Fowlers The Simple, Natural Electric Preserver Kit

1 review for Fowlers The Simple, Natural Electric Preserver Kit

1. 

   4 out of 5

   Annie (verified owner) April 2, 2023

   This is a great little unit which preserves fruit by packing it raw into jars. The jars then go into the unit and are covered with cold tap water. The unit brings the water slowly to boiling point or just below that over the course of an hour. I used this to preserve fruit that doesn't preserve well using overflow and a low sugar fluid medium - peaches and nectarines mostly. It's also more convenient than overflow for halved plums. The unit is plastic, so light and easy to handle. There is no thermostat on this model so if it's a hot day the water will boil more quickly. I found it best to add a little more water on hot days so that it doesn't boil too early. Pros: - easy, quick and clean - fits 5x agee jars, the usual preserving sizes of half a litre and a litre, or the older imperial equivalent. Jars can touch the sides of the unit and each other. - I had no failures using agee screw bands and Ball lids. I reuse any Ball lids that aren't bent. Cons: - Fowlers jars aren't available in New Zealand, but to be honest I'm not sure this is a loss. Once I got the hang of screwing the bands on tightly but not too tightly, things went swimmingly. I've never waterbathed in 50 years so had no experience of how tight lids needed to be. I also had to jettison my 30 year old rusted bands which are fine for overflow if you do them up really tightly, but the rust seems to impede getting the correct seal tightness if processing in water. - You can't preserve hot fruit in a Vacola. It has to be cooled to room temperature then processed. This is impractical for any quantity greater than that which you can fit in your fridge. A decent sized 12L potful of fruit takes a few hours to cool to room temperature, by which time bacteria will be growing well. I could have put hot stewed plums into jars and sealed them, cooled them for 24 hours then processed in the Vacola but I wasn't sure if I would need to change the lids before processing; if so I would have wasted some lids which I wasn't happy about. There also seems to be some suggestion that heat may not penetrate thick stewed fruit sufficiently to ensure safety, though I'm not sure if this is the case or not. I'll continue to overflow hot stewed plums. - The instruction book is minimalist in the extreme, as is the information on Fowlers' website. However there is an outstanding Facebook group - Fowlers Vacola Users - where you can get recipes, information and plenty of support. So the unit loses a star because processing hot fruit isn't practicable. Otherwise I'm very happy with it.