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bottling What I learned from my first hot fill into woozy bottles

total noobsauce

total noobsauce

Disclaimer:
This was with green salsa, but it has basically the same texture as a pre-food-milled hotsauce.
Was a good practice before doing the hot sauce on deck.
 
Story:
Initially, the liquid portion of what I poured in the funnel helped things along.
The incredibly small diameter of funnel to match the incredibly small diameter of the woozy bottle
was surprising and held things up from going into the bottle quickly.
 
Once the liquid-solid raced trickled through, was left with a mass of less-liquidy solids just sitting in the funnel.  Wanting to maintain a high temp, a wooden skewer was employed to frantically push the remaining solids
through, while holding everything so it didn't tip over.
 
Meanwhile, sauce was bubbling out of the nearly airtight funnel-bottle seal, making a mess on the
threads of the bottle as I periodically tried to lift the funnel to make an air gap when hands were free.
 
Ended up not cleaning the threads or bottle tops before capping, but they weren't that terrible,
and there didn't seem to be big chunks on the top lip to prevent sealing.  Maybe it would have
been good to wipe down before capping, but my rushed mind said no due to contamination fears from a rag.
 
Conclusions:
  • If not food milled, it's very hard to get sauce into a woozy w/o a wide mouth bottle/funnel.
  • Tongs (metal or with rubber grips) would help to handle hot/boiled bottles.
  • A stabilizer/weight for the bottle/funnel while pouring would help, not sure how to set that up yet.
  • Having a double boiler is harder than imagined with conventional pots.  Ended up just leaving on the stove and the sauce would be simmering/bubbling, unfortunately.
  • Just wipe the bottletop threads before capping, it probably won't contaminate and will ensure a better seal which itself will inhibit contamination!
  • Would be really nice to get woozy bottles with metal caps that click to tell you whether or not you have a vacuum.  I don't know if these exist for normal woozies though.  Maybe just widemouths?
  • Don't get a tapered funnel end.  Get non-tapered.  Otherwise it'll tip over and slow the suss down.
 
Not a disaster, and it should be pasteurized/safe for shelf...
But definitly looking forward to an easier experience with food-milled hot sauce..
 
Questions:
3minutes of contact on the cap after inverting bottles is called for.
Am wondering about the other end (bottom) of the bottle which doesn't get contacted, while inverted -
Is it assumed that this portion of the bottle is clean enough from pre-sanitizing your bottles?
 
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Something to keep in mind as you embark on your hot sauce career.  
 
Saying that we are sterilizing our sauce is a misnomer.  What we are really doing is greatly reducing the presence of bacteria in our sauce while creating conditions that are unfavorable to the growth of any potential remaining bacteria.  That is why it is critical that your sauce have the requisite acidic pH.  The primary concern is that we do not allow the bacteria that produces botulinum toxin to grow in our sauce and it cannot grow those in acidic conditions.
 
 
As we process hot sauce we are (hopefully)subjecting our bottles to sterilizing conditions before we add the sauce and cap the bottle.   However, truly sterilizing any canned goods requires that we subject the contents to sterilizing conditions after the appropriate containers have been filled and properly sealed.  Woozy bottles and caps are not appropriate containers for post filling sterilization and thus the need for the contents to be acidic.  There is a huge difference between sterilization and disinfection, sanitation, pasteurization, etc.   Realize that as soon as you remove those bottles from the water bath (or oven) they begin to cool and room air enters bringing with it airborne bacteria that become part of your sauce.  Even if those bacteria are just something as innocuous as yeasts it still creates a non-sterile environment.  Also, hot sauce brought to a boil is not sterile.
 
I don't mean to be an alarmist, but we all need to have a good understanding of what constitutes safe canning procedures and, more importantly, what does not.  Processing hot sauce(with the proper pH) as we do is safe, but to process green beans or sweet potatoes(or a hot sauce that is not acidic enough) by a similar process is not.
 
An older couple with whom I am friends occasionally give me jars of their pickled wax peppers.   They have a perfect mix of sweet and sour.  When I loosened the ring on the most recent quart the lid popped off and the contents began to effervesce, just like a bottle of soda.  Not what you want!
 
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There are metal caps for woozy bottles available, if the metal caps are used, the bottles can be boiling water bathed, assuming it does have a safe pH.  Plastic reducers can't be put into a BWB though.
 
Definitely wipe the threads before capping.  I keep a bleach rag handy.  (a dish cloth soaked in a bleach solution of 1 capful of bleach per gallon of cool water). 
 
Good first effort, and yea....most of us have learned those same lessons~ :lol:
 
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SmokenFire said:
I use the largest of this set I got from zon to fill my woozys.  
 
Click to expand...
t-noob,  the little wrinkle in the tube allows air to escape the bottle as the sauce enters and so there's no sauce "bubbling out" around the funnel.
 
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SmokenFire said:
 
 
When I hot fill/hold I sterilize the bottles in the oven, then fill with hot sauce, then wipe the rim w a clean paper towel, cap and invert in the box they came in till cool.  
 
Hope that helps. 
Click to expand...
That's my exact same method.....and a glove to hold onto the oven hot bottle... :hot:
 
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Sizzle Lips said:
That's my exact same method.....and a glove to hold onto the oven hot bottle... :hot:
Click to expand...
The bottles can be baked ahead of time, then just turn the oven off and leave the bottles in there until ready to fill.  It's OK to fill room temp bottles.  I like to use a roasting pan with sides as opposed to something flat like a cookie sheet.  You can also bake ahead of time, let 'em cook a bit, remove from the oven and cover with cling wrap or a clean dish towel until needed.  This method might work better if you are doing quite a few bottles and maybe need to bake them in batches. 
 
