Canning vinegar pickles Q

In the past few years, I have relied heavily on my freezers. Also, not having planted cucumbers in my garden in the same time frame, my skills are very rusty. I wandered through the net and have found comments about not putting the pickles in a metal pot for hot packing them. The warnings I have seen mention a cloudiness to the liquid if it is heated in a metal pot. I no longer have any pots that are not metal. Enamel-coated pots are not in my immediate future.

Are there any actual dangers in heating the pickles in a metal pot?

Theoretically if you heat them in Aluminium you can end up with aluminium in the pickles. and you will damage the pot, but in stainless steel nothing will happen at all. In cast iron you may damage the pot but any iron that comes off will be good for you in the pickles rather than bad.

Once again, I came up with better search words after I asked for help from my Permie peeps.

This article cautions one to use non-reactive pots.

A non-reactive pan (pot) is made of:
   stainless steel
   enamelware
   glass

AND a reactive pot...

Leaches into the pickles, giving them a metallic taste. In other words, vinegar reacts with metal, and causes the metals to “leave” the pot and join the vinegar “party.”

Hmmm... This does sound vaguely familiar. I do have stainless steel pots. Yay! I don't have to wait until tomorrow!!

However, if you know of something else, please do chime in!

I have canned a lot of pickles. I only own stainless steel pots.

I have two pickle books so I looked in "The Complete Book of Pickles and Relishes". It says to use an enamel pan or stone crock to brine as copper and iron may discolor the pickles.

It talks about sterilizing and pasteurizing though not anything about what pan to use.

Have you looked at the USDA Guide to Canning that I posted a link to somewhere?  It is a free online book on canning.  It is also on the Book Review Grid.

To add to mine, I do all my pickling in metal pans, mostly stainless steel but I do also use aluminium, If I use the latter I never leave the vinegar sitting in it whereas with the stainless I will leave vinegar in the pan over night if I am planning on using the rest of it later.
My pickling involves boiling the vinegar/sugar/spices then adding whatever is to be pickled pre cooked if needed, bringing the entire thing up to the boil again and then splitting it into jars. the total time in the pan is never more than 30 minutes. The only exception is red cabbage which is always done in Stainless and needs to cook for several hours.

Thank you Skandi and Anne.

Just chiming in with my experience.  The stainless pot I use the most has aluminum rivets holding the handles on; the liquid regularly comes into contact with them for the duration of the pickling process.  The pot is over 20 years old and the rivets are stained and visibly pitted, but it's never affected the taste or texture of my high-acid foods.  I wouldn't use a regular aluminum pot for pickling, but apparently my mom did for years when she would make pickled zucchini (and stuff with tomatoes like sauce and stewed tomatoes) and said she never had an issue.  Back then, she had city water, whereas all my stuff is made with hard well water (super high in copper and some iron).

Even if traces of aluminum get into the pickles, I think you'd have to eat like a full jar of them every day for years to get the kind of buildup that causes problems.  I mean, soda is highly acidic and is stored in aluminum cans and, while problematic for other reasons, I've not heard of any aluminum toxicity among hardcore soda drinkers.