How to Make Haskap Jam in Canada (Honeyberry)

Haskap is about as Canadian as a berry gets. The modern varieties were bred at the University of Saskatchewan, the plants shrug off −40 °C winters, and the fruit ripens in late June — earlier than strawberries across much of the country, which makes it the first jam of the season for a lot of Prairie and northern gardeners.

This guide covers both routes: easy no-risk freezer jam, and shelf-stable water-bath jam. As always, we don’t invent processing times — for the water-bath number, use the tested recipe printed in your pectin box together with the altitude-adjustments guide.

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What haskap tastes like

Somewhere between blueberry, raspberry, and blackcurrant — sweet up front, distinctly tart on the finish. The berries are elongated and deep blue, softer than blueberries, and they stain like crazy (wear an apron). That natural tartness is good news for preserving: it means the fruit is acidic. The bottled lemon juice we add helps the pectin set and steadies a batch whose berries vary from picking to picking.

Start here: freezer jam (the easy, no-risk route)

If you’ve never made jam, do this one — and if you came here looking for a haskap freezer jam recipe, this is it. There is no canner, no processing time to source, and no botulism risk, because nothing is stored at room temperature. It is the one haskap route this site can take you through end to end.

1. Crush about 5 cups of haskap.
2. Mix with sugar and freezer-jam pectin exactly per that pectin’s box (the ratios differ from regular pectin).
3. Ladle into clean freezer containers, leaving 1.5 cm headspace.
4. Rest as the box directs (usually 24 hours at room temperature to set), then freeze.

Keeps about 12 months frozen, 3 weeks in the fridge after thawing. Freezer jam keeps the bright fresh-berry colour and flavour that cooking dulls — and haskap’s flavour is worth keeping bright.

Water-bath haskap jam

For shelf-stable jars and gifting.

What you need

• About 5 cups crushed haskap (fresh or frozen — frozen works well)
• Granulated sugar — the amount your pectin box’s recipe specifies
• 2 tbsp bottled lemon juice — this quantity is ours, not a published figure; see the FAQ below
• Optional pectin — Bernardin Original powder or Certo liquid, for a firmer set
• 5–6 × 250 mL Bernardin jars, fresh SNAP lids, bands
• Standard canning kit — jar lifter, headspace tool, funnel, water-bath canner, ladle (which canner to buy)

Method

1. Prep the canner and jars. Warm jars in simmering water.
2. Crush the berries to about 5 cups; stir in the bottled lemon juice.
3. Cook: add the pectin, bring to a full rolling boil, add the sugar, boil hard 1 minute — or per the box, in the order the box gives. Confirm with the cold-plate set test.
4. Jar: ladle into hot 250 mL jars leaving 0.5 cm headspace, wipe rims, apply fresh SNAP lids fingertip-tight.
5. Process in the boiling water bath for the time in your pectin box’s tested recipe for 250 mL jars, adjusted for your altitude band.
6. Cool 24 hours; confirm each lid sealed.

Do I need pectin?

Haskap has some natural pectin but less than apples or crabapples. For a jam you intend to can, the answer is yes.

Haskap jam with pectin is firm, classic and spreadable, and the box recipe does the deciding for you. Which box matters less than following it exactly:

• Bernardin Original powdered pectin goes in with the crushed fruit before the sugar.
• Certo liquid pectin goes in at the end, after the sugar and the full rolling boil.
• Bernardin No-Sugar-Needed pectin is its own recipe, not a substitution into either of the above.

Getting that order wrong is the commonest reason a pectin batch fails to set, and it is the one thing the box is unambiguous about. The boil is short — a full rolling boil for 1 minute, or whatever the box says.

A no-pectin haskap jam is a real thing to cook, and we do not publish one. The Complete Book of Home Preserving’s traditional no-added-pectin jam covers a class of berries it names — blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, dewberries, gooseberries, loganberries, raspberries, youngberries or a combination of them, at p.21 — and haskap is not among them. We searched bernardin.ca on 11 September 2026 and found no haskap recipe of any kind. So we give no sugar quantity and no cook time for a no-pectin batch, and without a tested processing time we cannot tell you how long to water-bath the result. Cook one if you like the softer set, and freeze it.

If a batch will not set, see why didn’t my jam set — re-boil with a little more pectin, or call it a gorgeous syrup.

