Mike Flaminio wrote:
Thank you for your insight. While I didn't state it, botulism is my
main concern. I didn't test the pH, although that was one intent of
the lemon. I've got a quality pH test kit (designed for water
treatment) for my aquarium. I could easily add lemon to reach the
desired pH. Provided I maintain a good pH and pressure cook, would
that be sufficient?

I'm not a canner, so I'm learning on this front too. What would be the
best procedure for this? I thought when you canned jars, air was
pushed out. What would happen if I pressure cooked capped bottles?

They may explode, or even more likely blow the caps off. Are you a beer
brewer by any chance?

What I would do, is sanitize the bottles and caps using a high-strength
brewer's method, probably using iodophor. This stuff needs to be rinsed
like crazy so I would probably boil the bottles and caps. I would also
boil the tea to make sure that it wasn't contaminated.

Then, I would proceed to fill and cap while hot to minimize
contamination risk.

I guess you could do this canning-style by heating the filled bottles in
a water bath then capping with (sanitized) caps.

I brew mead and soda using similar methods. I don't know how a
yeast-innoculated fluid relates to a non-living tea though.

IMHO, this is a lot of work and I'd probably just make a big batch of
concentrate and freeze it :-)

-ben