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In farm life, there is always something happening to keep you humble.
I'm not new to canning, but last week I experienced something that had never happened before. When I opened my water bath canner to remove seven jars of fabulous dill pickles...three jars were floating.
Floating jars? What does that mean?
Upon carefully removing the jars, I discovered I had a mess on my hands. For I had one...
Ā 
Ā
Ā two....
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How disappointing, Amy! Sometimes jars have a flaw and they just break, and other times it's what your friends mentioned about hot/cold, cold/hot.
I had that happen with one jar of peach jam several years ago. It was a spanky new jar into cold water, and not the first cold packing of that batch either, so I doubt it was temperature shock. I chalked it up to not being on the family shopping trip that acquired the jars in the first place. I had told them what to get, but they decided to save money (a dollar or two at most!) and bought a cheaper flat. So I am figuring a flaw in the glass is what did it in. I just count myself as lucky that it cracked around instead of bursting, which would have broken more jars in the batch.
I have been doing a lot of canning here recently. I had some brand new jars break on me while I was canning some beef stew. I cold packed everything and had cold water in the canner. I totally believe that some jars are just weak from the get go. I have had some previously used jars do the same thing and I understood that but brand new... I was in shock. I'm glad you posted this because I now know it was just weak jars!
Amy, I had one of my jars of tomatoes that did the same thing. I didn't do anything different from the other times I water bathed canned them but one out of four broke. Another one didn't seal. I have never had either of these issues in the past. Who knows what the issue was. Have a great canning day.