Basically, every inch below the water-line is black. Kind of gross. I expect it's due to minerals in my well-water reacting with the aluminum. My concern is that something was deposited on my jam-canning jars?
So I decided to make jam, using AB's blueberry jam recipe. Two 12 oz packets of wild blueberries, 1.75 oz (gs?) powdered pectin, 2 T lemon juice, 5 T cider vinegar, 3 C sugar, some freshly grated nutmeg. I followed AB's recipe, but didn't have anything to mash the berries with. I let them boil a while longer and tried mashing with my wooden spoon. So, so results.
I didn't have canning equipment. Whoops. And I could only find 12 oz, two-piece lids.
I put the jars (sans sticky lid), in the big pot, with tongs, a metal ladel and a small cake rack. Boiled. Turned off, let sit minutes, put in the tops.
When the jam was cooked and cooled a tad, I used the tongs to remove the jars and used the metal ladel to spoon the jam in. I did pretty good -- very little wasted. But the tongs and ladel had this "dusty" deposit on them -- again, I assume from the minerals/salt in the water.
Used the tong to pick out the sticky lids and place them on the top of the jars. Screwed the tops on. AB says to screw them "finger tight." What the hell does that mean? I understand why I don't want to screw them too tight, but, you know. Some air bubbles came out of each pretty quickly. Boiled for ten minutes, took them out. Each lid popped fairly soon.
I had one left-over jar -- about half full -- that I didn't boil. This set up firm fairly quick. A small taste was pretty good. The cider vinegar was a little too strong.
The boiled jars haven't set firm, even though they're now cool (room temperature). But the lids haven't popped back up or anything.
