How do I calculate a salt brine percentage?

Most fermenting and brining recipes set the brine strength as a percentage of the water weight, where one litre of water weighs 1000 grams. So a 3 percent brine in 2 litres of water needs 2000 times 0.03, which is 60 grams of salt. Weigh the salt rather than measuring by spoon, because salt crystals vary a lot in density.

What brine percentage should I use?

For lacto fermenting vegetables a 2 to 3 percent brine is typical, firmer vegetables and warmer weather sit around 3.5 to 5 percent, and a wet brine for meat or poultry is often 5 to 8 percent. Follow your recipe, since the right strength depends on what you are preserving and how long for.

Is brine percentage measured by water weight or total weight?

Recipes usually mean salt as a percentage of the water weight, which is the figure this calculator uses. The salinity of the finished brine, salt divided by the total weight of salt plus water, is slightly lower: a 3 percent brine by water weight is about 2.9 percent salinity of the whole solution.

Brine Calculator

This brine calculator works out exactly how much salt to weigh out for a brine at whatever strength your recipe asks for. Enter the volume of water and the brine percentage, and it returns the grams of salt to add, the salt per litre so you can scale a batch up or down in your head, the total weight of the finished brine, and the salinity of the whole solution for when a recipe measures it that way. Brine strength for fermenting and brining is almost always given as a percentage of the water weight, where one litre of water weighs 1000 grams, so a 3 percent brine in one litre needs 30 grams of salt. The defaults set a 3 percent brine in two litres of water, a common strength for lacto fermenting vegetables like cucumbers, beans or cabbage. Push it towards 5 percent for a wet brine on pork or chicken, drop it to 2 percent for a milder ferment, and use the salt per litre figure to top up a jar without recalculating from scratch. Weigh your salt on kitchen scales rather than measuring by the spoon, because flaky, fine and coarse salts pack very differently and a level teaspoon of one is not the same weight as another. It works for any salt type, since the calculator deals in grams.

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Water volume

litres

Brine strength (% of water weight)

60 g

salt to add for the brine

Salt per litre30 g/L

Total brine weight2060 g

Salinity of solution2.91%

Brine strength here is a percentage of the water weight, the convention most fermenting and brining recipes use. Weigh salt on scales for accuracy, since salt crystals vary in density. Estimate only; follow your recipe for food safety.

How it works

One litre of water weighs 1000 grams, so the water weight in grams is the volume in litres times 1000. The salt to add is that water weight times the brine percentage divided by 100. Salt per litre is simply the percentage times ten grams, a handy shortcut for scaling. The total brine weight adds the salt back to the water, and the salinity of the whole solution is the salt divided by that total, which comes out a little below the by-water percentage because the salt adds to the total weight.

Worked example

For a 3 percent ferment in 2 litres of water, the water weighs 2000 grams. The salt is 2000 times 3 divided by 100, which is 60 grams, or 30 grams per litre. The finished brine weighs 2000 plus 60, which is 2060 grams. Its salinity as a share of the whole solution is 60 divided by 2060, about 2.91 percent, slightly under the 3 percent measured against the water alone.

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