A jar that reaches you with a broken seal is replaced, no argument.

Every jar leaves the kitchen with a batch date written on the lid. That is the day it was filled hot and sealed. All the other clocks on this page start from it.

Jars are filled at a rolling boil into clean, hot glass and turned upside down to cool on a steel rack. When they have cooled we check each lid by pressing the middle. If it clicks or flexes, the jar does not leave. It goes into our own fridge and gets eaten at lunch.

A sealed jar of lekvar, jam or fruit butter keeps 12 months from the batch date, stored somewhere cool and dark. A pantry shelf is fine. The cupboard above the stove is not; an Austin kitchen in August can push that shelf past 90°F, and heat dulls colour and flavour well before it makes anything unsafe.

Low sugar jam goes darker with age faster than supermarket jam does. At roughly one part sugar to four parts fruit, there is less sugar holding the colour. A plum lekvar at month ten will look browner than one at month two. It still tastes of plum.

Once open, keep the jar in the fridge. Plum and apricot lekvar and the fruit butters last about 4 weeks. The looser jams last about 3 weeks: sour cherry, blackberry, fig and orange, and the Hill Country peach preserves. The reduced-sugar 1:6 batches lose a week from each figure.

The thing that ends a jar early is almost always a buttery knife or a toast crumb. Use a clean spoon each time. Bakers working from a 2 lb tub or a 5 lb pail should scoop what the shift needs into a bowl and put the lid straight back on; the bulk tub then keeps as long as a jar does.

If you see fuzz on the surface, throw the whole jar out. Do not scrape it off and carry on.

Quince paste comes as a wrapped 8 oz block, not a jar, so there is no seal to check. Keep it wrapped in the fridge and it lasts 3 months from the batch date. After cutting, press the paper back against the cut face. A thin sugary crust on the outside is normal and harmless. Slice past it.

See the quince paste page for how to cut it thin for cheese.

If a jar reaches you with a lid that flexes, a seal that has lifted, a crack in the glass or a leak, we replace it. Tell us within 7 days of pickup or delivery. A photo of the lid helps but we do not insist on one. We replace the jar from the next batch of the same product, or, if that product is out of season, refund what you paid for that jar.

Peach preserves are the hard case. Peach preserves happen when Hill Country peaches happen. June to August, then they are gone. A broken peach jar in October gets a refund, not a promise of a jar in nine months.

Replacements are handed over the same way as the original: pickup at 68 Oak Lane, Office 12, or added to your next Austin delivery with no delivery charge for that jar.

Report a broken seal by email to [email protected], by phone on +1 (971) 555-5462, or through the inquiry form. One of the three of us answers within two working days and agrees the replacement or refund in that reply. A refund goes back the way you paid at handover.

We will not replace a jar that was opened, stored warm, or kept past the dates above. We also will not replace a lekvar for being too thick. That is the point of it: if it runs off a spoon held sideways, it is not finished. A bake that went wrong in someone else's oven is not a seal fault either, though if your kolache filling misbehaved at 375°F we want to hear about it. Read how we test that on the bakers page.

Nothing here limits any right you have under Texas law. The full inquiry and handover terms are in the terms.