[allotmentann]

Hi all, I hope you can help. Having had a glut of plums and damsons last year and made as much chutney, ice cream and sorbet as anyone could eat, I thought I would try my hand at bottling as my gran used to do. I sterilized my jars (and lids) in the oven -  probably to a hotter temperature than I have seen recommended on here. I made a sugar syrup and poured over the fruit, into the still hot jars.  Next I put the jars in a saucepan of water and brought the whole lot back to the boil again for a couple of minutes. Most of the safety buttons popped back in as they were cooling. When I checked them the other day they have all gone mouldy at the top. Where did I go wrong? I don't want to make the same mistakes again this year. I would really appreciate any advice.  Thank you.

[joyfull]

perhaps the damsons had some mould spores on them 

[mumofstig]

you say you poured the syrup over the damson - were the damsons cooked at all? pouring hot syrup over and a few minutes heat treatment won't have sterilised the fruit.

this is how from an old old preserves leaflet

Pack them into kilner jars.
Put lids down but don’t fasten them.
Put them in a low oven (about 130C) for about 40 minutes until they have shrunk a bit.
In the meantime, make a sugar syrup ratio of 1 pint water to 8oz sugar (just dissolve sugar in water and bring to boil)
Take jars out of oven and pour boiling syrup so they overflow & carefully clip down lids.
When cool it will create a vacuum so that you can unclip the lids and lift the jars up by the lids without opening them

[allotmentann]

Ah thank you so much for that. No, the damsons were not cooked at all (no recipes I researched mentioned this!). I will try again. I am very disappointed as I love damsons. I prefer a good old recipe for things like this, will this also work for other soft fruit?