How pickles are made
The sour in a fermented pickle comes from bacteria that live on the skin of the growing cucumber.
- stations
- 6
- things upstream
- 32
- raw sources
- 16
- steps from the ground
- 7
The short version
Cucumbers are washed and sorted, then packed into jars or tanks and covered with brine or a vinegar solution with spices. In a brine pickle, bacteria on the skin turn the sugars sour over days. In a vinegar pickle, acid does the work at once. Jars are then heat-sealed for the shelf.
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Wash and sort the cucumbers
Small cucumbers are washed and graded by size. The bacteria that do the souring live on the skin of a growing cucumber, though commercial washing and packing can strip them off.
Goes in -
Cover with brine
Cucumbers are packed in containers and covered with salty water, usually 20 to 40 grams of salt per liter. Garlic, dill and other antimicrobial spices such as mustard seed often go in with them.
20 to 40 g of salt per liter
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Let bacteria sour them
Lactic acid bacteria multiply in the brine and turn the cucumber's own sugars into acid. A full-sour pickle sits in the brine long enough to ferment fully. A half-sour comes out sooner, still bright green and crisp.
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Switch to vinegar
Many commercial pickles skip the long fermentation. They are packed in a vinegar solution instead, sometimes with sugar and spices, as in bread-and-butter pickles. The acid starts preserving the cucumber at once.
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Jar the pickles
Pickles go into glass jars with their liquid. Pickles were once stored in wooden barrels, but they are now sold in glass.
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Heat and seal
A pickling solution is acidic enough, at pH 4.6 or lower, to stop enzymes and microbes. Heating the sealed jar adds a safety margin and keeps the pickles for months.
pH 4.6 or lower
Worth repeating
- Cucumbers were being pickled in the Tigris Valley around 2030 BCE.
- A kosher dill is not necessarily kosher by religious law. The name describes a New York style heavy on garlic and dill.
- The bubbly film that forms on top of a fermented brine does not mean the pickles have spoiled, and it can be removed.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and pickles starts as these 16 raw sources.
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Sources
Cite this page: "How pickles are made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/pickles