Your Vinegar's Acidity Matters When Making Homemade Pickles

Are you feeling tired of store-bought pickles and want to make your own? Doing so means you can enhance them with your own flavors and seasonings. You can also make them in bulk or in smaller batches. But, due to the complex nature of pickling foods, specific items are needed to make a safe and delicious pickled treat. However, once you get the science down, you can pickle anything from cucumbers to tangy red onions.

First, you must start with vinegar. You can use any type of vinegar to pickle food — including white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and balsamic vinegar — as long as it falls into a specific percentage of acidity. To safely make homemade pickles, or really anything pickled, your vinegar must have an acidity of at least 5%, but no more than 7%. The acidity of vinegar increases the acidity of the pickled food, ultimately eliminating bacteria and extending its shelf life for roughly six months to two years.

The acidity percentage on vinegar bottles indicates how many grams of acetic acid are in every 100 milliliters. Acid levels can also be referred to as grain. To convert the grain number to the acid percentage, you need to divide the grain by 10 or multiply the acidity percentage by 10. Therefore, 5% acidity equals 50 grains. Once you have your 5% acid, you are ready to grab your pickling salt and make your expert-approved crunchy homemade pickles.

Due to the specificity of the acidity percentage, people are encouraged to avoid using homemade vinegar to pickle food since they are often unable to test the acidity. Don't be afraid of accidentally picking up vinegar with acidity levels over 7% at the grocery store; these are typically reserved for household cleaning or agriculture and are found in those sections — just don't mix them up at home. If you decide to use a vinegar with a lower acidity for its unique flavor, such as rice wine vinegar or sherry vinegar, it is safe to do so as long as you refrigerate the pickled food and eat it promptly.