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salsalady said:
The bottles can be baked ahead of time, then just turn the oven off and leave the bottles in there until ready to fill.  It's OK to fill room temp bottles.  I like to use a roasting pan with sides as opposed to something flat like a cookie sheet.  You can also bake ahead of time, let 'em cook a bit, remove from the oven and cover with cling wrap or a clean dish towel until needed.  This method might work better if you are doing quite a few bottles and maybe need to bake them in batches. 
Click to expand...
 
How hot does this oven need to be?
 
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From the CDC website(not my memory, which much less reliable these days):

The most common time-temperature relationships for sterilization with hot air sterilizers are 170°C (340°F) for 60 minutes, 160°C (320°F) for 120 minutes, and 150°C (300°F) for 150 minutes.
 
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I boil my bottles while my making my sauce then pull each bottle one at a time as I fill. They are too hot to touch but I got a pair of tongs that works perfectly. Similar funnel issue but I got how much to fill funnel down to 2.5 scoops of boiling hot sauce with my ladle then lift it just enough to break seal. Fills it up to neck. Cap and invert.
 
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As a test case for a green Jalapeno sauce I made this weekend (similar to a well-known lower Louisiana brand and reusing a spent bottle), I use a small funnel that fits the bottle orifice, and a coffee stirrer straw down the spout to allow air to evacuate the bottle as I fill it.  This was the "filling experiment", as I suspected having excess spillage all over the counter.  Went very smooth, as long as the straw is kept above the liquid level, to evacuate the air pocket.  Then clean everything as noted.  This was just an experiment, so it all goes back in the fridge, and will likely be gone after this weekend.  Thanks to all on this (and other) threads that have provided such valuable information!
 
J
 
 
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Open a paper clip a little and hang over the bottle edge before you insert the funnel.  That will raise the funnel up a little and open the seal around it for air to escape the bottle.
 
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I use starsan on my funnel, bottles and caps pre-fill (like brewers do).  It's a no rinse sanitizer.  So easy.  Then I hot fill with boiled mash.  If someone can explain to me the unsanitariness of that, I'm open to hearing it.  
 
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I use wide mouth woozy bottles for my sauces (they have a 28mm diameter instead of the typical 24mm diameter opening) along with metal caps. I boil all my bottles, while my sauce (already blended) is cooking. A friend of mine made me a pot with a valve on the bottom. It saves so much time. On a stainless steel pot he drilled a hole and welded a food grade valve to it. So when the pot is full, the pressure and weight from the sauce above the hole fills the bottles nicely (I have what would be considered thicker sauces). In the woozy I leave able an inch of head space, invert for 5 minutes then tip back up. The inversion will kill any "nasties" in the headspace and the cap, and the boiling/heating bottles will kill anything in the neck to the bottom. Doesn't look like they make pop top lids for woozy's but if you make sure you get plastisol lined caps you should be ok.
 
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total noobsauce said:
Disclaimer:
This was with green salsa, but it has basically the same texture as a pre-food-milled hotsauce.
Was a good practice before doing the hot sauce on deck.

Story:
Initially, the liquid portion of what I poured in the funnel helped things along.
The incredibly small diameter of funnel to match the incredibly small diameter of the woozy bottle
was surprising and held things up from going into the bottle quickly.

Once the liquid-solid raced trickled through, was left with a mass of less-liquidy solids just sitting in the funnel. Wanting to maintain a high temp, a wooden skewer was employed to frantically push the remaining solids
through, while holding everything so it didn't tip over.

Meanwhile, sauce was bubbling out of the nearly airtight funnel-bottle seal, making a mess on the
threads of the bottle as I periodically tried to lift the funnel to make an air gap when hands were free.

Ended up not cleaning the threads or bottle tops before capping, but they weren't that terrible,
and there didn't seem to be big chunks on the top lip to prevent sealing. Maybe it would have
been good to wipe down before capping, but my rushed mind said no due to contamination fears from a rag.

Conclusions:
  • If not food milled, it's very hard to get sauce into a woozy w/o a wide mouth bottle/funnel.
  • Tongs (metal or with rubber grips) would help to handle hot/boiled bottles.
  • A stabilizer/weight for the bottle/funnel while pouring would help, not sure how to set that up yet.
  • Having a double boiler is harder than imagined with conventional pots. Ended up just leaving on the stove and the sauce would be simmering/bubbling, unfortunately.
  • Just wipe the bottletop threads before capping, it probably won't contaminate and will ensure a better seal which itself will inhibit contamination!
  • Would be really nice to get woozy bottles with metal caps that click to tell you whether or not you have a vacuum. I don't know if these exist for normal woozies though. Maybe just widemouths?
  • Don't get a tapered funnel end. Get non-tapered. Otherwise it'll tip over and slow the suss down.

Not a disaster, and it should be pasteurized/safe for shelf...
But definitly looking forward to an easier experience with food-milled hot sauce..

Questions:
3minutes of contact on the cap after inverting bottles is called for.
Am wondering about the other end (bottom) of the bottle which doesn't get contacted, while inverted -
Is it assumed that this portion of the bottle is clean enough from pre-sanitizing your bottles?
Click to expand...
I have found that using a stainless steel syringe that was steamed or baked with bottles makes filling woozies much easier. The injection syringe is hot as F. But with gloves of some sort you get a clean fill without the need of cleaning threads "as much". Rather than skinny funnel and pushing in the meat, a syringe gives a consistent thickness and less bottle lip mess. It's in lieu of a pro vaccuum filler for large quantities above a home kitchen, or non manufacture situation. As far as hot filling woozy bottles this works pretty well.
 
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