Our Experience Canning Cranberry Juice

We tried an easy recipe we saw on Instagram and were quite pleased with the results. Here is our experience making canned cranberry juice.

A while back we found an Instagram post that touted an easy way to can cranberry juice. There were several reasons we wanted to try this recipe. First, our family enjoys the taste of cranberry juice. Second, we were excited to try a recipe that had no high-fructose corn syrup - we used natural cane sugar to sweeten our juice. Third, we like to keep cranberry juice on hand for those rare times when someone in the household feels the beginning symptoms of a UTI. 

The recipe was easy, just as the post claimed. I am so grateful for that post. You can find the original Instagram post here.

Below is our experience following the Instagrammer's instructions:

First, we rinsed the cranberries while we sterilized our jars and heated the canner. 

We used two 12 oz. bags of cranberries for this experiment. This gave us a total of six cups of cranberries. 

Following the directions on the Instagram page, we put 1 1/2 cups of cranberries in each jar, added 1/3 cup of organic cane sugar to each jar, then filled the jar with hot (boiling) water. We then capped off each jar and put it in the preheated canner. 

We processed them for 30 minutes (the Instagram post called for less time, but after looking up a couple more recipes for this method on the web, we decided to err on the side of caution and go with the longest processing time we found, which we then adjusted for altitude). 

When the jars came out of the canner, the deep cranberry color had just begun to settle down the jar. There was a layer of red sitting atop a layer of golden yellow from the cane sugar. 

We let the jars sit a minimum of 24 hours. The cranberries looked nice and plump at this point.  We removed the rings and wiped down the jars. 

We waited a month before opening the first jar. We wanted to be sure that as much of the flavor was extracted as possible before consuming the juice. 

When we opened the first jar, we strained off the cranberries and crushed them a bit to get all the juice out.  We enjoyed the juice.  It doesn't have the strong cranberry flavor of commercial juice. Rather, it has a lovely, light cranberry flavor that isn't overpowering. We drank it by itself and tried it in mixed drinks. Both were fabulous.

This recipe gets a thumbs up!

Have you been wanting to can but aren't sure where to start? We highly recommend the Ball Blue Book or the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. Both of these give you instructions for safe canning, freezing, dehydrating, and more. Even with all our years of canning experience, we still reference this guide frequently throughout the year.

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