Making

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Brine - Making

This page is divided into the following topics:

1. General
2. Making Saturated Brine
3. Making Non-Saturated Brine
4. Brine Tables

General

Many cheese making procedures, when using brine for salting, call for brine between 18 & 23% salt. This is because:

1. The range of brine resistent spoilage and pathogen type microorganisms that can survive in brine increases significantly at less than 16% salt. Weak brines are notorious sources of contamination and thus if used, should be disposed of after using and not re-used. Weak brines also result in less moisture loss from the cheese surface, resulting in several possible defects:
• As less salt, the body of the cheese will be higher water content and thus weaker and softer than desired.
• Initially soft/swollen cheese from less brine inhibition and a slimy, greasy, or “melting” surface of the newly formed cheese.
• As less salt in the cheese, the acidity development will be less retarded, resulting in higher acidity (lower pH) will favour the growth of spoilage organisms. For aged type cheeses you can get sticky and discoloured rind patches, varying from straw to bright orange, red or brown. Also, the surface will be prone to show growths of the black or grey mucor molds (poille de chat).
2. Brines above 23% salt increases the risk that moisture will be lost too rapidly from the surface of the cheese. This can result in a very dehydrated layer which may hinder or reduce the further uptake of salt into the body of the cheese to reach the correct % salt in cheese, depending on cheese type.

However, some home type cheese making recipes call for brining with saturated (typically 26% salt at 60°F/15°C) brines. This is because:

1. Saturated brines are easier to make and maintain.
2. They provide an easy standard against which future cheese making batches can be measured.

Freshly made brines, will when first used for brining a cheese, will exhibit cat ion exchange whereby the calcium and hydrogen ions in the cheese surface will transfer to the brine until the brine and cheese reaches equilibrium. This transfer will result in the casein in the cheese surface to absorb water and swell leaving a soft slimy layer that in aged cheeses leads to rind rot during aging. To mitigate this transfer:

1. Acidify the new brine to a pH of ~5.0, or roughly the same pH as the cheese, most common acid is acetic (vinegar), second choice is citric acid.
2. Add ~0.1% food grade CaCl2 to the brine.

Making Saturated Brine

To make a saturated salt solution:

1. Boil amount of water you want to make into brine and pour into brine tank.
2. Add roughly 1 part non-iodized NaCl salt for 4 parts boiled water.
3. Stir until salt is fully dissolved.
4. Allow brine to cool to ~60°F/15.6°C application temperature or lower if storing. This will result in some salt precipitated back out of solution, demonstrating saturation.
5. Add enough vinegar to reach a pH of 5 or to roughly equalize pH with that of cheese, typically 1 teaspoon per US gallon / 1.33 ml per liter water of standard 5% white (clear) vinegar.
6. Add 0.1% CaCl2 to reduce cat ion exchange, typically 1 tablespoon/US gallon / 4 ml/liter water of 30% CaCl2 solution.

Making Non-Saturated Brine

To make non-saturated Sodium Chloride brine:

1. Pour amount of cool ~60°F/15.6°C water into brine tank that you want to make into brine.
2. Choose your desired % Brine from column #1 of the table below.
3. Determine the corresponding weight of non-iodized NaCl salt you need per unit of water from column #2 or #3.
4. Scale up the weight of table salt to your volume.
5. Weigh that amount of salt, pour into water, and stir until dissolved.
6. Add enough vinegar to reach a pH of 5 or to roughly equalize pH with that of cheese, typically 1 teaspoon per US gallon / 1.33 ml per liter water of standard 5% white (clear) vinegar.
7. Add 0.1% CaCl2 to reduce cat ion exchange, typically 1 tablespoon/US gallon / 4 ml/liter water of 30% CaCl2 solution.

Notes:

• % weight of brine means % of total brine is salt, i.e. if you put dissolve 1 kg of salt in 5 liters of water, the brine will weigh 6 kg and you will have 1/6 = 16.7% brine. Example Metric Calculation: Say you want to make 5 liters of 16% brine. Table says 0.1905 kg salt/liter water for ~16% brine. Thus combine 5 liters water and 5 x 0.1905 = 0.9525 kg salt and stir until dissolved. Example American Units Calculation: Say you want to make 2 US gallons of 10% brine. Table says 0.1111 pounds salt/US gallon of water for ~10% brine. Thus combine 2 US gallons water and 2 x 0.1111 = 0.2222 pounds salt and stir until dissolved.
• When salt is dissolved in water, it makes the resulting volume of brine slightly bigger depending on the amount of salt. For example the above 16% brine will be about 5% larger volume that the original amount of water used.
• A very fresh egg will float in a 20% solution and this is a very reliable method in home-production.

Brine Tables

The table below is at standard conditions of 60°F/15.6°C. Table only goes to 26% as at 26.395% brine is fully saturated (at 60°F) and any additional salt will not dissolve.

% NaCl Salt	kg NaCl Salt / liter Water	pound NaCl Salt / US gallon Water
0	0	0
2	0.0204	0.17
4	0.0417	0.347
6	0.0638	0.532
8	0.0870	0.724
10	0.1111	0.925
12	0.1364	1.136
14	0.1628	1.356
16	0.1905	1.586
18	0.2195	1.828
20	0.2500	2.082
22	0.2820	2.349
24	0.3158	2.630
26	0.3513	2.926