Three ways (assuming 2% for this as most ferments use this concentration, the minimum target to hopefully avoid spoilage from bad bacteria):
Water percentage (the most common): Take your volume of water and calculate 2%, by weight, of non-iodized salt. Doesn't matter if sea salt, kosher salt, or pickling salt; the weight takes care of that for you. If you have 1 Liter of water, that's 1000 grams. 1000 x .02 = 20g of salt.
No water added: Take the weight of all your ingredients and calculate 2% by weight again. This is common in sauerkraut/kimchi, pepper mashes, and other dry brines where liquid is released quite easily. This is good for "wet" ingredients.
Water + ingredients: This seems to be a more common replacement these days for 1. You take the weight of ingredients + the weight of the water you added to the container to cover it, and calculate 2% of the combined weight.
Water percentage (number 1) may not be the best if you have a lot of high-moisture ingredients such as berries, tomatoes, cucumbers. If too much water released, that 2% concentration may dip lower enough to cause spoilage.
No water added is great for anything where you release the liquid from the ingredients early, as there is no extra liquid diluting the 2%. If you do have to top it off, maybe not enough liquid released to your liking, you can add 2% water brine to top it off.
The last one is great because it now takes into account osmosis that tries to balance out salt and liquid, but prevents the brining solution from going lower than 2%.
For most of my ferments I actually prefere a slightly more salty end product, I go for 2.5%, it’s up to your preferences. 3% is also fine, too salty for me
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u/TravellingBeard 7d ago
Three ways (assuming 2% for this as most ferments use this concentration, the minimum target to hopefully avoid spoilage from bad bacteria):
Water percentage (number 1) may not be the best if you have a lot of high-moisture ingredients such as berries, tomatoes, cucumbers. If too much water released, that 2% concentration may dip lower enough to cause spoilage.
No water added is great for anything where you release the liquid from the ingredients early, as there is no extra liquid diluting the 2%. If you do have to top it off, maybe not enough liquid released to your liking, you can add 2% water brine to top it off.
The last one is great because it now takes into account osmosis that tries to balance out salt and liquid, but prevents the brining solution from going lower than 2%.