Cloudy brine, and when it is normal
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In a ferment
Fermentation is a population of bacteria doing work, and a cloudy brine is what that looks like. Discarding fermented batches for cloudiness is a common and expensive beginner error, and it usually follows from reading quick-pickle guidance and applying it to a crock.
What is NOT normal in a ferment is a film on the surface, which is a different thing in a different place. Cloudiness is throughout the liquid; scum sits on top. Confusing the two sends people in both wrong directions at once, discarding good batches and leaving surfaces unattended.
In a quick pickle
Here there is no fermentation to explain it, so cloudiness has other published causes and they are worth running through in order.
- Table salt. Anti-caking agents do not dissolve clear, which is the single most common cause and the easiest to eliminate.
- Hard water, carrying minerals that come out of solution.
- Ground spices rather than whole.
- Spoilage, which is the one that matters.
Working through it
The first three are cheap to rule out and you should rule them out before reaching the fourth. Switch to pickling salt, use soft or distilled water, use whole spices, and remake the batch. If cloudiness persists with all three controlled, you are looking at the fourth and the answer is to discard rather than investigate.
For a commercial product this is where a batch log earns its keep again. "The cloudy batches were all from the week we ran out of pickling salt" is a finding. "Some batches go cloudy" is not.
Know which craft you are diagnosing
Everything on this page depends on an answer you have to establish first, which is whether the batch fermented or not. The two problem tables are kept separately for exactly this reason and the same symptom belongs to a different cause list in each. A maker running both crafts in one building needs the batch log to say which this was, because by the time the jar is in front of you the brine does not announce where it came from.