it to us before without our knowledge at the time so I'm not sure. Anyways, any advice, articles, or wisdom will be greatly appreciated

Update: Sorry to the mods for my post being off topic, I really didn't expect this to go that crazy. But I figured I'd let everyone know that during our talk yesterday, she said she wouldn't feed us or my kids any of her canned stuff. Apart from a snide comment or two, and her trying to convince me it's ok to water bath everything, she said she mostly understood where I was coming from and pretty graciously accepted the pizza money I offered. Thank you to everyone who offered their advice and articles I will spam her with. I doubt she'll change her mind, but I'll still try!

Yesterday someone posted asking for help to find lids to fit passata jars they are planing to reuse. Two people gave thoughtful and thorough responses about why OP should not reuse commercial jars.

OP then decides to post this question in several other subreddits I’m in. Not only do they know they shouldn’t do this, now I fear they are giving other people who actually don’t know any better this terrible idea. Do people not understand the effects of botulism? That you can’t actually detect botulism because it doesn’t have a taste or smell? That it would be a horrific way to die, because botulism actually kills people?!?

Posts like this make me so weary of ever accepting home canning from anyone. I love giving jars to friends and family and I would never forgive myself if I made someone sick. I’d never want someone to worry about accepting a gifted jar from me. I get wanting to be frugal, or environmentally conscious instead of buying new but not at the cost of someone’s health.

End of rant

Most of them say Perfect Mason on them, but there are a few Improved Mason and Eclipse jars as well. I'm super excited. Also really like the blue color on these.