Made a new smoothie...YUM!
Canning Peaches today!
Ticked Off!
All the work I put into canning sliced peaches and my mason jars busted once I put them in the canner!!!!! Wah!
Oh well....learned my lesson today. Apparently....Jars break for one of two reasons. Thermal fractures or impact fractures. The first is caused by rapid temperature changes. Usually something too cold getting too hot too quickly. The second is caused by jars knocking into each other, implements knocking into jars, jars falling over, etcetera. Luckily they are easily distinguished and identified.
Impact fractures will run vertically up the side of the jar either in a straight line or lightning bolt pattern. Thermal fractures will run horizontally around the jar, and in my experience only at the very base. The fracture is extremely straight and clean almost leaving no sharp edges.
Thermal fractures are caused by your jar heating up to rapidly. You started with cold jars and placed hot food inside of them, or your jars had hot food inside of them and you place them in a pot that was too hot, or you placed the jars directly onto the surface of the bottom of the pot without having any kind of insert to gain elevation. Or you placed hot liquid in them, and in the time it took to close them and get them in the pot, they started to cool a little. If you are sterilizing your jars before each batch this is generally not an issue. However if you are not, be sure to heat your jars up in the dishwasher or by using hot water before filling them. Always keep your jars off the bottom of the pot.
The thing is, it's science. It's not a mystery. If you have this kind of fracture, it's thermal. So, try to think back to what you did, and maybe make adjustments if necessary. Personally, I know it's happened when my staging got ahead of my processing, and the jars sat full of liquid on my counter for 5 minutes, and then went in the water.
If you are 100% certain that you are the perfect canner, and this can not be attributed to anything you did, just remember.....You are taking a material from room temperature, to just below boiling, to boiling, and then above, with great pressure (if you're pressure canning, then back down to room temperature. And you're doing this again, and again, and again. I think we're lucky to have the low failure rate that we do given the extremes these little jars go through.
All the work I put into canning sliced peaches and my mason jars busted once I put them in the canner!!!!! Wah!
Oh well....learned my lesson today. Apparently....Jars break for one of two reasons. Thermal fractures or impact fractures. The first is caused by rapid temperature changes. Usually something too cold getting too hot too quickly. The second is caused by jars knocking into each other, implements knocking into jars, jars falling over, etcetera. Luckily they are easily distinguished and identified.
Impact fractures will run vertically up the side of the jar either in a straight line or lightning bolt pattern. Thermal fractures will run horizontally around the jar, and in my experience only at the very base. The fracture is extremely straight and clean almost leaving no sharp edges.
Thermal fractures are caused by your jar heating up to rapidly. You started with cold jars and placed hot food inside of them, or your jars had hot food inside of them and you place them in a pot that was too hot, or you placed the jars directly onto the surface of the bottom of the pot without having any kind of insert to gain elevation. Or you placed hot liquid in them, and in the time it took to close them and get them in the pot, they started to cool a little. If you are sterilizing your jars before each batch this is generally not an issue. However if you are not, be sure to heat your jars up in the dishwasher or by using hot water before filling them. Always keep your jars off the bottom of the pot.
The thing is, it's science. It's not a mystery. If you have this kind of fracture, it's thermal. So, try to think back to what you did, and maybe make adjustments if necessary. Personally, I know it's happened when my staging got ahead of my processing, and the jars sat full of liquid on my counter for 5 minutes, and then went in the water.
If you are 100% certain that you are the perfect canner, and this can not be attributed to anything you did, just remember.....You are taking a material from room temperature, to just below boiling, to boiling, and then above, with great pressure (if you're pressure canning, then back down to room temperature. And you're doing this again, and again, and again. I think we're lucky to have the low failure rate that we do given the extremes these little jars go through.
I would rather be painting my Chicken Coop, but I still have some peaches left
and Brig asked me to dehydrate them.
Good thing we have a Rotisserie Chicken in the fridge..heating that up for supper time!
Made Chicken Stock after I de-boned the chicken
and last, but never least...This made me smile
A Fun Photo of Mila...
eating watermelon in her watermelon dress!
End of an exhausting Sunday, but a good one....well, minus the peach jars breaking.
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