This jelly is probably one of my favorites because it is so intriguing on so many levels. There are a lot of assumptions in text and through word-of-mouth that American Beautyberries (Callicarpa americana) are toxic. Probably because of their almost neon purple coloration. Or maybe, it’s because the plant its self has insect repelling properties effective against mosquitoes and fire ants. More on that in our post on the entire plant!
American Beautyberry’s show-stopping color and insect repellent properties are only the beginning. Many recipes for Beautyberry Jelly start out by telling you to add some quantity of water to a quantity of berries, and gently crush and boil them to extract the juice. You’d expect vibrant fuchsia liquid, right? The first time I made this jelly, I was worried I had done something very wrong, because that is NOT the color I ended up with. I ended up with a strange brownish beige color with just a hint of a lavender to purple hue. It was not an appetizing color at all. I decided I had gone so far as to collect the berries and make the juice, I might as well follow through and see what happened. I am so glad I did. American Beautyberry Juice appears to be a pH indicator. Don’t worry, I just barely passed freshman Chemistry, so I won’t go super in-depth here, and if I am incorrect, please smart people of the internet, let me know!
Simply put, in the presence of an acidifying agent (like bottled lemon juice used in canning!), the color of the liquid changed from a weird brown-y hue to a pleasant garnet-pink. It was beautiful. There are other pH indicators out there too. We used blueberry juice to demonstrate this to STEM programs we developed for grade school children at a museum I worked at, and commercially, butterfly pea tea is having a moment. You can find it in everything from gin to dried teas. The royal blue/purple liquid turns a brilliant pink when acid (lemon or lime juice) is added. Even the humble purple cabbage is a pH indicator. Here’s a fun experiment at home for kids – boil some red cabbage, reserve a bit of that juice in a little sauce dish and add a teaspoon to a Tablespoon of lemon juice or household vinegar. That fun blue liquid becomes a shockingly bright purple!
We make Beautyberry juice with a steam juicer now. The first time we did, we ended up with what we in Texas would probably classify as the color of “sun tea” (put a large, lidded glass jar of water in the sun with several tea bags, and let it infuse while you go work in the garden etc. – this unattended brew tends to take on a rich mahogany to walnut brown color). I tend to get a more concentrated yield with a steam juicer, hence the richer color.
Beautyberry jelly has to me, notes of rose petals and strawberries with an herbal lean and a touch of even a grape-y flavor. It’s complex, but very mild, so neutral vehicles like buttered farmhouse bread or English muffins showcase the delicate flavor profiles better than stronger flavored items like brie. I also quite like Beautyberry jelly on cinnamon bread, and crackers.
In Texas, cottage food law requires one of several things in order to sell acidified food products made in your home kitchen (like the jams and jellies sold by Hambone’s Mercantile). You must use a recipe from a source approved by the Texas DSHS, an entity that develops lab-tested recipes (such as extension offices, the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP), or Ball Corporation), or you must utilize a calibrated pH meter to test the acidified final product after it has had time to stabilize. The recommendation for this timeframe is around 24 hours, and the food product must be a pH of 4.6 or less, so a highly accurate pH meter must be used. For Hambone’s Mercantile, we strongly favor following recipes that have been developed and supported by lab data.
Initially, when looking for a recipe backed by lab testing, we sourced one that was supposed to be developed by an extension office out of Wyoming University, but I could not find the original document, so we reached out to TAMU (Texas A&M University) and the Wyoming extension office for verification of the safety status of the recipe. TAMU indicated they were unaware of a lab tested recipe for American Beautyberry jelly, and the Wyoming Extension Office definitively told me they had never developed an American Beautyberry Jelly recipe. SO, Hambone’s Mercantile is currently going through the process of getting our recipe lab-tested to ensure that pH and water activity are within safe levels for a shelf-stable canned product.
As a biologist, I do have a few lab-grade pieces of equipment, including a precision pH meter of the caliber required for Texas Cottage Food Law testing. Since there is currently no lab-tested recipe available, my first task was to test the pH of pure Beautyberry Juice. The finished pH was 5.00, not acidic enough to be within the guideline approved parameters for safety (and Texas Cottage Food Law). Though the pectin component does add some acidity to the final product, I went ahead and added enough lemon juice to get to the 4.6 pH acidity goal. Not only does it help with the safety of the product, but it enhances the beautiful herbal, floral and fruit flavor notes.
Jellies are made from fruit juices, without solid ingredients from fruits (no pulp, no seeds), so the jelly product has a homogenous consistency, meaning the pH will be consistent throughout the product (as opposed to fruit pieces that may have a different pH than the surrounding jelly matrix). I am fairly confident that Beautyberry juice with added acidity from the lemon juice, and a little acid boost from the pectin will result in a shelf stable product. We shall see when the university lab gets back to me with the results.
Why is all this science stuff important? Glad you asked. Home-canned food products can be risky, especially if improperly canned. You can read about C. botulinum here. In home canning, even if the spores survive the boiling process, a pH of 4.6 or lower is the threshold that prevents those spores from growing into active toxin production. The other component of making jellies a low-risk food, is water activity. You can read more about the nuances here. When buying and consuming home-canned products, be a knowledgeable consumer, ask questions, and use good judgement. We do our best to provide high-quality home-canned food products following lab developed recipes and safety guidelines. You as the consumer have the right and responsibility to determine the potential safety or risk of the products you consume. Therefore, we do our best to be transparent about our practices, and we hope our American Beautyberry Jelly will get the lab’s stamp of approval for sale in the very near future.
That said, this is one of my favorite jellies. It’s beautiful, the flavor is intriguing, giving hints of rose petals and strawberries with complex herbal notes. It’s a subtle, mild, unexpected jelly.
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