The riper the fruit, the less pectin, from what I've been told.

The riper the fruit, the less pectin, from what I've been told.

The riper the fruit, the less pectin, from what I've been told.

True. Plus some days it just takes longer to set but it usually does eventually.

Grandma used to say "some days you just can't make good gravy". She was referring to high humidity days I figured, either that or negative ions in the air from alien fly-overs. :). Same holds true for jelly.

Dave

Huh, so there is not a specific reason why jam that was thick in the pot would be thin in the jars?

I left it out of my list in the OP (tired), but I also wondered if it could be that I BWB'd it for too long.

Since I was using an untested recipe, I wanted to be sure the time was not too /short/ :). So I did 20 minutes, for half pints and quarter pints.

Now that might affect it - 20 min is a long processing time - but no way that I know of to know for sure. Carol might have better info for you.

How long did you process the first batch?

Dave

20 minutes? Excessive exposure to heat can break the jell, so it is certainly possible a preserve will "set" in the pan but not the jar. This would be somewhat more likely with a preserve that doesn't have additional commercial pectin or if the sugar to acid to pectin ratio is off somehow.

It could also be a combination of factors, including excessive sugar (a condition called syneresis causing weeping or separation of the jell), excessively ripe fruit (pectin is in the cell walls and as the fruit ripens the cell walls break down) and/or long exposure to heat.

Carol

Thanks, Carol!

The processing time was the same for the first batch.

I doubt that I put what anyone would consider excessive sugar :). If anything, I put less in the second batch because the fruit was riper. If that batch hadn't set in the pan, I would think it was a ripeness issue.

I could very well have cooked the second batch for longer on the stove. I burned some of the berries, when I was first heating them. So I picked out the burned ones, and did some fiddling with it. Heated the remainder slowly, for example, and taste tested it compulsively. I did try to cook it to the same level of 'cooked but barely done berries' but I really have no idea.

So, could be longer cooking or higher temp. Or the fact that I cooked the first, mini, batch in the microwave?

As mentioned, it may still "re-set" in the jar. (Jam is sometimes a mystery.) And if it doesn't, label it syrup. No one but you will ever know the difference.

Carol

This idea of labeling unset jelly as syrup is a good one. Sometimes it can be a serendipitous boon. One year I attempted cider jelly and made two mistakes; first I doubled the batch (always risky); second I used expired pouches of liquid pectin.

I ended up with cider syrup, which has become my family's favorite. They prefer it to real maple syrup, a thing I'll never understand.

Incidentally, pan leavings of all my jellies are always thicker. I'd assumed residual heat cooked off the water.

Deborah

Well, it is full of whole kiwi berries. (remember, this kind are the size of grapes). I suppose it could be extremely sweet preserves...

>Incidentally, pan leavings of all my jellies are always thicker. I'd assumed residual heat cooked off the water.

Ah, good point!

Now y'all got me curious. I gotta go dig around in the cupboard and see if it has thickened up in storage :).