I got this book because I was excited about the author's unique combinations of ingredients and her use of ingredients I'd never seen in any preserving book.

That being said, her "technique", even for an experienced North American preserver, leaves a lot of important things out. She doesn't mention yield at all or the size of her jars. She says nothing of processing time, but instead advocates inverting jars which will weaken the seals, at least the 2-piece Ball/Bernardin closures we use.

This is what I did: I juiced 10 lbs of unripe Spy apples to make 3 batches of pectin. I let the juice sit overnight and decanted what I needed for each recipe. I let the jelly come to 221F on a candy thermometer which took considerably longer than her '5-10 minutes'. Once the jelly was at this temperature, the set took yet longer to achieve and was a weak set, not the firm set I'm used to, even with unripe apples containing a lot of pectin. Three batches of pectin were made on the same morning. The third batch foamed the least. I did not stir the juice that I measured out for each batch so the last batch contained the most solids. I processed the jelly for 10 minutes in a water bath because I was not convinced not processing would be appropriate or safe. The jelly had a tendency to clump before all jars were filled.

For those of you with lots of experience using this book and this method, what did I do wrong and what did I do right? I want to get the kinks out before I attempt to use this green apple pectin in one of her recipes with pears.

Thanks!

I'm assuming when you juiced the apples, you cooked them as per Ferber's instructions.

Based on what you're saying I don't think you did anything wrong. The fact that the jelly was clumping as you poured it indicates it was setting even before it went into the jar. But to be fully set a jelly, even an apple jelly, can take as long as six weeks on the shelf.

I think traditional preserving requires a certain tolerance for insecurity and unpredictability. The ripeness of the fruit, the character of the fruit, will affect the final result, regardless of the preserver's skill or the caliber of the book.

You can "strengthen" the apple jelly by boiling peels, cores and seeds in a bag with the juice or by double-cooking the pulp to extract every bit of natural pectin.

A 6-7 pound batch of fruit and sugar will yield generally 5-7 8-oz. (250mL) jars. Ferber's recipes are small-batch and all the ones I've tried fall within that range. Working with natural pectin, it's not recommended to go beyond a batch of that size, though sometimes you can stretch it. However, you risk overcooking.

Ferber follows European practice for preservation, which means no heat processing. It's not "unsafe" per se, but it does tend to reduce the shelf life and increase the risk of mold. So yes, 5 minutes with sterilized jars or 10 minutes BWB with hot clean ones is a good idea.

Carol

Oh thank you so much for your quick response! Yes, I prepared the juice per Ferber's instructions. It's good to know that the strength of the set can increase. I also didn't know about putting extra peels and cores into a cheesecloth bag to increase the amount of pectin, but that totally makes sense. I wasn't sure if Spy apples were a good variety to use, but it's what the orchard had at the time and I didn't want to wait past September as I would probably have a real hard time finding unripe apples. Our orchards only start selling apples in September. It would be ideal to have your own tree for this. I did know not to scale the batch sizes so I made 3 separate batches to get the number of jars I wanted. Thank you also for the yield information.

I think it's just a matter of nerves since this technique is so foreign from anything I've used for making preserves up til now. I guess I just need to take the plunge and chalk my results up to trial and error. I'll post back here when I decide on which pear recipe to try.

Carol