How do you open canning jars?

[oosik]

TnAndy - I've never seen that many canning jars in one place at one time. From a health/safety stand point - the only foods that might give problems(Botulism), when canning, are low acid foods.

We always dry packed and froze everything. It's a shorter process and somewhat easier to store( less space ). We have always had one of those large chest freezers.

However - we alway would make a 24 gallon crock of home made dill pickles. Never canned nor froze them. Just ate them right out of the big 'ol crock.

 

[Deere Dude]

At least when I squeeze cider I don't have to deal with jars and rings though we do freeze apple cider, keeps well that way. Last fall I ran enough apples for 75 gallons of cider and it vanished as fast as I made it.

Everyone around here loves my cider, even the cattle who get the squeezed mash. I bought one of those big screw presses but I mechanized the mashing/pulping process. Bought an antique English pulper at a flea market, machined all new bearings for it, cut the hand crank flywheel for a belt drive and I drive the pulper with a 1/2 horse electric motor and that sucker eats apples as fast as you can feed them.

Takes about 45 seconds to fill the cheesecloth bag lined tub with pulp and then the squeezing begins all to thedelight of the kids and the bees who congregate around the cider press. I wash them in 5 gallon buckets and the apples, worms and all go in the pulper and get squeezed. The worms give the cider good flavor and no, I don't tell people I squeeze the worms too....lol

I like the idea of making cider. Next year if more of our new trees produce I am going to have to look at some kind of cider recipe and technique used.

 

[the old grind]

Orchard owner next door told me about a gov't alarm and recent proposal to restrict cider sales. He mentioned a young couple who visited a cider mill and didn't realize that a thirsty child was being given too much cider in one afternoon.

The youngster passed away from the excess, and a knee-jerk reaction was to enact some sort of ban on selling and serving cider. The bakery is a big part of Pat's op, but not all of it. Growers don't seem anxious to play along at the expense of such a big part of their biz. If it comes to that, will we see that much more applesauce? :licking:

 

[MossRoad]

Unless it was hard cider and the child died of alcohol poisoning, I don't think drinking a lot of apple cider would kill anyone unless they had an allergy, or the cider had organisms in it.

The only difference between apple cider and apple juice is cider isn't filtered and it's just fresh squeezed juice with pulp, while apple juice is filtered and pasteurized.

I used to frequent an old guy that had a nice orchard and made his own cider. One year, he told us that he was now required by law to inform all cider customers that his cider was not pasteurized.

Here's a story regarding unpasteurized cider, and it mentions that pasteurize cider started in the 90's after a child died from drinking unpasteurized cider contaminated with e. coli, likely from unwashed apples collected from the ground in an area where cattle also grazed. Maybe that's the story your friend was thinking of.

The Real Deal: Have You Ever Tried Unpasteurized Cider? | Kitchn

 

[Jstpssng]

Drops used to be the mainstay for cider, until the case which MossRoad cites above. Now most places leave them to rot, or sell them for animal/deer feed.
It's getting harder and harder to find someplace around here which presses cider, most likely due to labor costs as well as the liability. I drive about 110 miles and buy enough to freeze several gallons. A press is on my want list, but even the cheap Chinese models are pricey by the time you get all set up.

 

[MossRoad]

Drops used to be the mainstay for cider, until the case which MossRoad cites above. Now most places leave them to rot, or sell them for animal/deer feed.
It's getting harder and harder to find someplace around here which presses cider, most likely due to labor costs as well as the liability. I drive about 110 miles and buy enough to freeze several gallons. A press is on my want list, but even the cheap Chinese models are pricey by the time you get all set up.

Yep. My old dude orchard man's wife passed away in a car accident. He tore out the orchard and cash rented the land for corn. As soon as I found out I drove by to inquire about the cider equipment. It was already gone.

 

[TnAndy]

TnAndy seein the dates on ya jars reminds me how the local extension service use to always tell people that home canned food was only good for a year and was suspect after that.

I write the year with a Sharpie on the lid.

Never had a problem with a stuck ring cause they always came off after the jars cooled.

Gotta go peach cobbler is comin out of the oven.

The photos are from years past...that food is long gone now. Most stuff, we only keep a year or two, especially meat products. If we went overboard one year with fruits/vegetables and they are getting old, they go to the pigs.

 

[TnAndy]

TnAndy,
I've never seen a home setup with that many mason jars. That is awesome. I love it.

And that is just the empties....pantry has the full ones.

TnAndy - I've never seen that many canning jars in one place at one time. From a health/safety stand point - the only foods that might give problems(Botulism), when canning, are low acid foods.

Yeah....about 20 years ago, local hardware store was going out of business, and I bought a pallet of wide mouth quarts dirt cheap...I think there were 40 cases of 12 jars per case, with lids/rings.

We always dry packed and froze everything. It's a shorter process and somewhat easier to store( less space ). We have always had one of those large chest freezers.

We also do a lot of freezing. Prefer smaller freezers (like 7-9cuft) over a couple big ones....reason being it spreads the food out so a freezer failure wouldn't hurt as bad (though we have alarms on all of them), and as we use one up over the winter, we shut it off. Right now, we have 2 up rights, used mostly to freeze fresh meat (killed two hogs past two weeks), then move them into the chest freezers, and the uprights get shut down. Chest freezers, we have 5.

Part of 'freezer row':

However - we alway would make a 24 gallon crock of home made dill pickles. Never canned nor froze them. Just ate them right out of the big 'ol crock.

24 gallon ! wow.....my biggest one is 10gal I use for brine curing hams/bacon...and it is heavy as heck ! I can't imagine moving a 24gal one.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Heres dad using the cider mill. Grinder on one side fills the tub, then slide over to the press side.juice runs off the bottom into a bucket.

Dad sold cider at farmers market in the 80s and 90s.

2 legs rotted some, it was stored in a barn on dirt floor. I need to fix, and sanitize it.

 

[newbury]

Surprised no one mentioned my favorite jar lid opener -