Salt from sea water, the stove-top version

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My first batch is off the stove and sitting nearby, finishing by air drying. I have a pan of salty mush. Once that is done, I have 15 more gallons of seawater to go! I'll get pictures of the next batch as it progresses.

 

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Apparently life got crazy and I never got back to report on this project! It was an outrageous success and I have several jars of lovely sea salt in my cupboard to show for it. Never did get good pics of the process somehow. I hope to get back to the ocean to get more water for salt-making again this winter. Easy-peasy!

 

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My aunt is selling her beach cottage and we went for the last time yesterday. I waited until dh was walking the dogs before we left and ran and got 7 pails with lids and a five gallon gerry can that I normally use for bringing water to the barn in winter. Tossed them all into the trunk. I didn't tell him I had them until an hour before we were to leave. I'm no fool.

I'm not sure how much water we got since it is hard to walk on the beach with full pails, but I need to get it all strained today for storage until winter. I'm gonna guess that I have 32 gallons, if each container has about four gallons of sea water in it.

That should pay for the gas to get there and back! I'll start making salt when the wood stove is going full time again in November.

 

[~gd]

32 gallons of sea water should yield about 9 1/3 pounds of sea salt. Historically the evaporation was done using Solar energy since the evaporation of that much water takes huge amounts of energy. A pan sitting on the cooler part of your wood stove will provide some welcome humidity to your house during a winter. The reason I say cooler part of your wood stove is because the slower the evaporation the larger the salt grains will be. If I were doing it I would try to concentrate down to heavy brine using summer solar and then bring it to a boil before longterm storage since I don't have the needed containers for that much raw sea water.~gd

 

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Suggestions for summer solar? Solar oven with the lid off? Buckets in the sun with lids off and fabric on top? I wonder how long it would take....worth a try.

I do like to keep water on the wood stove to humidify the air and it is so much better to use the energy to not only heat the house, but to produce a useful product. The new stove we got last fall is very efficient for heating, but not so efficient for cooking. I can't bring a pot of water to a boil on it, maybe barely a simmer if it is in direct contact with the center of the stove. You see in my picture in the above post that I have the salt pan on a horse shoe on the edge of the stove, with one end of the pan resting on the raised...and hotter....center of the stove. This keeps it evaporating but not simmering.

9 1/3 pounds? I was hoping for more, but that is still great! Celtic salt is about $11 per pound here, and in our taste tests, our homemade salt was "saltier." The grains are rather large, though, so I use it only in cooking with liquid where it will melt down. Soups, stews, sauces, gravies, etc. I didn't know that it would be finer with slower processing. Cool info. Thanks.

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

Ok, now I know what we are doing in a couple months.
Taking a drive down south, past the inlet.
Not interested in the Anchorage area water, or Seward for that matter, due to high traffic, but if we drove down to Homer we could do very well.
Shoot, we could camp out for a few days and make it on our oil drip stove!

 

[~gd]

Suggestions for summer solar? Solar oven with the lid off? Buckets in the sun with lids off and fabric on top? I wonder how long it would take....worth a try.

I do like to keep water on the wood stove to humidify the air and it is so much better to use the energy to not only heat the house, but to produce a useful product. The new stove we got last fall is very efficient for heating, but not so efficient for cooking. I can't bring a pot of water to a boil on it, maybe barely a simmer if it is in direct contact with the center of the stove. You see in my picture in the above post that I have the salt pan on a horse shoe on the edge of the stove, with one end of the pan resting on the raised...and hotter....center of the stove. This keeps it evaporating but not simmering.

9 1/3 pounds? I was hoping for more, but that is still great! Celtic salt is about $11 per pound here, and in our taste tests, our homemade salt was "saltier." The grains are rather large, though, so I use it only in cooking with liquid where it will melt down. Soups, stews, sauces, gravies, etc. I didn't know that it would be finer with slower processing. Cool info. Thanks.

You got that backwards the SLOWER the evaporation the BIGGER the grains will be! If you want finer grains you can break them down in a blender or try to get your hands on a salt mill [like a pepper grinder] frankly the best I have found is also the cheapest, our Piggly Wiggly [ Southern low end supermarket chain] sells sea salt and various sea salt mixes [dried onions, dried garlick, red pepper flakes] in grinders for a buck! The great thing is that the grinder can be removed to adjust the grind or change the contents. the grinder body is plastic and tends to wear out on the sea salt after 3-4 jars have been ground. BTW I use the homemade salt only in salt-to-taste uses, a teaspoon of sea salt is not the same weight as regular or kosher style salt so use in a recipie can cause problems.

9 1/3 pounds I figure your 32 gallons of sea water =266 pounds. sea water is about 3.5% salt so that is where the 9.34 figure comes from. ~gd

 

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Ooops, thanks for the bolding of my too-quick-reading! Next hot, sunny day I'm gonna experiment with my sun shield on the driveway. I'll put the splatter screen on top of my little salt pan. I was able to render tallow this way in about five hours, so it will be a start and maybe less water to store. I'll look for a cheap grinder at our discount grocery, where they have an extensive selection of spices for very low prices. I usually buy organic spices elsewhere so I'm not too familiar with all that they carry....gotta go look now!

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

We're going to Whittier in a week and a half!
Going to make salt, fish for Silvers, test a Mussel to see if they are safe, and pick salmon berries too.