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.

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.

This was exactly what I have been looking for to keep my fermented veggies under the brine for long-term storage. When I received these, I added them to jars of sauerkraut, salsa, and jalapeños. They work great. As you can see by the photo, I put them in jars with "feet" downward instead of upward. This allowed them to hold the food under the brine without taking up room. I recommend using them after the fermenting process is over and remove the glass weight. They would work during the process if you use a glass weight with it. Buying more.

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.

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.

I bought these thinking they would be great at preventing floaters that increase the likelihood of mold forming on my fermentation projects. They didn't stop floaters I even tried putting two in the jar and turning the top one about 45 degrees so the spaces woul be smaller. Four of them have broken where they are supposed to bend. Not very durable!

Someone was definitely messing around with the 3D printer to come up with this. I can only imagine the number of hours it's taken to develop and being mass production - but it's just not 'there' yet.I tried this with 5 different ferments, in quart jars, using different textures (shredded, thin sliced, and minced). Unfortunately, ever ferment failed. I used the exact same methods, with a different primer and weight, for the same recipes, and had success with each. My suspicion is the silicon. White or lighter colored batches turned an unhealthy brown and soured. The minced version came up through the pattern, and molded at the top of the ferment.The other challenge is getting the piece out of the jar. It's difficult to gauge the packed contents of a jar, before you've had a chance to prep and pack the jar. Unfortunately, this works best when left at the very top of the jar, which is NOT where you want your primer and weight to be. You need space for the food to expand and contract during the ferment. This doesn't allow enough room to keep the food down, and prevent the brine escaping the container.I hope the inventor keeps working at it. It's a good idea, but it's not there yet.