Canning Water For Storage
Water bath canning gives you sealed, glass-stored water with no plastic taste and no rotation date. It also costs more per gallon than any other method on this site.
You can preserve water the same way you preserve tomatoes: fill canning jars, process them in a boiling water bath, and shelve the sealed jars. Utah State University Extension gives the method, and it works.
The question no page answers is whether you should, and for most of a household’s supply the answer is no.
What it costs
A quart jar holds a quarter gallon. A case of twelve quart jars runs about fifteen dollars with lids, and holds three gallons. That is five dollars a gallon for the container, against two dollars a gallon for a drum and under a dollar for reused soda bottles.
Then there is the work. Most water bath canners take seven quarts, which is under two gallons. Twenty minutes of processing per batch, plus heating and cooling, means a full afternoon produces perhaps five gallons. A garden hose fills a 55 gallon drum in about four minutes.
And glass is heavy and it breaks. Water is already 8.34 pounds a gallon before you add the jar, and a shelf of quart jars in an earthquake is a different proposition from a stack of plastic jugs.
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Fill clean jars, leaving an inch
Standard canning jars, washed. One inch of headspace at the top, which is more than you would leave for food.
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Wipe the rims and fit the lids
A drop of water on the rim is the usual reason a jar fails to seal. Rings finger tight, not forced.
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Boiling water bath, 20 minutes
Jars fully submerged with an inch of water over the tops. Start timing when the water reaches a full boil.
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Cool undisturbed, then check every seal
Twelve hours on a towel, out of a draft. The lid should be concave and should not flex when pressed.
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Label and shelve
A white mineral film in the jar afterward is normal and is dissolved minerals coming out of solution, not spoilage.
What it buys
Three things, and they are real.
No rotation date. A properly sealed jar is a sterilized, hermetically closed container. It is the only home method that produces the same situation as commercially bottled water, where the six month rule stops applying because the fill was sterile and the seal is verifiable. You check the seal, not the calendar.
No plastic. Nothing leaches from glass. If your storage has to sit somewhere warm, or if anyone in the household is sensitive to the taste plastic gives water after a year, this solves it outright.
It uses equipment and skills you may already have. For a household that already cans, this is a Saturday with no new purchases. That is a very different calculation from buying a canner to do it.
Where it fits
Canned water is not your bulk supply. It is the part of your supply that has to be reliable without maintenance.
The sensible use is a small reserve, twenty or thirty quarts, put somewhere separate from everything else and left alone for years. Water for an infant’s formula, water for someone with a compromised immune system, water you want available without having to think about whether the drum in the garage is still good. The bulk of your gallons still lives in jugs and drums, rotated on a schedule.
Two things that go wrong
Overfilling. Leave a full inch of headspace. Water expands as it heats and a jar filled too close to the rim will push water past the lid and fail to seal, and you will not know which jars until they have cooled.
Trusting an unchecked seal. Every jar gets pressed after it cools. A lid that flexes did not seal, and an unsealed jar of water left on a shelf for two years is an open container of water. Refrigerate those and drink them, or reprocess with a new lid.
The white film that appears in the jars afterward worries people every time. It is dissolved minerals precipitating out under heat, it is harmless, and it is not a sign the water has gone bad.
The honest summary
If you already own a canner, spend an afternoon and put thirty quarts away as your no-maintenance reserve. It is the most durable water in your house.
If you do not own a canner, buy jugs. The money and the afternoon both go further, and the thing that fails in real households is never the storage medium. It is treating and dating the containers you already have.