Canning Lemonade Concentrate

The usual disclaimers:

• I am not a canning expert.
• Do your own research and make your own decisions about the safety of any recipes I share.
• This is not meant to be a canning tutorial. If you have not canned before or need help, there are wonderful videos available, as well as many good websites.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we came across lemons for .10 each. I don’t know how many lemons we bought but I had a bag at home and I think between the ones we bought and the bag of lemons, I ended up with 36 lemons.

There was right at 8 cups of lemon juice. I’ve canned lemonade concentrate before but I almost always check online for recipes to see if any others look better that what I usually do but I ended up canning the concentrate the way I have in the past.

Most recipes advise against boiling the lemon juice. Some recipes can together equal parts sugar and juice, others add equal parts sugar, lemon juice and water. My opinion is there’s no need to can water because I assume we’ll have water wherever we might be when we’re wanting to have lemonade. These days, I probably shouldn’t take anything for granted!

Here’s how I canned the lemonade concentrate.

1. Because I didn’t want to get a large pot out, I divided the juice in half and use 4 cups in each batch.
2. Use a pot that is plenty large enough because the juice/sugar will foam a bit and can overflow the pot.
3. I added 1 cup water and 4 cups sugar. Bring that to a boil and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.
4. Turn off the heat and let it cool down a bit. Add the lemon juice and stir. Heat the lemon juice just until it almost boils. Keep it at a low simmer for 5 minutes. Skim off any foam that has formed on top.
5. Fill HOT jars with the HOT mixture.
6. Wipe the jar rims with a damp cloth, add the lids (see note below) and rings.
7. Water bath can – 15 minutes.

NOTE: With anything highly acidic (lemon juice, vinegar, etc.), I use the Tattler reusable lids. They now have metal lids too so if you’re wanting the plastic reusable lids, make sure that’s what you’re ordering. Regular metal canning lids do not last as long as they once did and I’ve had metal lids on acidic foods (even tomatoes) and the jars got stuck in the back and not used for a more than a few years and the lids literally disintegrated. I’m fairly confident that if the contents of even the most acidic foods were used within a year or so, they will be fine but, for me, no matter how organized I try to be, I’ll find a jar that was canned 10 years ago. I found a jar of taco soup from 2014 not too long ago and we ate it, it tasted fine and we survived.

I ended up with 8 pints of lemonade concentrate. There was about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice left in the pot and I made myself a glass of lemonade. Delicious!

I used the jars I’ve emptied over the past week so there were four regular mouth and four wide mouth. It doesn’t matter to me if I use regular mouth or wide mouth – just whatever is handy.

What we’ll do most of the time is use the Soda Stream and cold water to make fizzy water, stir in about 1 or 1-1/2 T. lemonade concentrate. I didn’t keep any out because I figured at least one jar wouldn’t seal and they all sealed! That’s a good thing but I want lemonade NOW! 🙂