Home Distiller

We have a few jars of home canned jellies, mostly
citrus that are older than we want to use and I was wondering if anyone has
ever used such to start a batch of alcohol. Thinking of watering back down,
maybe bringing to a boil ?, cooling down, adding yeast and waiting. Anyone have any suggestions ?Thank You
for your consideration, Larry

Hypothetical math problem with variables not considered. Not sure about how much sugar you would retrieve but I did a bit of research and on average there is 10.76 grams of sugar in a tbspoon of jelly. If 453.59 grams equal a pound then it would take approx. 42 tblspoons to get a pound of sugar. 1 pint equals 32 tablespoons thus you would get a little over a pound of sugar out of each jar if none is lost. I am sure there is a flaw to this thinking but I thought it was an interesting problem to calculate.

Get a pack of certo and read the recipes for the type of fruit you have. That should give you a ball park figure of the amount of sugar.
When I make jelly from grapes, its 7 cups of sugar to 4 cups of juice. Lots of pectin in jelly... I would probably water it down, boil it, let it cool, and add some pectic enzyme to break down the pectin binding the stuff together. You could always check it with a hydrometer to see what your potential alcohol might be. If you only have a few jars you're going to need more ingredients (sugar/grape juice) if you hope to get much out of it. 7 cups of sugar and 4 cups of juice is only around 3-4 pounds of sugar spread out over four pint jars. I know, because I can make two batches of jelly from a 10 pound bag of sugar, and still have sugar left in the bag when I'm done.

Seems like I remember a member saying that whenever they needed more jars they just bought jelly and fermented it all. Said it was cheaper than mason jars plus you get a wash out of it.

I don't remember how he fermented, I'm thinking someone else might remember the thread...may help you out some.

StillLearning1 wrote:Said it was cheaper than mason jars plus you get a wash out of it.

Same deal with Costco peaches, which come in standard mason jars.

Yup. I've made 'Marmalade vodka' before - more like a citrus schnapps really.
Boiling water to melt and dilute to a sensible SG (based on 50% by weight of the marmalade).
Some vit B and a tsb of DAP for nutes and it came out well once double distilled.