The jelly is cloudy
Updated
The three
Cloudiness in jelly has three causes and they happen at three different stages, so identifying which one tells you where to change your process rather than what to add.
| Cause | Where it happened |
|---|---|
| Green fruit, and its starch | At the picking |
| Imperfect straining of homemade juice | At the extraction |
| Jelly left standing before pouring | At the fill |
The one about standing
The commonest cause is impatience at a step that looks like doing nothing, which is why it is the one most often repeated batch after batch.
A jelly that is allowed to sit after it comes off the heat begins to set in the pot, and pouring it then breaks the partly formed gel and carries the pieces into the jar. The instruction in the guide is to fill promptly, and this is the reason.
Straining, not filtering
Cloudiness from straining is a case for a second, finer pass, not for pressing the bag to get more juice through. Pressing is what drives fines into the liquid. A slower extraction with less yield gives a clearer result, which is the trade on extracting juice.
Whether it matters
Cloudy jelly is not a defect in any safety sense and it is a defect commercially, because clarity is most of what distinguishes a jelly from a jam on a shelf. A cloudy jelly beside a clear one looks like the lesser of the two whatever it tastes like, and a market customer makes that comparison in about a second.
Not to the set and not to safety. It matters because a cloudy jelly in a clear jar on a lit shelf is the one thing a buyer judges a jelly by before tasting it.