Pressure canning wort

The last few times that I've pressure canned my 1qt starter wort, the water in the pressure cooker has obviously gained some malt extract after I open the lid. How do you fellas prevent the jars from leaking wort, or is it par for the course? I fill my jars just under completely full, and tighten the bands just firmly..not extremely tight.

If you pressure cook ANYTHING the lids should get "sucked" close due to the temperture change/air pressure. You don't even need the bands once they snap/click/seal.

Maybe you're overfilling a bit?

I get that with my wort too, actually I get some of the "juice" in the water no matter what I can, venison, salmon etc.

the vacuum does not actually occur until after the jars cool. the stuff in the jar is boiling while being cooked and some will leak out which is why you need the ring.

A little leaking out is fine- as Superior said, it happens all the time when you can things that are mostly liquid. Just make sure you have about an inch to inch and a half headspace in the jars.

I get virtually no leakage from my jars of wort. The most common cause of this boilover is reducing the pressure too fast. As the temperature rises, the boiling point gets higher. At the end of your canning session, the wort is at around 250° F at about 20 psi. If you try to let the pressure off, the wort will begin boiling since it is now above the boiling point for the pressure. You need to just let the thing sit and cool until the pressure drops to zero on its own before opening the cooker or taking off the pressure weight.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

I let mine cool slow, and it dosnt seem to matter if I fill the jar 1/2" from the top or 1"
I still get a little sticky wort on top of some of the lids and the water gets ever so slightly darker.

Here is my last batch before I wiped them down with a damp rag;

Thanks guys. I've honestly never canned anything else besides wort, and wasn't sure I was doing it correctly. I hadn't considered that some of the liquid inside the jars *is* going to turn to steam and force the lid up. Tightening the bands more than moderately makes them a bear to get back off after sterilization, so I probably won't worry about it. My jars look almost identical to Rich's when I take them out of the cooled cooker.

Basically the wort is boiling in the jars, so some will get out. This is good, otherwise, the jars may bust from the contained energy. I just put the lids on, and loosely fit the bands and let it go. When I extract them, I tighten the bands to hold the lids in place until the vacuum seals it. After that, you can keep the bands on or remove them for other jars.

Ok, Maybe I should have read a little before attempting this.

I had a hair brained idea to make 5 gal of wort & can it right? (All before doing research)

step 1. mash 10 lbs of 2 row, sparge & boil wort.
step 2 (done during step one) boil all my mason jars & lids.
step 3. pull mason jar out of boiling water, add boiling wort
step 4 pull lid and ring out of boiling water, place on jar full of wort and tighten.

Question... did I just waste 10 lbs of grain and 7 hours or will this work out for me?

If you didn't pressure cook them you can keep them in the fridge for a while.

just stumbled across this thread. Are you canning wort for starters in mason jars? And I've got a question about the pressure cooker. Why do you have to use a pressure cooker to get them to seal correctly? It would seem that the pressure inside the jar would equalize with the temp outside it so when you release the pressure from the cooker there would be a pressure differance between the inside of the jar and the outside. Wouldn't the pressure inside the jar pop the lid off or does it just super heat the vapors therefore creating a smaller volume of vapors which would create an even greater vacuum inside the jar?

The reason you use a pressure cooker is because botulism can live through being boiled, but not live through being boiled at 250 degrees. If you pressure can you can just stick them in a closet for a year or more. If you only boil and can (which can work) you will need to keep the wort refrigerated, but it can still last a good while that way (botulism does not reproduce or create toxins at refrigeration temperatures I think).

I think from now on I may take the rings off and keep them someplace else as I've had a few rust on me, then I can use them with other jars hmmm good idea

+1 greimsawyer why are youcanning wort anyway?

It's great that you are pressure canning your starters. Here are 2 links about botulism and canning:

http://msucares.com/pubs/infosheets/is0734.htm

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5338.html

More info than what you need, but the articles do have the important information.

I had a few questions I did not see asked earlier in the thread. Seabee John mentions boiling the mason jar and adding boiling wort to the mason jar. First do you need to boil the mason jar if you are going to pressure cook it? Do you need to cool the wort for a cold break, or do you need not worry about the cold break since this is just for a starter? Thirdly, can you double stack the mason jars in the pressure cooker if there is room. I have a massive 41 1/2 quart all american pressure cooker that I got off of craigslist. It has two canning racks. I am assuming you can double stack it. The instructions that came with are pretty slim which was surprising.

