Home Bottling Wide Mouth Mason Jar Inserts

These work well for pickling of almost any vegetable that you cut into chunks. They wouldn't work for finely cut or mashed vegetables, such as sauerkraut or salsa. They work in any wide-mouth jar that flares out below the neck. That includes the most common types of quart and half-gallon wide-mouth jars. I don't think they'd work in the tall types of wide-mount pint jars that taper inward towards the bottom instead of flaring outward below the neck. The Canning Buddies hold themselves in the neck by pushing outwards just above and below the narrowest part of the neck. They don't rely on the food to push them up, or on the lid to push them down. Forget the applicator - you don't need it. With a bit of practice these become second nature to insert with just your hands: put one side of the Canning Buddy in the neck of the jar and hold it there with two fingers. Then push the other side down into the neck with your other hand. I recommend running them under hot water before folding them the first time, to reduce stress in the plastic at the folds. Without doing that, I'm afraid the plastic will weaken and eventually break at the folds. After repeated use they mostly hold their shape. Insert them into the jars before adding the brine, and you won't get your fingers in the brine. I've used these for a few years now on many jars of lacto-fermented cucumber pickles, carrots, and kimchi. They barely pick up any odor from the food, they are fairly easy to wash, and they seem to be holding up to repeated use. They have picked up some color from the food. I use Canning Buddies to keep foods below the brine, silicone lid inserts with pinholes to act as airlocks and keep out the oxygen, a mini-fridge as my fermentation chamber, a temperature controller , and a heater . I've yet to have a bad batch.

If you do fermenting or canning, you are always told to leave a gap at the top for expansion, and to keep all of the product submerged. The typical way to do this is with a weight of some sort. A clean rock. Glass weights specially made. Bags of water. One problem with all of them is that they take up valuable space... often that expansion space. The ViscoDisk Cannin Buddies work great. They take up virtually no room in the jar, and keep the product submerged. I use them all of the time and highly recommend them.

Works perfectly I bought the wide ones because I wanted to use them with the le parfait French jars 🫙 they work with them but you have to do some work. You can see the picture a relish kimchi is fully submerged in the brine only using the viscodisc.

These looked like just what I needed to keep my ferments under the brine. Unfortunately the material is very thin where the tabs bend. The result is they are too weak and easily break.

These are simple to use. They pop right in, and pop right back out again, and hold all my fermenting veggies below the brine where they belong! I had been using glass weights but these are so much less expensive and take up less space to store. I'm a little squidgy about the fact that these are made of plastic, but I am trusting that they really are BPA-free as advertised.

I used two of these within a couple days of receiving. Seemed ok, but a bit cheap. But after a month of fermenting sauerkraut they are not usable any more. They broke upon removing (gently) from the jars. I'm past the thirty day return window. Don't use these unless you understand they are a one time use item, marketed as reusable. They are not. Very disappointed. Back to fermentation springs for me!

Best tool to keep the floaters down in quart and pint jars when making sauerkraut.

Reading between the lines from the nay-sayers is that really don't know how fermentation works. The purpose of these is to keep ingredients under the brine, regardless if the ingredients float "inside" the brine. If puts minced ingredients on top of the other ingredients then that failure is on the them, not this product. That being said, I've used these with quarts and 1/2 madon gallon jars and they work as intended and fabulously. Never had an issue with my ferments failing. Great investment and I will purchase more.

Fabrication de Kimchi et choucroute.

These work better than the mason glass pucks. Sometimes food escapes to the surface, around the edges of the glass pucks….but not with these. Wonderful product. Works perfectly in my widemouth mason jars.

Je pensais que ca aurait permis une certaine pesanteur et constate que si dans ma recette de lacto fermentation, y a de petits morceaux, eh ! Bien qq uns vont sortir des trous et flottés !!! Donc, pas ben ben le choix d’ajouter une pesanteur (via une pesée en vitre ou autre !!!) pour que tous mes aliments restent immergés. Ce produit ne comble donc pas toutes mes attentes genre que je pensais qu’il aurait fait la job pour deux (écrasement et pesée).

Overall, Is expensive.

Tellement heureux d’avoir découvert ce produit! Ça simplifie énormément mes lactos.