White sediment in the jar

The two ordinary causes

• Yeast. A normal by-product of fermentation, settling out. Expected in a fermented product.
• Anti-caking agents. Table salt carries additives that do not dissolve, and they end up on the bottom of the jar. Pickling salt does not have them, which is the whole argument of the salt page.

Why it still costs you

Neither of those is a safety problem and both are a commercial one. A customer looking at a jar on a shelf does not have the problem table, and sediment reads as something gone wrong whether or not it is. For a product sold on appearance in clear glass, "harmless" is not the same as "acceptable", and the salt cause is entirely avoidable.

This is the clearest reason to use pickling salt even where a recipe would tolerate table salt. The cost difference is small and the shelf difference is visible.

When it is the other thing

Sediment accompanied by an off smell, a slippery texture or a bulging lid is not in the ordinary category and nothing on this page applies. That is a discard, not a diagnosis, and the published guidance does not offer a way to tell a spoiled jar is safe by looking at it.

Decide that rule in advance and write it into whatever passes for your quality procedure, because the moment to decide whether a doubtful jar ships is not the morning the order is due.

Clear glass is a commitment

This failure only exists because the product is sold in something you can see through, which is a packaging decision taken long before the first batch. Clear glass is the right call for a pickle, because the buyer is partly buying the look of the thing, but it means every cosmetic fault is on display for the whole shelf life. A maker who chooses clear glass is choosing to solve the salt question and the water question properly rather than tolerating a haze that an opaque container would have hidden.

References