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Thanks all. Jarring hot shortly. I do think the moisture from condensation affected my jam, obviously the spores would have been there but moisture helped them grow. I wet sterilise my jar lids, perhaps that doesn’t help.
Its important to understand the role of sugar content in preventing mould growth. High sugar content presents a high osmotic pressure on the fungal cells preventing their survival -that's why we make jam in the first place! But equally, this is why low sugar content jams rapidly become mouldy once they are opened. If you have condensation on the jam, the water can be at a low enough sugar concentration to support mould growth. The air in your kitchen will have enough mould spores in it that you inevitably trap these in the jar when you put the lids on. Zapping the loosely closed jars (or steaming them in a bain marie) helps to kill these spores. Placing a paper or wax disc on the surface simply stops there being a wet medium for the spores to grow in.
But the surface of jam is very different to the surface of your chutney. Jam will set, allowing the possibility of a layer of lower sugar content medium on the surface after it cools. Chutney shouldn't set to the same extent, so any condensation that forms should be able to merge into the total volume of chutney rather than forming as a lower acidity layer on top, so you should see less of a problem with mould growth on chutney.
But equally, this is why low sugar content jams rapidly become mouldy once they are opened. If you have condensation on the jam, the water can be at a low enough sugar concentration to support mould growth. The air in your kitchen will have enough mould spores in it that you inevitably trap these in the jar when you put the lids on. Zapping the loosely closed jars (or steaming them in a bain marie) helps to kill these spores. Placing a paper or wax disc on the surface simply stops there being a wet medium for the spores to grow in.