Corrected 17 September 2026: this page used to publish a second, no-pectin method — combine the crushed berries with about 4 cups of sugar and simmer 20 to 25 minutes to a cold-plate test — in the speakable answer, an FAQ, the recipe card, the method and this section. No source we hold publishes a no-added-pectin haskap jam, and we cannot give a tested processing time for a recipe nobody tested, so those figures are removed. Corrected again 18 September 2026: the 2 tbsp of bottled lemon juice was credited with bringing the jam into the safe acid range, in the speakable answer, an FAQ and the body. No source we could find publishes an acid quantity for haskap jam, so that warrant was ours and has gone; the quantity stays, labelled as ours. A sentence calling it “the same conservative rule we use for Saskatoon berries and tomatoes” has gone too — Bernardin’s Saskatoon figure belongs to their Saskatoon recipe and does not extend to a fruit their berry lists exclude. The yield and the prep and cook times on the recipe card were invented and are gone. The commercial-pectin quantities above are unchanged.

What about maple syrup? Swapping part of the sugar for maple syrup is a common Canadian variation and it is a question of taste rather than safety — but syrup behaves differently from sugar at canning temperature, and Bernardin has no tested water-bath time for a maple-sweetened jam. Keep it for a freezer batch, where there is no processing time to honour.

Haskap jelly is a different product and this page is not it. Jelly is made from strained juice with no pulp, which changes the pectin and sugar ratios and the yield, so you cannot run a jam recipe through a jelly bag and call it jelly. We have no tested haskap jelly. If jelly is what you want, red currant jelly is the closest thing here in acidity and set behaviour, and crabapple jelly is the one that sets on the fruit’s own pectin.

Does Bernardin have a haskap recipe?

No. Their site was checked on 11 September 2026 and they publish no haskap recipe — not a jam, not a jelly, not a syrup. This site’s own rule is that we do not publish a processing time we cannot trace, so we are not going to give you one for a recipe that does not exist.

The book’s two berry jams exclude it as well, and that is worth knowing before you substitute. The Complete Book of Home Preserving (ISBN 978-0-7788-0137-5) enumerates the berries each of its berry jams was tested with — page 21 names blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, dewberries, gooseberries, loganberries, raspberries and youngberries; page 29 names blackberries, boysenberries, dewberries, loganberries, raspberries, youngberries and cooked black currants. Haskap is on neither list.

And do not borrow another berry’s time, which is the tempting move. Bernardin’s tested Berry Jelly recipe names the berries it was tested on, in the ingredient line itself: “raspberries, blackberries, boysenberries, youngberries, dewberries or loganberries.” Haskap is not among them. That list is the point — where Bernardin tests a class of berry they enumerate its members, so the list is the tested scope rather than a set of examples to reason outward from. A haskap batch processed to a raspberry recipe’s clock has been processed to a figure nobody tested it against.

So there are two honest routes, and neither needs a substitution:

• Freezer jam, above. No canner, no processing time, nothing to source. This is the route we can stand behind from start to finish.
• The tested recipe printed inside your pectin box, using its time for the fruit it names. A pectin box recipe is a real tested recipe, and it is the one published source for this that you physically have in your hand.

If your pectin box does not cover haskap, we cannot give you a water-bath time, and that is the end of the answer. Freeze the batch instead. If in doubt, throw it out.

Growing note

If you’re thinking of planting haskap, you need two compatible varieties for pollination, and the University of Saskatchewan’s releases (Aurora, Borealis, the Boreal series) are the Canadian benchmark. That’s a growing-season topic — our sister site GrowersGuide.ca is the place for variety selection and planting.

Lower-sugar and sugar-free options

Haskap is tart and boldly flavoured, so it shines with less sugar — a low-sugar batch tastes more like the berry and less like candy. Use Bernardin No-Sugar-Needed Pectin for a canned reduced- or no-sugar version, following the tested recipe on the box; the sugar in jam is for set and texture, not for the safety that acidity and processing provide. Haskap already skews soft-set, so expect a loose, spoonable jam with less sugar — lovely swirled into yogurt. The no-cook freezer route above works sugar-free too; see our freezer-jam guide for the full method.

Next steps

• How to make Saskatoon berry jam — the other great Prairie berry, same water-bath method (its processing time is its own, not haskap’s)
• How to make freezer jam — the no-canning route in detail
• Why didn’t my jam set? — the cold-plate test and salvage paths
• Canadian altitude adjustments — for your processing time
• Water-bath canning pillar — the full method