Fermented fruit products, and why they are a different business

Why the exemption does not follow

A fermented product is a different regulatory animal from a cooked preserve, even when the fruit and the jar are identical. The exemption that covers your jam almost certainly does not extend to it, and assuming it does is the expensive version of this mistake.

A fruit preserve is permitted under these laws because acid, sugar, pectin and heat together make it safe, and the published processing instructions produce that state reliably. A fermented product arrives at acidity by a living process, which is a different safety argument and one these exemptions generally do not make.

The products this covers

This is a wider category than it sounds and several things people think of as preserves sit inside it.

• Fruit shrubs and drinking vinegars.
• Fermented fruit condiments and chutneys.
• Anything relying on a culture rather than on concentration.

What it would take

Doing this properly is possible and it is a different undertaking rather than an extension of the current one, with a different process and a different conversation with your state. Worth deciding deliberately rather than drifting into it because a batch happened to ferment. A fermenting jar is a failure in this craft and a product in another, and the two should not be confused on the same shelf.

A conversation with your state department of agriculture before anything else, and probably a licensed kitchen. Where a product relies on added or produced acid for safety rather than for set, the acidified-foods question applies, and that is on measuring pH.

Why it is on this list at all

Because it is the obvious next thing to do with fruit that did not make grade, and the step from preserving to fermenting looks small from the kitchen and is not small from the regulator's side.

References