Shay said:

I had a few questions I did not see asked earlier in the thread. Seabee John mentions boiling the mason jar and adding boiling wort to the mason jar. First do you need to boil the mason jar if you are going to pressure cook it? Do you need to cool the wort for a cold break, or do you need not worry about the cold break since this is just for a starter? Thirdly, can you double stack the mason jars in the pressure cooker if there is room. I have a massive 41 1/2 quart all american pressure cooker that I got off of craigslist. It has two canning racks. I am assuming you can double stack it. The instructions that came with are pretty slim which was surprising.

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You don't need to boil the jars- clean and still hot (like from the dishwasher) is fine. You don't need to cool the wort to a cold break, since it's for a starter. In fact, it's probably a good idea to put hot wort into hot jars and then place in the pressure canner. You can stack jars ONLY if your model allows it. In mine, I can stack half pints, but no other jars. I'm not sure why, but I assume it has something to do with the amount of water you add in the canner. Since you have the canning racks, I'd also assume you could do it, but maybe call the company, or google it.

Thanks Yooper. I will do some digging around.

As always a newbie question or two. Is this, in essence, making LME? What is the reason for doing this? I would assume it makes beer making easier and still allows the brewer full control?


After more thought it isn't making LME. Wort is more than just the malt. yes?

lapaglia said:

As always a newbie question or two. Is this, in essence, making LME? What is the reason for doing this? I would assume it makes beer making easier and still allows the brewer full control?


After more thought it isn't making LME. Wort is more than just the malt. yes?

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It is a ready source of starter wort. When a starter is needed, just open a jar or few and pitch your yeast to make your starter. Doing the wort this way is cheaper than buying DME or LME.

The canned wort will not be concentrated like LME, but yeah same principal. Having the canned wort makes doing starters a total breeze. Once you've tried it you'll never go back to boiling water/DME.

raceskier, When it comes time to make the starter, do you just open the mason jar and pitch the yeast without boiling the wort?

TIA

Bump

If you can your wort for starters, do you add your wort to say a flask, add yeast and turn on your stir plate??

Also, I cook my wort for about 20 min at 15 psi. How do you run yours?

The canned wort will not be concentrated like LME

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True, but I have recently gotten the idea of canning wort at 1.080 instead of 1.040 and cutting it in half with bottle water when making a starter. This saves by half the amount of canning I have to do. It might even be feasible to can at 1.120 and cut it by 2/3 water.

B-Dub said:

Bump

If you can your wort for starters, do you add your wort to say a flask, add yeast and turn on your stir plate??

Also, I cook my wort for about 20 min at 15 psi. How do you run yours?

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That's exactly what I do. Sanitize the flask and stir bar, pour in a quart jar of canned wort, pitch my yeast, cover the top of the flask with a square of foil, give it a bit of agitation until a bit of foam appears on top, then sit it on the stir plate and let 'er go.

I pressure cook @ 15PSI for 15mins...20 can't hurt though.

KopyKat said:

True, but I have recently gotten the idea of canning wort at 1.080 instead of 1.040 and cutting it in half with bottle water when making a starter. This saves by half the amount of canning I have to do. It might even be feasible to can at 1.120 and cut it by 2/3 water.

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That sorta defeats the purpose though. The idea is that you can just pour the pre-sterilized wort into a proper container, pitch your yeast, and be on your way without having to heat then cool anything. Granted, you're using bottled water (which should be sterile), but that's just expensive.

GNBrews said:

That's exactly what I do. Sanitize the flask and stir bar, pour in a quart jar of canned wort, pitch my yeast, cover the top of the flask with a square of foil, give it a bit of agitation until a bit of foam appears on top, then sit it on the stir plate and let 'er go.

I pressure cook @ 15PSI for 15mins...20 can't hurt though.

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If your flask fits in the canner, you can sterilize it as well, I put the stirbar in the flask and cover the mouth of the flask with a large square of tinfoil. 15min at 15psi is sufficient.

If you're going to be autoclaving large amounts of starter wort (nore than 8jars or larger than 1 pint per jar) at a time, you might want to autoclave a bit longer as it should take longer for the mass of liquid to get to temperature. If I'm doing more than 4 or 5 jars, I'll increase the time to 30min.

Cheers

Is it normal to have a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of hot break in the jar?

