Water Bath Canning Part 2 Water Bathing Blackberries

Please note the timing is for Blackberries only.  Other fruits have various times.  The process though is pretty much the same.

Gather together your deep stock pot, tea towel, pair of oven gloves and a jug, if you have them a pair of jar lifters.  Get everything together so that you do not have to go looking for stuff whilst you are working on your water-bathing.

Get your jars sterilised either in a hot oven or a pot of hot water.  Once sterilised allow to go cold.  For cold pack really this needs to be sorted first.  I used pint jars the other day when I made my Blackberries and I used about 1.5 kg of Blackberries.  Also sterilise your lids in a small pan of hot water.

Make up your preferred syrup - I usually use a light syrup made up of 8oz of sugar to 1/2 a pint of hot boiling water.  Stir the sugar until dissolved.  Then take off  the cooker away from heat and add in 1/2 a pint of cold water which will help it cool down.  I am using the cold pack system here.  Sometimes I have to make up more syrup as I tend to work with what I have picked on the Blackberry front and the amount of syrup to each jar can be variable.  So if you have a lot of Blackberries that you have picked make up double the amount of syrup.  This is often referred to as a stock syrup and it can be kept safely in the fridge for up to a week with some cling film over.

Gather your blackberries and wash them in salt water. Helps to alleviate any bugs there might be. Leave to soak for about 10 minutes then drain and rinse and pop into a bowl.

Then pack your blackberries into each jar pushing them down gently until at the shoulders/ neck of the jar.  I am assuming that you are using a jam jar/lug jar here.

Add your syrup, and fill the jar to about 3/4 full to about the shoulders. As the Blackberries cook, they will create more juice so you do need a bit of headspace to allow for this.  The syrup will leak into the pan and sometimes does this anyway but if we can avoid it we will.

Pop on your lids.

Get your Stock Pot and put a tea towel or a trivet in the bottom of the pan. This is so that the jars are not directly touching the bottom of the pan where the heat source is underneath.  Space your jars around the pan so that the jars do not touch.

Add in cold water and make sure that the jars are covered by at least an inch of water above the lids, turn up the heat and bring to a rolling bubble.  Once boil achieved start timing.  You need 10 minutes on this.  Then switch off heat and allow to cool for 10 minutes before taking out of the pan and leave somewhere where they can be left undisturbed for 24 hours. I usually place them on a hard wooden board with a towel over it. Check the next day to see if seal has been achieved as described in my previous post.

Perhaps this might be too simplistic for some but in essence this is how I Bottle my Blackberries.  I work with what I have.  If there are berries left over and not enough for a full jar.  Please keep these aside in the fridge as I have a fermented recipe that produces a Blackberry syrup by using sugar and Blackberries in a jar.  

Needs to be a litre jar  Basically you add a light layer of sugar so that the Blackberries are coated to a jar then your Blackberries add more sugar and layer the jar all the way up alternating sugar and Blackberries to the shoulder.  Put on the lids.  You will have to burp the jars every few days to release the gas. You will also need to stir the sugar in as well otherwise it goes solid.  Supposedly takes 100 days but often made before then.  This method does not use heat and therefore you keep all the vitamins from the Berries.  I leave it on the windowsill so that the Sun can get at it.  I check frequently.  You then strain off the fruit from the syrup you can use the fruit to top cereal and then decant the syrup into a bottle or bottles depending on how much this makes. I still need to add more Blackberries and they are fermenting well.  Will probably add some more tomorrow after have been Blackberrying. I will provide a recipe for the traditional way of making syrup later on.

I hope this helps

Pattypan

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