Sauerkraut is the easiest of all recipes to scale: it's cabbage and salt, and the salt is a percentage of the cabbage, about 2.2% by weight whether it's 5 pounds or 500. What changes at scale is the equipment, a commercial shredder and food-grade crocks or barrels, and the care of the fermentation: the temperature, the brine over the top, and a pH check before it's jarred. Done this way, a fermented foods maker that packed a gallon crock makes about 276 jars from a run, and the cost of a 16-ounce jar falls from $6.66 to $1.93. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the loss, what a jar costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.
The short version
- Salt at about 2.2% of the cabbage's weight, at any size.
- Shred on a commercial shredder, all to one thickness.
- Pack the crocks tight, with brine over the top and a weight on it.
- Ferment at 65 to 72°F for three to four weeks.
- Check the pH before jarring, and keep raw kraut cold.
- Weigh what comes out and use your real loss to cost a jar.
- TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.
The recipe, by percentage
Brightwater Ferments, the made-up fermented foods maker in Portland, Oregon, I use in these examples, packed sauerkraut a gallon crock at a time until a co-op ordered it by the case. The recipe, weighed:
| Ingredient | % of the mix | Kitchen batch, 5 lb | One batch, 150 lb | The run, 300 lb | Cost a lb, bought in bulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Green cabbage, cored and shredded | 97.6% | 4.88 lb | 146.4 lb | 292.8 lb | $0.45 |
| Sea salt, not iodized | 2.2% | 0.11 lb | 3.30 lb | 6.60 lb | $0.60 |
| Caraway seed | 0.2% | 0.01 lb | 0.30 lb | 0.60 lb | $5.00 |
| The whole mix | 100% | 5 lb | 150 lb | 300 lb |
The 300 pounds cost $138.72 in ingredients, nearly all cabbage. The salt is 6.6 pounds for the run, weighed, not measured by the cup: too little and the wrong bacteria grow first, too much and the kraut barely ferments. The kombucha side of the business is in kombucha business plan.
The steps, at 300 pounds
- Core and shred. Outer leaves off, cores out, shredded on a commercial shredder to one thickness.
- Weigh and salt. The shredded cabbage weighed and salted at 2.2%, with the caraway, and mixed until it gives up its juice.
- Pack the crocks. Packed down hard in 150-pound food-grade crocks, the brine rising over the top, a weight and a lid on it.
- Ferment. Three to four weeks at 65 to 72°F, checked every few days; scum skimmed, brine kept over the cabbage.
- Check the pH. Tasted and tested before jarring, well below 4.6 and often around 3.5; how to test is in pH testing for acidified foods.
- Jar it cold. Packed into jars with its brine, refrigerated, sold raw.
- Label with a lot code. Every jar carries the crock's lot, the date and "Keep refrigerated".
The run takes about 8 hours of labor, half of it on packing day and half on jarring day a month later.
What a jar costs at each size
| Per jar | Kitchen batch, 5 lb | Bulk run, 300 lb |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $1.13 (grocery prices) | $0.50 (bought in bulk) |
| Packaging | $1.20 | $0.85 |
| Labor at $20 an hour | $4.33 (13 min a jar) | $0.58 (1.7 min a jar) |
| Cost of a jar | $6.66 | $1.93 |
Cabbage by the 50-pound sack cuts the ingredients by half, and the shredder cuts the labor from 13 minutes a jar to about 2. The jar, lid and label become most of a jar's cost. Kimchi, its cousin, is in kimchi business plan.
Fermented, not acidified
Sauerkraut gets its acid from the fermentation, not from added vinegar, which puts it in a different place in the rules than a vinegar pickle; how that works is in acid food vs acidified food. Raw, unpasteurized kraut keeps fermenting in the jar, so it's kept cold and the lid gets room; a warm jar can push its lid.
Get the calculator
Download the sauerkraut 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 crocks, what comes out after the brine and trim loss, the jars it fills and the cost of each jar; 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
Plain, caraway and a beet kraut, crocks at different weeks of fermentation, and cabbage from two farms. A sheet can say how much salt a run needs, but not which crock is ready, which farm's cabbage is in it, or what its 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 cabbage bought by the 50-pound sack and used by the pound, and the cost of every jar comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the cabbage, salt and jars on the shelf allow.
Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of cabbage it used, and gets a lot of its own for the jars, 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 crock with mold on top is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients for Friday's run | Multiply, then check the shelf | What could I make right now |
| Which cabbage went into a run | Not written down | Lots recorded on the batch |
| The real brine and trim loss | Weighed now and then | Good and rejected on every batch |
| A crock that went bad | Thrown out, forgotten | Adjustment with a reason |
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.