I canned 7 quarts and 7 pints of 1.046 wort today, and have good amount of hot break. I imagine this is normal.

When you use this, do you pour the whole jar into your flask, or decant off of the trub?

Yep, it's completely normal; amazing how much is in there. I usually try to decant off the trub, but don't worry if you get a fair amount in there. I don't imagine it impacts the flavor of your finished beer, but it's nice to be able to tell how much yeast has grown without the trub adding bulk.

If my starter is for beer, I don't worry about hot break at all. If I am doing yeast farming, I go for only the clear wort.

I just received a PC as a gift so wanted to start canning my wort from tomorrows brew. my PC is only rated 11PSI. will this be sufficient to avoid B? If so, how long will I need to cook it? thank you

Plan9 said:

Is it normal to have a 1/4 to 1/2 inch of hot break in the jar?

I canned 7 quarts and 7 pints of 1.046 wort today, and have good amount of hot break. I imagine this is normal.

When you use this, do you pour the whole jar into your flask, or decant off of the trub?

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yeah, and in my experience the higher temps in the PC seem to create even more break.

So I've got a question. I've been pressure canning 1.040 wort and priming sugar solutions for a year now and its great. I love the convienence.

One issue I have is that a quart of 1.040 wort is sometimes not enough to get a good starter going. So I have to use 2 quarts of starter. This takes up valuable space and time to create twice as many quart jars.

My question is this: Why don't we pressure can 1.080 wort and then add a quart of water to it the day of the starter? For me, this means either boiling and cooling just water (no big deal) in a flask or using a quart of premade sterile pressure canned water. Taken together the SG would be around the magical 1.040 number and we'd have twice the wort for the time and space needed to create just one jar of wort.

Anyone see a drawback to this idea?

well for the second option, "using a quart of premade sterile water" I don't see what you'd gain..since you'd still have the same number of jars. Unless you wanted to have some with boiled and some with sterile water.

Boiling would work ok as long as you aren't working with slants or very low cell counts. But for me, it takes away part of the advantage of using premade wort (not having to cool things off)

Shockerengr said:

well for the second option, "using a quart of premade sterile water" I don't see what you'd gain..since you'd still have the same number of jars. Unless you wanted to have some with boiled and some with sterile water.

Boiling would work ok as long as you aren't working with slants or very low cell counts. But for me, it takes away part of the advantage of using premade wort (not having to cool things off)

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I keep sterile water in quart jars anyway to use for topping off purposes. But we can agree that just canning water is simpler than canning wort, perhaps.

Ah, well if you've already got the water, then yeah, that would work... But you'd still be using two jars each time (1.080 isn't great for starters by itself)

Finally signed up so please bear with me. I read somewhere you can boil the jars, and lids in the wort itself. Pull the nearly full jar out of boil with boiled tongs, then grab the lid out with tongs set on jar. Get some gloves and tighten lid. Continue boil for ten minutes. Any comments?

<edit> can I delete a post that was sent before I was finished? Sorry for the double post

Trub_Catt said:

Finally signed up so please bear with me. I read somewhere you can boil the jars, and lids in the wort itself. Pull the nearly full jar out of boil with boiled tongs, then grab the lid out with tongs set on jar. Get some gloves and tighten lid. Continue boil for ten minutes. Any comments?

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This is called Hot Water Bath canning and is not sufficient for wort. This can lead to botulism. There were links in this thread already to canning safty sites.

but JIC

http://nchfp.uga.edu/
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/kitchen-cuisine/food-canning-conserve-aliment-eng.php

You must pressure can wort for safe shelf storage. (ie not frozen or refridgerated)

Thanks for the reply waterskj. So a week or two in the fridge should still be safe using that method?

Lot of talk about boiling jars first, boiling wort first, lot of extra work. It all gets up to 250 in the canner. I mix up the wort with DME cold. Seems like it doesn't clump as bad doing it cold. Then just put the cold wort in jars. Once everything's in the canner, you have to let it start steaming out the vent until all the air is purged out and it's all steam coming out. Then you cap it and let it start building pressure. Once you get to 15 PSI, that's when you start the timer. I usually do 15 minutes. I've kept jars at room temp for YEARS and it's just as good as the day I made it. It takes about a minute and a half to do a starter. Just sanitize a flask, pop and dump in a jar or two, add the yeast and it's off and running!