Home Distiller

Just ordered some 1/2 gallon "pickling" jars, that come with the normal screw on metal lid. Are these lids OK with 60-65% ageing spirit? I assume they will be coated inside, but my experience with old pickle jars is that the coating deteriorates. I want to leave hooch in them, with oak sticks, for at least a year. I can get natural cork stoppers at around £1.60 a piece, might be worth the investment.

the lids will deteriorate over time. If you can find some ptfe sheet you can cut your own, thats what I did.

Recently...someone here was cutting at home, wood stoppers for odd size jars.

that's Corene1 making the oak lids.

These folks have PTFE jar lid liners - http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.a ... rchresults" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow . I've used the 2.725" size that fits a standard mason jar lid. The larger, 3.5" size, fits a wide mouthed mason jar. Don't know if any of them are correct size for a pickle jar. They also sell PTFE sheets.

Or, if you want to allow it to breathe a little, you could try these - http://www.widgetco.com/jar-cork-stoppers-standard" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow . I'll be ordering a couple of these myself in the near future. I want to see how the largest one will fit a gallon pickle jar for aging.

Those cork stopper are pretty neat, and reasonable too! I have a dollars worth of white oak in the wood lids and then a bunch of work to make them the right size. I should have my new batch done this weekend for the final testing.

I have made some lids by cutting card stock to the same dimension as the mason jar metal lid, and then wrapping the card stock entirely with Teflon tape,screw down with the sealer ring , seems to work well. I shake the jars now and again and no leaks,although I would not want to lay them on their side. Possibly this way it will get the air that is required for proper aging on glass

corene1 wrote:Those cork stopper are pretty neat, and reasonable too! I have a dollars worth of white oak in the wood lids and then a bunch of work to make them the right size. I should have my new batch done this weekend for the final testing.

Hey Corene
Would love to hear your final process and measurements. I have a friend with a cnc mill who cut me up some lids. I read your original post about this and my friend ran with it. They came out ok but the top sealing section was a little thin & the bottom section that inserts into the jar had to much play. They sealed just ok during testing and sealed very well when the top section was wrapped with Teflon tape. I think you came up with a great idea for storing in mason jars, up to this point I only seal with natural cork trying not to mess with rule #8. I would appreciate any input from somebody with your skills.

Thank You
Windy City

S-Cackalacky wrote: Or, if you want to allow it to breathe a little, you could try these - http://www.widgetco.com/jar-cork-stoppers-standard" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow . I'll be ordering a couple of these myself in the near future. I want to see how the largest one will fit a gallon pickle jar for aging.

I have used this company and find them very good. The nice thing is they have them in all sizes. I used the larger ones when I designed and built my vacuum funnel.