Food-grade brine vs non-food grade brine
Hello IFSQN team,
We are starting a small ice cream operation and we are using brine cooling in one of our machines to freeze our product. It has always just been an expectation that the brine salt be food-grade. The issue is that food grade costs about 20 times more than non-food grade, so I have been trying to find out what the real difference is between "food-grade" salt and non, other than cost?? I would assume some purity stuff, but I can't figure out specifically what would cause the non-food grade to pose a bigger risk to our product than food-grade.
If any brine gets in to the product/molds, whether it is food-grade or not, that product will be garbage and the molds will need to be rinsed/cleaned, so I'm not really sure what difference the food-grade makes?
Additionally, the way our machine is designed is that there are literally open brine areas at the corners of the machine. Based on how it functions, there is less of a worry of the brine splashing in the molds than product splashing out and contaminating the brine. The brine could possibly get dirty quickly, shortening its effective lifespan; we will skim off the contamination where we can, but eventually we will have to replace it sooner than just the regular life-span of a brine solution. So if we can use the stuff that is 20x cheaper, that would help a lot on cost savings?
Thanks in advance
Sounds like you're describing the brine as a processing aid, to help freeze the ice cream as you're processing? For the same reason that lubricants in processing machines should be of food grade, chemical processing aids should be food grade as well to help ensure consumer safety for incidental cross-contamination that might not be immediately discovered.
I did some searching and found that food grade salts tend to be nearly pure sodium chloride from ocean deposits, whereas non-food salts can contain other elements and even added chemicals for intended uses in other industries.
Hello IFSQN team,
We are starting a small ice cream operation and we are using brine cooling in one of our machines to freeze our product. It has always just been an expectation that the brine salt be food-grade. The issue is that food grade costs about 20 times more than non-food grade, so I have been trying to find out what the real difference is between "food-grade" salt and non, other than cost?? I would assume some purity stuff, but I can't figure out specifically what would cause the non-food grade to pose a bigger risk to our product than food-grade.
If any brine gets in to the product/molds, whether it is food-grade or not, that product will be garbage and the molds will need to be rinsed/cleaned, so I'm not really sure what difference the food-grade makes?
Additionally, the way our machine is designed is that there are literally open brine areas at the corners of the machine. Based on how it functions, there is less of a worry of the brine splashing in the molds than product splashing out and contaminating the brine. The brine could possibly get dirty quickly, shortening its effective lifespan; we will skim off the contamination where we can, but eventually we will have to replace it sooner than just the regular life-span of a brine solution. So if we can use the stuff that is 20x cheaper, that would help a lot on cost savings?
Thanks in advance
Hi JD,
IIRC, as per Chemicals Codex, the Grade of Salt typically relates to Purity (eg min % NaCl) and, possibly, other aspects like heavy metals.
So what are the Purity, etc Specifications of the 2 options ?
We had a client that made an error in purchasing salt for their ic machine - the buyer was purchasing rock salt for the snowplow spreader and decided there was no difference so they ordered the same for the machine.
A small amount was detected as leaking into the mix and it led to a need to issue a soft recall.
You need to use food grade brine salts. You cannot run the risk of contaminating your product.
Some water chemicals (salts) may also use biocides to prevent bacteria/mould/algae from growing in the water, but this cannot enter the food chain.
Reach out to compass minerals directly and speak to someone--they offer 4 different food grade salts--you can probably still reduce your costs significantly by changing the particular salt your using AND by buying in supersaks
https://www.compassm...alt/food-grade/
They have sea salt but also they are the company who mines in Goderich Ontario