How the method works
Sources, method, and what this site does when the documents disagree
A manual about food safety is only worth what its sources are worth, so this page names all of them and describes how they were read.
On this page
On this page
The Brine Ledger rests on a fixed shelf of public documents. Every number, every duration, every temperature, and every processing time printed anywhere on this site comes from one of them, and this page says which ones they are, who publishes them, and how they were read. All of them were checked against the live pages on September 6, 2026.
Thirty-nine documents from eight publishers
The shelf holds thirty-nine documents. They come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Office of the Federal Register, and four university extension services, Oregon State, Penn State, Colorado State and Clemson, with Michigan State consulted for produce availability. Nothing on this site is drawn from any other kind of source: no cookbook, no blog, no vendor sheet, no forum thread.
How the documents fit together
The corpus is not flat. It has a center, a ring around it, and a floor under both.
- The center is the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 539, revised 2015, and above all its Guide 6, Preparing and Canning Fermented Foods and Pickled Vegetables. It carries the only two lactic fermentations in the USDA canon: fermented dill pickles and sauerkraut, plus every fresh-pack vegetable pickle.
- The ring is made of extension publications that adapt the national guide to their regions. Oregon State's PNW 355, Pickling Vegetables (revised July 2019, reviewed 2024), is the most complete of them: equipment, water, salt, vinegar, procedures, and seventeen tested recipes. Penn State's Let's Preserve series, Colorado State's factsheets, and Clemson's Home & Garden Information Center sheets carry the same doctrine in shorter form, and Clemson is the only extension in this corpus that publishes a kimchi recipe (September 4, 2025).
- The floor is federal. Title 21, Part 114 of the Code of Federal Regulations supplies the regulatory thresholds, including pH 4.6, and the FDA's Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance (fourth edition, June 2022) supplies the limiting conditions for pathogen growth, among them water activity 0.85 and 20 percent water-phase salt for Clostridium botulinum control. These documents explain why thresholds exist; they do not give recipes, and no recipe on this site is attributed to them.
The rule followed when the documents disagree
They disagree, and this site does not pretend otherwise. When two accepted sources contradict each other, both readings are printed side by side, each with its publisher named. Neither is treated as the referee. Where a vegetable page must carry one workable procedure, it carries the procedure of the source it names, never a blend of two.
Never average, never round, never convert.
When two sources disagree, this site prints both numbers and stops there. A number that no named publication prints is a number this site does not publish.
The contradictions found, reported without a verdict
Nine disagreements were found while reading the corpus. They are listed here in the same spirit they are handled everywhere else on the site.
| Question | One side says | The other side says |
|---|---|---|
| Sauerkraut fermentation | NCHFP, PNW 355, Clemson, and Penn State: store at 70 to 75 degrees F, fully fermented in three to four weeks. | Colorado State: 68 to 72 degrees F, for about 7 to 14 days. |
| Iodized salt | NCHFP: safe with either iodized or non-iodized salt. | Penn State and Colorado State: use non-iodized salt; iodized darkens or discolors pickles. |
| Kosher and flake salt | Penn State and PNW 355: not recommended for fermented and pickled foods, density varies. | NCHFP condemns only flake salt and does not rule on kosher salt in the text reviewed. |
| Kimchi | Clemson publishes a full fermented kimchi recipe. | Penn State writes that the only research-based fermented vegetable procedures are sauerkraut and fermented pickles; the word kimchi appears nowhere in USDA Guide 6. |
| Michigan cabbage | Michigan State's 2025 Lower Peninsula guide: July through October. | Michigan State's own cabbage factsheet, 2014: September through March. |
Four more are noted without a table. PNW 355's raw-pack sauerkraut table prints "5 min." for quarts at 0 to 1,000 feet, while NCHFP prints 25 minutes and Clemson 25 minutes for quarts; the PNW value is what the page displays, and this site never reproduces it. The NCHFP attributes its container and pasteurization pages to the 2009 revision of the USDA guide and its fermenting pages to the 2015 revision; both attributions coexist, and each page is cited with its own. Alum is called usable for firming fermented cucumbers by Penn State and omitted as unnecessary by PNW 355. Clemson's older dilled bean sheet (2001) processes five minutes with altitude added in five-minute steps, against NCHFP's three-step 5, 10, and 15 minute scale; the two barèmes are never mixed.
What this site refuses to do with the numbers
Beyond refusing to arbitrate, the site refuses four specific shortcuts. It does not convert: recipes stay in the American units they were printed in, pounds, cups, tablespoons, and degrees F, because a converted recipe is a modified recipe. It does not round: if a source says 68 to 72 degrees F, the site does not sharpen it. It does not average: no two disagreeing numbers are collapsed into one. And it does not extrapolate from one vegetable to another: a brine or a processing time published for cucumbers is never carried over to beans, cauliflower, or carrots, because no source here treats vegetables as interchangeable. A kimchi procedure is never presented as if it had USDA standing, because it has none.
Access limits and what "not found" means
On September 6, 2026, three accepted publishers did not answer direct requests: Oregon State's extension site returned an error (PNW 355 was obtained another way), the University of Minnesota's extension site was unreachable, and one Colorado State factsheet could not be located at its recorded path. The USDA's seasonal produce guide was read through an archived snapshot. Wherever this site says that nothing is published, the accurate reading is: nothing was found in the sources actually consulted. That is a statement about this shelf, not about the world.
This page does not settle any of the disagreements listed above, and it does not tell you which sauerkraut schedule or which salt position to follow; that choice belongs to you and to the named source you choose to cook from. It also does not publish a salt percentage for fermented dill pickles, because the USDA guide gives its pickle brine in cups per gallon rather than a percentage, and the only percentage printed anywhere in this corpus is Colorado State's 2 to 2.5 percent by weight, for sauerkraut alone; carrying that number to any other vegetable would be exactly the extrapolation this site exists to refuse.
Sources of the figures on this page
- National Center for Home Food Preservation, University of Georgia, General Information on Pickling, adapted from the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, revised 2015, reviewed February 2018. The four classes of pickled product, the 5 percent vinegar requirement, and the prohibition on altering proportions.
- Oregon State University Extension Service, Pickling Vegetables, PNW 355, by Jeanne Brandt, revised July 2019, reviewed 2024. Equipment, water, salt and vinegar, the fermentation procedures and seventeen tested recipes.
- Office of the Federal Register and the Food and Drug Administration, Title 21, Part 114, Acidified Foods, sections 114.3, 114.80 and 114.90, source 44 FR 16235, March 16, 1979; section 114.80 amended 80 FR 56144, September 17, 2015; CFR edition 2024. The regulatory definitions, the 4.6 equilibrium pH that separates an acidified food from a low acid one, and the 4.0 measurement rule.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance, chapter 13 and appendix 4, fourth edition, June 2022. The limiting conditions for pathogen growth: minimum pH, minimum water activity, maximum water phase salt and minimum temperature, organism by organism.
- Penn State Extension, Let us Preserve: Fermentation, Sauerkraut and Pickles, updated May 22, 2023. Ratios, containers, temperatures, the prohibition on changing proportions, and the criteria for discarding a batch.
- Clemson Cooperative Extension, Home and Garden Information Center, Pickle Basics, HGIC 3100, published November 1999, updated March 20, 2012. The four classes of pickle, the published procedure for hard water, and the requirement for a pure salt.
- Colorado State University Extension and FoodSmart Colorado, Understanding and Making Sauerkraut, reviewed October 2025. The only salt figure published as a percentage by weight, 2 to 2.5 percent, and a fermentation window of 68 to 72 F for 7 to 14 days.