A jar that didn't seal, and a jar gone bad
Last lesson we labeled everything, so now it's all sitting in your storage spot with a date on it. This one is where I tell you what to do when something goes wrong — because eventually something will. Not because you're bad at this. Because that's canning.
There are two completely different problems here, and people mix them up constantly. One is a jar that didn't seal. The other is a jar that sealed fine and went bad later anyway. Different causes, different fixes, and different levels of "you should actually worry."
The jar that didn't seal
You already know how to spot this from the seal-checking lesson. The lid flexes when you press it, or it never made that tink at all. No drama. This happens to everyone, me included, especially that first year when I had my rings cranked so tight the air couldn't escape to make the vacuum in the first place. Took a phone call to the extension office to figure it out. I felt dumb for about a day and got over it.
An unsealed jar gives you two options.
Option one, reprocess it. Take the lid off, put on a brand new lid, wipe the rim again like you mean it, and run it back through the canner for the full processing time. Not a shortened time. The full time, like it's a new jar. This works, but it's a bit of a hassle, and your produce comes out softer for the second trip through hot water.
Option two, put it in the fridge and eat it soon. This is what I do most of the time. An unsealed jar is just food in a jar. Treat it like a leftover — eat it within a week or so, same as anything else in the fridge. No canner, no second processing, no ceremony.
What you don't do is leave it on the shelf hoping it seals overnight. It won't. And don't store it at room temperature like the sealed ones. That's the one real rule here.
The jar that sealed and went bad anyway
Rarer, but it happens, and it's worth knowing what to look for so you're not paranoid every time you open something from the pantry.
Signs a sealed jar has gone bad: the lid bulging up instead of flat or slightly concave. Liquid spurting or fizzing when you open it. A smell that's very obviously wrong — not "different," wrong. Mold, even a small spot. Cloudy liquid in something that used to be clear, like a pickle brine gone milky.
Any of that, the jar gets thrown away. Not tasted first "just to check." Not fed to the dog. In the trash — and if you want to be extra cautious, somewhere the dog and the disposal both can't reach it. But for the acidic stuff we're doing in this class, jam and pickles, the odds of anything genuinely dangerous are very low. This is what I want you to actually hear: the scary botulism stories come from low-acid foods — green beans, meat, that whole world — done in a pressure canner incorrectly. That is not what we're doing. High-acid food, water bath canner, done the way I've shown you, and you're in a very safe lane. I don't want you nervous-eating your jam for a year the way I did.
Mostly what goes wrong with our stuff is quality, not safety. Soft texture. Mushy pickles. Jam that separated a little. Those jars are still fine to eat — they're just not winning a ribbon at the fair.
Speaking of things going quietly wrong without anyone getting hurt: one year I did a whole batch of pickles and completely forgot the salt. Just skipped it, brain somewhere else. Sealed up beautiful, sat on the shelf all summer looking exactly like pickles should. Opened one in November feeling very proud of myself, and they tasted like sad wet cucumbers. No brine flavor at all, flat. Brett ate a few to be nice, and I made him stop, because watching him choke down a plain cucumber out of loyalty was too depressing to witness. Nothing dangerous about that jar. Just a jar with a mistake baked in from step one. That's most of what "goes wrong" looks like. Not scary. Just disappointing.
So: check every jar before you eat it. Same quick look every time — lid shape, smell, clarity. Ninety-eight percent of the time it's completely fine and you feel a little silly for checking. Check anyway.
Before next time
Go look at whatever you've got canned already — store-bought jars in the pantry count for practice — and run through the check. Lid shape, any bulging, anything cloudy that shouldn't be. Get your eye used to what normal looks like so the abnormal jumps out at you.