← Free kitchen toolsFree fermentation brine calculator

Calculate fermentation brine salt by weight — without percentage guessing.

Choose how your recipe defines its percentage, enter the vegetables and water, and get the exact salt weight. Total-weight ferment and water-only brine maths are kept deliberately separate.

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Choose the maths

What does the percentage mean?

Enter weights in

For kitchen brine maths, 1 ml water is treated as approximately 1 g.

Quick percentage:

These are maths shortcuts, not a claim that one percentage is right or safe for every ferment. Follow the process or tested recipe you are using.

Salt to add
Weigh out25 g0.88 oz

Total weight · 2.5% of 1 kg

1000 g × 2.5% = 25 g salt
Total weight

Salt is a percentage of the vegetables plus any added water. Useful for weight-based vegetable ferments and dry-salted ferments.

Fermentation reality check

The calculator can check your arithmetic. It cannot validate your preservation process.

  • With no added water, this is dry-salting maths: the salt percentage is based on the vegetable weight.
  • Weigh salt rather than measuring it by spoon: crystal size and salt type make volume measurements inconsistent.
  • Do not arbitrarily reduce the salt in a tested fermented-pickle or sauerkraut recipe. Salt affects both the fermentation and the finished texture.
  • Keep fermenting vegetables submerged as your recipe directs. For shelf-stable or canned pickles, use a tested preservation recipe rather than inventing the acid/salt proportions here.
NCHFP fermentation guidance ↗University of Minnesota fermentation guide ↗
Why two percentage modes?

Because 3% can mean two very different amounts of salt.

If you have 1 kg of vegetables and 500 g of water, a 3% total-weight calculation uses 1.5 kg as its base and gives 45 g salt. A 3% water-only brine uses just the 500 g water and gives 15 g salt.

Neither convention is automatically “the right one.” The important thing is knowing which convention your recipe or fermentation method is using before you calculate.

Total weight(veg + water) × %
Water-only brinewater × %
Common brine maths

Use the percentage your recipe calls for.

Working from cups or ounces?Convert the recipe measurements first, then weigh the salt accurately.
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