How to Make Pickles in Bulk, With a Scaling Calculator

To make pickles in bulk, write the cucumbers and brine as percentages of the jar, pack every quart by weight, and make the brine by the batch from the same percentages. Shelf-stable pickles are an acidified food, so the vinegar share, the heat treatment and the pH check come from a process a process authority set, and stay the same at any size. Done this way, a pickle maker that put up 7 quarts at a time makes about 190 in a day, and the cost of a quart falls from $11.62 to $3.60. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the loss, what a quart costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.

The short version

• Write cucumbers and brine as percentages of the jar.
• Pack every quart by weight: cucumbers first, brine to the line.
• Weigh calcium chloride into the brine to keep spears crisp.
• Keep the vinegar share and heat step the process set.
• Check and record the pH of every batch.
• Weigh what comes out and use your real loss to cost a quart.
• TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.

The recipe, by percentage

Sugar River Pickle Co., the made-up pickle maker in Belleville, Wisconsin, I use in these examples, put up 7 quarts of dill spears at a time at home before moving to a licensed kitchen and a co-op order. The recipe, weighed:

The 400 pounds cost $236.44 in ingredients, most of it cucumbers; the water costs nothing, and the jar costs about as much as everything in it. The calcium chloride, 1.5 grams a quart, went in when the co-op said the spears were going soft, in calcium chloride in pickles.

The steps, at 400 pounds

1. Sort and wash the cucumbers. Same size in the same batch, blossom ends trimmed, spears cut to the jar's height.
2. Make the brine by the batch. Vinegar, water, salt and the calcium chloride weighed for 48 quarts and heated.
3. Pack by weight. Garlic, dill and spices into each jar, then the cucumbers to a set weight, then hot brine to the line.
4. Heat to the process. Jars lidded and heated in the pasteurizer or canner to the time and temperature the process sets, two loads a batch.
5. Check the pH. An equilibrated jar from each batch tested below the process's limit and written on the batch. How to test is in pH testing for acidified foods.
6. Weigh what comes out. Leftover brine and trimmed ends come to about 5% of what was weighed out.
7. Label with a lot code. Every quart carries the batch's lot and date.

The run takes about 12 hours of labor, four batches of 48 quarts.

What a quart costs at each size

Cucumbers by the bushel from a grower cut the ingredients by more than half, and the labor falls from 21 minutes a quart to 3.8. The jar, lid and label become the biggest share of a quart's cost. When a co-packer starts to make sense is in pickle co-packer, and the start in how to start a pickle business.

The process, every batch

An acidified food is made under a process filed with FDA, supervised by someone trained at an approved school, and each batch's pH is recorded and kept (21 CFR 108.25, 114.10, 114.100). A bigger batch doesn't change the process; a new recipe, even one with calcium chloride added, goes back to the process authority first.

Get the calculator

Download the pickle scaling calculator. Two sheets: scale the recipe, where you type each ingredient's percentage and cost a pound and the raw mix you want, and each ingredient's weight for the run fills in, with the batches, pasteurizer loads, what comes out after the brine and trim loss, the quarts it fills and the cost of each quart; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average brine and trim loss. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Dill spears, bread-and-butter chips and pickled beets, batches all summer, cucumbers from three growers, and a co-op asking about one jar. A sheet can say how much brine a run needs, but not which grower's cucumbers went into which batch, or what each batch's pH was.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield.

The recipe in the units you use. A recipe holds each ingredient by weight, with cucumbers bought by the bushel and used by the pound, and the cost of every quart comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the cucumbers, vinegar and jars on the shelf allow.

Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of cucumbers it used, and gets a lot of its own for the quarts, with how much came out good, how much was rejected and the labor minutes.

Yield checked from history. From your own batch history, TaroStack says whether a recipe yields what it claims and which ingredient's quantity is off, so a brine and trim loss that creeps up shows in the numbers. A bushel of cucumbers gone soft is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.

Recipes, batches, lots and yield are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How many quarts of pickles does a bushel of cucumbers make?

In the example, about 1.3 pounds of cucumbers go into each quart of spears, so a 48-pound bushel fills about 36 quarts before trim; whole pickles pack fewer.

How do you make brine for a large batch of pickles?

Weigh the vinegar, water, salt and any calcium chloride at their percentages for the batch, the same proportions as the recipe your process was set for.

Do I need a process authority to sell pickles?

Shelf-stable pickles are an acidified food, so their process comes from a process authority and is filed with FDA.

How much does it cost to make pickles in bulk?

In the example, $3.60 a quart in a 400-pound run, against $11.62 in a kitchen batch.