Vinegar, water, salt and sugar for the amount of brine you need, scaled from seven tested NCHFP pickle recipes, with the acid level of the brine and a check of your own vinegar to water ratio.
Pickle Brine Calculator - Vinegar Pickle Brine Ratio
Vinegar, water, salt and sugar for the amount of brine you need, scaled from seven tested NCHFP pickle recipes, with the acid level of the brine and a check of your own vinegar to water ratio.
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Vinegar pickle brine, scaled from a tested recipe
Choose what you are pickling and how much liquid you need, and the pickle brine calculator scales the matching NCHFP recipe: cups of 5% vinegar and water, salt in your kind of salt, sugar, the vinegar to water ratio and its acid level. Type the ratio you were going to use and it tells you whether that is as acidic as the tested one.
Filling in the brine form
- Pickling - one of seven NCHFP recipes: quick dill pickles, dilled beans, beets, bell peppers, hot peppers, carrots, bread-and-butter pickles.
- Liquid needed - in cups, quarts or liters. The recipe is scaled by its vinegar plus water.
- Salt - canning or pickling salt as written, or table, Morton or Diamond Crystal kosher salt converted by weight.
- Vinegar acidity - the percentage on the label. Under 5% or unknown, the calculator stops.
- Your ratio - optional: the vinegar and water you planned, in any one unit.
The seven brines side by side
Per batch as NCHFP prints it. The acid column is the share of acetic acid in the vinegar and water before the vegetables go in, which is the number your own ratio is compared with.
| Recipe | 5% vinegar | Water | Vinegar : water | Acid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| quick dill pickles | 1 1/2 qt | 2 qt | 1 : 1.33 | 2.14% |
| dilled beans | 4 cups | 4 cups | 1 : 1 | 2.50% |
| pickled bell peppers | 3 cups | 3 cups | 1 : 1 | 2.50% |
| pickled beets | 4 cups | 2 cups | 1 : 0.50 | 3.33% |
| pickled hot peppers | 5 cups | 1 cup | 1 : 0.20 | 4.17% |
| pickled carrots | 5 1/2 cups | 1 cup | 1 : 0.18 | 4.23% |
| bread-and-butter pickles | 4 cups | none | vinegar only | 5.00% |
There is no single pickle brine ratio. Dill pickles run at about 2.1%, carrots at more than 4%, so a 1 : 1 brine that is fine for beans is too weak for beets.
Eight jars of brine, worked out
Dill pickles, the whole recipe. 3.5 quarts of liquid is a scale of exactly 1: 6 cups vinegar, 8 cups water, 1/2 cup canning salt (144 g), 1/4 cup sugar.
One quart for dill pickles. 1 3/4 cups vinegar, 2 1/4 cups water, 2.25 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp sugar.
Two quarts for dilled beans. Exactly the NCHFP batch: 4 cups each of vinegar and water, 1/2 cup salt, no sugar.
Two quarts for beets. 5 1/4 cups vinegar, 2 3/4 cups water, 2 tsp salt and 2 3/4 cups sugar. Beets are the sweet one.
Four cups for carrots. 3 1/2 cups vinegar and only 1/2 cup water, 1 1/4 cups sugar, 1.25 tsp salt.
Bell peppers with Morton kosher salt. One quart: 2 cups each of vinegar and water, 2 1/4 cups sugar, 1.25 tbsp of Morton (18 g, the same weight as the canning salt in the recipe).
A 1 : 3 brine for dill pickles. 1.25% acid against 2.14% in the tested liquid. The result says it is weaker and how much vinegar to add: 1.25 parts per 1 part of vinegar and 3 of water.
A 1 : 1 brine for beets. 2.50% against 3.33%: too weak for this recipe, although the same 1 : 1 is exactly right for beans.
Same salt, four different spoons
One quart of quick dill pickle liquid needs 41 g of salt whichever box you buy. The spoons change because kosher salt is lighter per spoon, so swapping one for one by the spoon changes the salt.
| Salt | Per quart of dill brine | Grams per teaspoon |
|---|---|---|
| canning or pickling salt | 2.25 tbsp | 6 |
| table salt | 2.25 tbsp | 6 |
| Morton kosher salt | 2.75 tbsp | 4.8 |
| Diamond Crystal kosher salt | 5 tbsp | 2.8 |
Rules that come with the vinegar
Five percent, from the store. NCHFP recommends white distilled or cider vinegar of 5% acidity (50 grain) and warns against vinegar of unknown acidity, which rules out homemade vinegar.
Do not dilute. The same page says not to alter vinegar, food or water proportions. A stronger vinegar is used in the same amounts, not watered down to match.
Salt is for taste here. For these fresh-pack pickles NCHFP says reduced or no salt is safe, with lower quality. Fermented pickles and sauerkraut are different: there the salt may not be cut.
The time belongs to the recipe. The processing time in the result is the one tested with that brine, those vegetables and those jars.
Pickle brine questions
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