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Canning excess wort

MaltLicker

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I know nothing about canning food stuffs, but for preserving wort for starters, is it as simple as putting some in mason jars and sealing those jars, and boiling in the steamer pot?  The heating process sterilizes both wort and the jar? 

Is the resulting sterilized wort "ready-to-use" or would you need to re-boil it upon prepping the starter? 

thx


 
I've only done one sterile wort for a starter but the literature says it's best to "cook" it in a pressure cooker to get the temp up to 250d Fahrenheit.  Bacteria etc. will be destroyed at boiling temperatures but mold and wild yeast spoors can survive.  250d will kill everything alive in there.

I bought a pressure cooker on sale for $10 and use a 4 cup measuring glass to sterilize then pour into a sanitized beaker with an air lock to propagate.  I put about 1/2inch of water in the pot with the measuring glass in the water.  Seems to work so far.

A quart jar seems like a lot of sterile wort to keep but don't know how you'd do it with less.  My grandma used to put the jars into the preasure cooker, with water almost to the rim, with the jam, and the lid with ring setting loosly on the jar.  The heat would expand the air in the jar then while cooling the contracting air would suck the lid onto the jar and seal.

BTW if you lift the weight from the lid to decrease the preasure, the drop in preasure will make the wort boil very vigorously.  I lost about half my wort that way.  Patience is a virtue.

Chas
 
I experimented with this Saturday.  Took one pound of 2-row, mashed it, sparged it, and ended up with over two quarts of very cloudy wort.  Cooled down one liter and fed that to an old Belgian starter to see if it was still viable.  SG was 1.030 at start of boil. 

Poured the other quart into a quart mason jar, sealed and boiled in a 5-gal pot.  Let it boil longer than any recommendation I saw for fruit preserves to be safe.  Seems sealed well, and I'm going to watch it for infection. 

Doing this from scratch was not worth the pots cleanup, but using leftover wort that I usually toss may be worth trying.  I'm thinking I'll collect extra from MLT and boiler and mix it, then boil that down and can it.

It also occurred to me afterwards that the typical Polarware pot with a flat false bottom would be an excellent canning vessel, as it would keep the jars off the bottom, so other than jars and lids, there is no expense for any brewer with such a pot. 
 
I do high volume canning quite often.
There are two ways. The best is to get a pressure canner, but they are rather pricey.

The traditional way is heavily salted boiling water.  With the lids in place but not snugged down (lose)  you put the canning  jars in the water  and make sure that the water covers the Mason Jar's  kid by a couple inches ( half inch minimum).  Then boil till the liquid inside of the mason jars  continue to auto-nucleate ( boil) when you remove them and snug the lid.  About 40 minutes.  Snug the lids and let cool.
Store however you please.

You can do this in your BK no problem.  However about the salt:
Home Canners use it to raise the temperature of the boiling water. But the  Wort might be wrecked by lots of salt leaking into the jars. So you can skip the salt  and just make sure that the fluid inside the jars is at boil when you draw the  jars from the water.
Truly salt does not  raise the boiling point  terribly high - I mean absent using an inordinate amount of the stuff.

You will want to use some way to get the jars out of the pot.  These days I  use  large colander  I prior place  in the pot. I used to use a set of bent wire canning tools that I lost in a move years back.  I made them in a tool shop from .25 and .375 diameter Steel wire.  They were tough as nails.  I made a pair of jar specific tongs that wrapped around the ridge of a canning jar to hold it firmly.  I should make another set.  They were the SHIZZ~!! 
 



 
CR said:
... make sure that the water covers the Mason Jar's  kid by a couple inches ( half inch minimum). 

I skimmed a book on canning a few months ago when I thought I might can some nectarines, and didn't realize you had to cover the jars.  So this one is likely not the best.  I Star-San'd everything before filling, and the wort boiled inside the jar for a while, but it's not A-1 quality per your guidance.  We'll see.

Have to read that book again.
 
MaltLicker said:
I skimmed a book on canning a few months ago when I thought I might can some nectarines, and didn't realize you had to cover the jars.  

Google around.   There are Agricultural Extension for universities all over the MidWest  and even the US FDA and other places where  there is an enormous amount of information available for free.

The only reason you gotta cover the jars is to ensure that the lid gets pasteurized too. Rising steam won't  do it.
I lust after a pressure canner but I'm running out of room to store specialty hardware.

I Star-San'd everything before filling

Leave it to a Brewer to do something no one else does.

and the wort boiled inside the jar for a while


Yer prolly just fine.  The boil inside the jar is going to cover most of your bases, even the lid.
It's  simply that much more  certain when you have the boiling water in 100% contact.
 
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