About This Product
Check the salinity of your brine with a custom-made Salometer (Brine Hydrometer), Salinometer, Salimeter.
This essential tool tests the salinity of the salted cheeses to help ensure a consistent and optimal percentage of salt in the final cheese. The glass Salometer for sale indicates salt saturation at both 0-26 degrees of saturation and 0-100% of NaCl by weight.
For a ‘light brine,’ look for 10% of salt by weight or 3 degrees on the salt brine hydrometer. A ‘heavy brine’ would be close or at total saturation or 25 degrees. Both light and heavy brine are marked with a green line on the salometer.
The scale is in both degrees and salt percentage.
A sample brine procedure for a semi-hard cheese like Gouda at a 25% saturation of salt. For brines, salt should be non-iodized.
- Add salt to the brine until 75 appears on the Salometer
- Subtract the 75 from 100 to achieve 25
- Add 2lbs (900 grams) salt to one gallon of clean water before boiled and cooled
- Use ½ tsp citric acid and 1 tbs (14.7ml) liquid calcium chloride or 1tsp (4.9ml) white vinegar to bring the brine’s pH to 5.4-5.2
Salometer, Test Jar and Sampler:
Three tools can help test the brine for your cheeses and can be purchased together or separately. For small brine batches, these tools may be even more helpful.
- Test Jar to hold a small measurement of the brine (10in/25.4cm length)
- Brine sampler to pull out a small amount of brine for use with the test jar (15in/38cm length, 2.5in/6.3cm bulb width)
- Salometer has saturation marks from 0-100% (12in/30.4cm length)
When used, the test jar and brine sampler keep the salometer from having direct contact with the general brine. The sampler is similar to an eye dropper and extracts a certain amount of the brine to test at 1/4oz marked intervals. The salt percentage or percentage of saturation is read at 50-60f (15.5c) on the Salometer for salt brine with 1% divisions. Additional cheesemaking tools like cheese cloth and utensils can aid in your cheesemaking endeavors.
Use non-iodized cheese salt when making brine. Brine Calculator Chart
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