You Asked It!

Shelf Life of Mrs. Wages Mixes

Mrs. Wages makes several packaged mixes to help make home canning easy and quick. All of their products for canning use the water bath canning method. But do the mixes have a shelf life?

Mrs. Wages recommendation:

“On the side of every Mrs. Wages® pouch is an 8 digit code that you can use to determine when the product was produced, and you will find it stamped into packet, for example B2181A23. The B identifies the facility that produced the mix. The number, which follows, represents the last digit of the year the mix was produced, e.g., a 2 would indicate 2012. The next three numbers indicate which day out of 365 days in the year, the mix was produced. So if the number is 181, it means the product was mixed on June 29th as this is the 181st day of the year. The final 3 digits are used by Kent Precision Foods to indicate the batch code. For optimal performance, we recommend using Mrs. Wages® Pickle, Tomato, Fruit mixes and Fruit Pectins within 24 months of the day and year, it was produced.”

Source: https://www.mrswages.com/canning/frequently-asked-questions/

About Karen Blakeslee

The Rapid Response Center was formed in 1995 as a resource for Kansas State University Research & Extension Agents. Resource topics included Food Science, Human Nutrition, Food Service, Textiles, Home Care and other consumer topics. Since that time, the Center has grown to be of valuable assistance to Kansas State University Extension Specialists in those areas.