5-Pack - Easy to Grasp - Grab Them with Tongs - Glass Fermentation Weights with Handles for Wide Mouth Mason Jars

After making my head spin reading all the reviews for glass weights similar to this product, I ended up purchasing these. Boy am I pleased! These weights are so perfect. They keep my veggies under the water and they are easy to grip to take out of your jar even if they are wet! So many reviews for other similar products mentioned the weights being difficult to get out. This product has a handle with a slight edge that makes it easy to grip and pull right out of the jar. I just made sauerkraut and the weights worked perfectly. I use these weights with wide mouth Ball canning jars. Overall I am so pleased with my purchase!

I've bought and read two different books on fermentation and neither one mentioned the existence of these! After schlepping along with my own clunky solutions for keeping my sauerkraut and kimchi submerged, these are a blessing! The weight stated in the ad didn't sound like much, so I had my doubts they would be heavy enough; so far these weights generally kept things tamped down, but I did need to occasionally push them down again in a few cases. I suggest they be made just a bit larger in diameter to cover slightly more area and be a little heavier. They could easily be 1/8 inch or 3mm larger in total diameter and still be easy to fit in the jar opening. This is why I took off two stars under the "Easy to use" portion of the rating. Still, I'm very happy I found these. The glass is very good quality, clear and smooth, and the general design is perfect. The number of weights in the set was just right; when I'm not using them I can fit them all in an empty mason jar, then cover them with water and a little bleach to keep them sanitized!

These weights make homemade sauerkraut so much easier. I got some 64 ounce mason jars and the glass weights fit inside just perfect. I cut up a cabbage, one or two carrots with some spices, then put a round cabbage leaf as a floater trap with the glass weight on top of everything. That fills the jar with enough room for about two inches of brine on top and one inch of air space. It used to be such a chore trying to improvise weights using items already on hand that were ill-fitting and messy, but now it's easy peasy! Update: Just finished my first batch of sauerkraut and wanted to report that there was no problem removing the weight with my fingers. The handle is good for grasping.

I used to use boiled rocks for my weights, and cabbage or other plant leaves to hold down the vegetables. Nothing wrong with that, but these glass weights are so classy, easy to clean, easy to grab, easy to use, and along with the silicone nipple tops I purchased, make the whole process a joy. They are thick, so give the ingredients a good press downward, and like another reviewer mentioned, do not allow air bubbles at the bottom surface.

Excellent glass weights!

I am new to fermenting, but I did a lot of research about airlocks and using glass weights, etc, and so I purchased 3 different glass weights (and 3 different airlocks). These are the best weights by far of the 3 I purchased (I purchase these, some "Nourished essentials" brand and some from "Galahome" which were part of a fermentation kit with another airlock design I wanted to try). Of the three, the design of these is the simplest, and such that the brine can be (and will be) release back into the jar without getting trapped into the weight itself when your vegetables (sauerkraut and kimchi in my case) expel gasses and rise. The "lip" on the handle does help tremendously when fishing it out if needed (I use gloves because I am paranoid) but with the other weights you will have a harder time because the brine can get trapped in the grooves and not be released back to the ferment itself. I check my ferments every couple of days, if the vegetables get too high, I gently press the weight back into the jar, and consequently the vegetables themselves. With this weight, the brine has always been above the vegetables every time, so repacking was probably unnecessary, but definitely easier. The glass is smooth as advertised. There are small bubbles inside the glass, but they are trapped and only add to the aesthetic appeal and don't harm the effectiveness of the weights themselves. So far I am very happy with the weights as they are the most effective in all aspects of their purpose. The only downside to these weights is the "1 per customer" restriction, I am not sure why that is but I will be ordering more if they let me.

Unlike most of the other canning weights I could find on here, these have flared handles. It's only a slight flare, but it's enough that I can grab a weight covered in water and yeast out of a jar with my bare hands, no problem. I haven't tried grabbing it with tongs as that seems pointless and just asking for a bad time. Heavy enough to keep batches of peppers, sliced radishes, or radish seed pods submerged. Weights are the perfect width for all the 1 pint wide mouth mason jars I've tried. Unfortunately, they're a bit too narrow to use alone in the quart size widemouth jars, since those get wider under the neck, but that's just how it is - I don't think you can manufacture a single-piece fermentation weight that is simultaneously narrow enough to fit in a wide mouth opening and wide enough to keep everything down in a quart size jar. However, there is an easy workaround if using a quart size jar: only ferment larger items, or (as is often suggested) stuff a large cabbage leaf over the top of everything you're fermenting, then place the weight on top of that. If you're like me and are stressing about finding the right canning weight or have spent way too long looking at every single glass canning weight offered on amazon, just pick this one. 4 stars for "easy to remove" just because I don't think it's a good idea to pick up these (or any) glass weights using tongs.