Brine Calculator

1. Using the brine calculator
2. Salt brine percentage calculations
• How to calculate 3% brine?
• How much salt for 1L of water?
• How to achieve 2% salinity?
3. Wet brine vs dry brine meat
4. Equilibrium brining vs gradient brining
5. Lacto-fermenting vegetables
• Brine percentage for pickles

    Using the brine calculator

The brine calculator is versatile but also easy to use. There are two main use-cases:

• Estimate how much salt is needed given a target brine percentage and water volume.
• Estimate the amount of salt required to achieve a target salinity level of the final product.

If you want to make a salt brine solution of a given percentage, say 2% brine, the only other required input is the amount of water you will be using. Once you enter that, the salt to water ratio makes it possible for our salt brine calculator to find the amount of salt needed to properly preserve and/or season your food.

In both scenarios, if you are unsure of the target salt brine or the suitable level of final salinity, you can choose whether you are salt brining a vegetable or meat, and what kind, and the calculator will automatically fill in the suitable level for you. For example, if you want to prepare corned beef, select "Meat", then "Beef" and the type of brining process you prefer. For wet brine the target salinity is 1%, and once you specify the weight of the meat and water you can learn how much salt is needed. For dry-cured salt beef just specify the amount of meat to learn how much salt to use.

Importantly, the percentages recommended for wet brine for different meat types assume 40% water to meat ratio and they are not to be taken as rules. Consider your own taste, how the meat or vegetables will be served, and other factors to determine the appropriate salinity level and therefore salt to water ratio for your brine solution.

    Salt brine percentage calculations

Brine is by definition just salt water: a highly concentrated water solution of common salt. Once it is known what salt percentage the brine solution should have, it is easy to find out how much salt is needed to prepare a given amount of brine. Here are some example brine solution calculations.

How to calculate 3% brine?

Start by measuring the weight of the water you will be using. Ideally you want to measure it by weight (ounces, pounds, grams or kilograms), but if you prefer to use volume units such as liters, gallons, fluid ounces, or cups. For example, with 2 pounds of water, a 3% brine would require 3% · 2 lb = 3/100 * 32oz = 96 / 100 = 0.96 oz or about one ounce of salt for two pounds of water. Here is how to calculate this using our salt brining calculator.

How much salt for 1L of water?

Using the metric system is identical, even if we complicate the task by using volume measurements. Say you want to prepare 1 litre of salt brine solution with a concentration of 2%. To do that, first convert liters to grams, in this case since 1l of water weighs roughly 1kg or 1,000 grams. Then multiply by 2%: 2/100 · 1,000 g = 20 g. To get 2% salt brine from 1l of water you need to add roughly 20 g of salt.

How to achieve 2% salinity?

When the target salinity of the end product is of interest, it is important to include the meat or vegetables in the baseline weight. For example, to achieve 1% salinity of a given vegetable, first measure the weight of the vegetable and the water. Say their combined weight is 2 kg, of which 1.4 kg are the vegetables and 0.6 kg is water. To get the target 1% salt level, multiply 2,000 g by 1% which gives the answer of 20 g of salt needed. Note that the brine percentage in this case is much higher since we only have about 600 g of water, of which the 20 grams of salt represent 3.33% (20 is 3.33% of 600).

    Wet brine vs dry brine meat

Meat can be cured in two main ways, namely through brine curing and dry curing. Dry meat curing is preferred for smaller pieces of meat such as slices of bacon, hams, and ground meat. With dry curing there is no water so the salt brine percentage is applied to just the amount of meat. E.g. if you have 1 pound of bacon and you want to reach 2% salinity, just multiply 2% by 1 pound (16 oz) to get that you need about 1/3 oz (9.1g) to dry-cure that amount of bacon.

With wet curing, a.k.a. sweet pickle cure, the meat is injected or soaked with the salt brine. If you soak, make sure to keep the meat fully submerged by applying a fermentation weight if necessary, for optimal results. To estimate how much salt is needed to prepare a wet brine for a meat, it is important to weigh the meat and water together, then apply the brine percentage. For example, a 1% salt brine for chicken which weighs 2 kg with the water it is submerged in, would required 1% · 2,000 g = 20 g of salt (1 kg = 1,000 g).

    Equilibrium brining vs gradient brining

Meat can be equilibrium brined or gradient brined. With equilibrium brining the salt percentage is low and the brining time is a few days to a few weeks to allow the salt in the brine solution to work its way through the layers of meat. The suggested levels in our brine calculator when you select a given type of meat assume equilibrium brining. It should be noted that both dry equilibrium curing and wet brine equilibrium curing are valid approaches to curing meat.

Gradient brining uses brine with very high concentration of salt, typically 6% or more, with the goal of killing any bacteria on the surface of the meat. It takes much less time, quickly flavours the meat and is more convenient, but the resulting effect is not as uniform or as effective as with the longer-taking equilibrium brine method.

    Lacto-fermenting vegetables

Pickling vegetables, a.k.a. vegetable lacto-fermentation is done similarly to how meat is wet brined. The vegetables are submerged in pickling brine, as salt brine is sometimes referred to, sealed tight, and left to ferment for a while. The salt to water ratio in the brining solution is something you can use in our calculator to easily determine how much salt is needed to ferment.

Brine percentage for pickles

The classic vegetables subject to salt brining are pickles, which is where the term "pickling brine" likely originates. In our tool we suggest a salt to water ratio of 3.5% for pickles and other cucumbers. That is, you will need 35 g of salt per 1 l of water.