how uncanny--Bottling Jelly/Peaches

It's canning season again.

We love it.  Last Saturday my hubby and the rest of the clan (give or take) helped bottle elderberry jelly, plum/elderberry jelly and peaches.  (Tomatoes are on deck).

It was a fun family work time.

Here are the fruits of our labors...

 Here's our elderberry and plum/elderberry jelly.

 Isn't that one BEAUTIFUL?!

Red Haven peaches make such beautiful juice and they are, in my opinion, the best tasting bottled peaches.

Uh...

houston...we've got a problem

WTH??!

What. The. Heck.

 This isn't the first time around the home bottling block.  What the heck is going on here?  Half the juice in one of the batches boiled out and the other two batches, it seems has boiled out some.  I am so disappointed, but it created a learning opportunity because you can bet your sweet patootie that we started investigating why that happened.

um...yaaaaaa...

I googled it and my hubby called the county extension office.  Yes, if you didn't already know, the county provides an expert in the field of home bottling.  He didn't get through however and ended up consulting the world wide web.

We are pretty sure that the problem was that our contents weren't hot enough.  We took the sugar syrup off the stove to make room for two steam canners and it must have cooled too much.  So, learn from my mistake, if you are using a steam canner, your contents must be hot.  Caliente baby!

We aren't giving up.  We are going to the corner peach stand.  Hope they're hot! ;)