Water Glassing Eggs: The Complete Jar Guide (How Many Eggs Fit in Each Size)

Water glassing is the old-school method homesteaders use to keep fresh eggs shelf-stable for 12 to 18 months — no refrigerator, no freezer, just a jar, pickling lime, and water. It's been working since the 1800s, and it's having a well-deserved revival. Here's the part most guides gloss over: the jar you choose matters as much as the method.

How many eggs fit in each jar size?

• Half gallon (64 oz) wide mouth: 16–18 eggs. The most popular starter size — one jar holds about a week and a half of a small flock's laying.
• 1 gallon wide mouth: 32–36 eggs. The workhorse. Holds a month of eggs from a few hens and still fits on a pantry shelf.
• 2 gallon wide mouth: 65–70 eggs. For serious flocks and serious preppers — a whole season's surplus in one vessel.

Why wide mouth is non-negotiable

You'll be lowering eggs in pointy-side down, one at a time, and eventually reaching back in to retrieve them from lime water. A narrow-neck jar turns that into surgery. A true wide-mouth opening lets your whole hand in — which is also why our half gallon and 1 gallon wide-mouth jars are the sizes homesteaders standardized on for this exact job.

The recipe (it's simpler than you think)

1. Mix 1 ounce of pickling lime per quart of filtered water (distilled or spring water — chlorinated tap water can interfere).
2. Whisk until fully dissolved. The solution looks cloudy — that's correct.
3. Add clean, unwashed, farm-fresh eggs pointy-side down. Unwashed matters: the natural bloom on a just-laid egg is the seal that makes this work. Store-bought eggs are washed and won't preserve safely.
4. Keep eggs fully submerged with about 2 inches of solution above them.
5. Seal with an airtight lid, store in a cool, dark spot, and rinse eggs well before using.

The airtight lid question

Evaporation is the quiet enemy of a year-long preservation project — if the water level drops below the eggs, exposed eggs spoil. A genuinely airtight lid (metal with a liner, or a gasketed wooden or swing-top lid) keeps the solution stable for the full 12–18 months. Every jar in our wide-mouth mason collection seals airtight, and many are made in the USA — which the homestead crowd tends to appreciate as much as we do.

Quick answers

Can I use any glass jar? Food-safe glass with an airtight lid and a wide mouth, yes. Avoid plastic (lime solution is alkaline and you're storing food in it for a year) and avoid narrow necks.

How long do water glassed eggs last? 12–18 months stored cool and dark, fully submerged.

Do the eggs taste different? Properly done, fresh-cracked water glassed eggs are remarkably close to fresh — older ones are best for baking.

What if my jar breaks in shipping? If it's one of ours: we replace it free. One email, one photo, no returns — that's the Kitchentoolz Promise.

Kitchentoolz is a family-run glass company in Lakewood, NJ. We make the big jars — half gallon to 2.5 gallon — with real airtight seals, many made in the USA. See the full lineup in our Jar Size Guide.