Filling without a machine
Updated
You need
- A wide-mouthed canning funnel
- A ladle, or a heatproof measuring cup
- A scale, if you are filling to weight
- A damp clean paper towel, changed as it gets sticky
- Jars laid out and lids within reach before you start
The sequence
Hand filling is a rhythm rather than a set of steps, and the rhythm is what keeps the product hot enough to seal. Everything below is arranged to avoid the pauses that let a jar cool while you look for something.
- Lay everything out before the batch comes off the heat. There is no time to find a funnel.
- Set the funnel, ladle to the quarter inch, lift the funnel clear without dragging it on the rim.
- Wipe the rim.
- Lid, band to fingertip tight, straight into the canner.
- Then the next jar. Do not fill a tray and lid them all at the end.
Why not fill a tray first
Filling a row and then lidding the row feels more efficient and is the single most common way a careful batch fails to seal. Each jar in that row is cooling while it waits, and the hot fill is doing its work in a window measured in seconds rather than minutes.
Because the product is setting and cooling from the moment it leaves the heat, and the process time assumes a hot fill. A jar filled first and lidded last has been open on a bench picking up whatever is in the air.
Filling to weight
Volume is what you see and weight is what you declare, and they are not the same thing across products. Filling to a line on the glass means a net weight that drifts batch to batch for reasons nothing to do with the label.
If the label declares a net weight, fill on a scale rather than to a line. Jars vary, the product varies in density with its concentration, and a fill line that looked right on one batch will not on the next.
Aim slightly over
Under-filling is a labeling problem, and hand filling varies more than people expect. A small deliberate overage is cheaper than a short-measure jar.