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Produced my own sea salt
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25-02-2014 10:08am#1I read a newspaper article a couple of months ago about a company in Sligo now starting to produce Irish sea salt.
Nothing for it but down to Dollymount beach with a big water container, I brought home about 20 litres of seawater.
Back home, I filtered the sea water through a T-shirt to get rid of sand and seaweed, poured it into my biggest saucepan, brought to the boil and simmered for about seven hours, lid off of course, until there was a lot of pasty salt deposit in the bottom of the saucepan.
You have to be careful not to burn the salt, so the final drying is best done by leaving it in trays in a warm dry place for a couple of days, with the final dry-off in a warm oven to make sure it's dry.
Store in an airtight container. It looks and tastes very well!
15 to 20 L of water made me about two large mug fulls of sea salt.
Once your saucepan is brought to the boil, you can turn the heat right back, the water does not have to be simmering, it will evaporate fine once there is any bit of water vapour coming off the top. If you had a solid fuel stove you could leave the saucepan on it after bringing to the boil, it would probably work out well.
(sorry about the size of the photo, I don't have s/w to get it smaller).
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Just out of curiosity what is the water quality like in Dollymount?? I know that if I were to make my own sea salt I would take the water from an area where the largest concentration of the countries population lives. This is especially true when you are effectively concentrating 20 litres worth of 'nutrients' into a couple of mugs of sea salt!!
Sure if it doesn't glow in the dark it's probably grand
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Power used:
Sea water at 10DegC.
Mass of water: 15Kg
SHC of water 4.186KJ/Kg
Latent heat of evaporation of water = 2260KJ/Kg
To bring the water to the boil:
15 * 4.186 * 90 = 5651KJ.
To do this in one hour requires 5651/3600 / 0.75effy = 2.1KWh
To evaporate the water:
2260 * 15 = 33900KJ.
Over seven hours requires 33900 / (7*3600) / 0.75 effy = 1.79KWh
Total energy usage 2.1 + (1.79*7) = 13.7KWh
Gas hob, 5.2c per KWh, total energy cost cost was 71.3 cent.
:cool:
Evaporated water went out the extractor hood.
Ahha, but what about the electricity cost of running the cooker hood for 7 hours? 0 -
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It's GREAT to see sea salt being produced up the road in Clogherhead. I wish them all the best.Well played OP, well played.
Another company called http://www.orielseasalt.com/ are doing the same as yourself OP, but on a grander scale obviously.
I've had the pleasure of tasting their salt and boy its fantastic (no affil by the way) - don't think its available in shops yet but I urge you to try it if you see it.
After doing those calculations I was looking at the energy cost of production, I reckon I made 450g for 71c of gas (didn't weigh the yield
), that'd be roughly €1.60 per Kg at gas rates (plus extractor fan) just to evaporate the seawater.
Compare that to the lads in Hot-land who evaporate seawater from shallow pools using just the sun's energy and sweep up the salt once it's dried out. It's a far cheaper, and surely greener, way of producing sea salt.
Now if an Irish producer could come up with a source of low-grade, cheap energy to evaporate water.... they'd be onto a winner.
I believe there's a big incinerator project out of Dublin looking for a home, it'd be an ideal source of cheap, low-grade heat. Any takers, apply to Dublin City Council
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The gas hob will not be 100% efficient, and also you lose energy from the hot pot on the stove.
Have you done any blind tasting on the salt? I was going to buy some maldon sea salt recently to see the difference, I looked up about it and people were saying it was pretty much a waste if it was just going into mixtures, like in soup and being dissolved. People were doing blind tastes and saw no difference if dissolved. They were saying it was really the flakiness/texture of the salt which was valued, where it is sprinkled onto food and could have a crunch to it.
I have had salt solutions dry out and be crystaline. I would be interested in methods for making flaky salt.
Do you know what your yield should havebeen? e.g. if sea water is meant to be 4% salt you should have got so many grams, if you got a lot it could be comprising of other stuff you don't want.
Yea you have a few good points there.
My energy figures are worked out allowing for 75% effy (efficiency) which should be about right.
I'm not a salt snob! In my book there are two classifications: (1) Saxa table Salt and the likes, which basically is good for de-icing the driveway, and (2) anything else - sea salt, pink Himylan, SligoStuff, Clogherhead, Dollymount whatever.
Type (1) does not taste well and I don't use it for anything food related.
Type (2), honestly I have done blind-taste tests and I can't detect much of a difference between them.
For me, you want the best salt when you're only using a little: over your 1&1; over a green-leaf salad; over freshly cut tomatoes.
When making your own salt, delaying the drying-out process gives the largest crystals. Watch 'Breaking Bad'!
Re: Yield: I evaporated between 15 and 20 L water and got approx. 450g salt, that's about 2.6% yield? Next batch I'll do a proper measurement. 0 -
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Sulla Felix wrote: »Yeah, anything posted on the David Icke (he of the lizard NWO conspiracy theories) should be taken with a .... pinch of salt.
YEEAHHHHHHH
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