Juice vs Pickles - how to choose what to do with your vegetals

[imnvs]

Okay, let's get a few things out of the way first...
- Putting veg in a keg results in juice which has a value of 2.25xbase, ~4 days to process.
- Putting veg in a jar results in pickles which have a value of (2xbase)+50, ~3 days to process.

Now, the first thing that this means is that if .25 of a veg's base value is less than 50g, you will result in a juice with a value lower than the value of pickles for the same item of veg. What follows from that is that literally only TWO veg items in the game have juice with a higher value than the pickles, pumpkin and red cabbage. Conclusion: Put all veg besides pumpkins and red cabbage in jars to process.

Now, when putting red cabbage and pumpkins into kegs for juice, as discussed you are getting an artisan good with a higher value, but it took longer to produce. For red cabbage juice is 585 and pickles are 570. 585/4 days = 146.25, and 570/3 days = 190. (Pumpkin, 720/4 days = 180, and 690/3 days = 230. Conclusion: If when processing veg you have more machines than veg, put pumpkins and red cabbage in kegs, but if you have more veg than machines, put pumpkins and red cabbage in jars. (Alternately, you can alter the formula by making more kegs to maximize total profit.)

*EDIT* : There is a special exception in the form of tea leaves which make green tea in 3 hours, but make pickles in 3 days. For these the situation is exactly the reverse of pumpkin and red cabbage in that it processes ultra-fast in the kegs, pushing the g/day way up (100g/3 hours) but over time a greater profit is had if it is turned into pickles (150g/3 days). It is further made an exception by the fact that the longer processing happens in the jars rather than kegs like for everything else.

Edit to add: Yes, these numbers are without Artisan. The thing is, that just multiplies literally everything by 1.4, so the ratios stay the same.

 

[Cptldsilver]

Good analysis, though I'd like to add that tea leaves are an exception to this rule. Despite taking significantly longer (in processing time) to turn into pickles vs green tea, tea leaves are worth more if they are pickled.

 

[imnvs]

Good analysis, though I'd like to add that tea leaves are an exception to this rule. Despite taking significantly longer (in processing time) to turn into pickles vs green tea, tea leaves are worth more if they are pickled.

Good point, so added more detailed information on tea leaves.

 

[MissDandy]

Now you have me thinking about the tea.

I definitely think that making the tea into pickles is the best option too because if you consider that the plant only produces for 7 days, you're not wasting any time if you store them when they come off the plant and take a bit longer to turn them into pickles, you make that extra 50% more than the tea from the keg, and you've lost no time because you have a very strict allowance from the plant.

Since the jars take still 3 days, you have from the 1st until the 21st of the month with no leaves coming from then plants. 28/3 = 9.333 so each preserves jar is available for roughly 9 uses a month. (Plus one every three months but for now I'll ignore that) Each plant only produces 7 leaves/month, so if you store your leaves and start using them on the first of each month (as you might if all the jars were still in use from the previous month), in order to never have excess leaves, for every 1 plant you must have 0.78 preserve jars, no less. (Or in whole numbers, about 5 plants for every 4 jars)

For tea, it's a hassle to collect them every three hours and you'd lose money anyway there. If you made four batches of tea/day, (12 hrs in time) for example (so in other words your sole purpose was to be a tea farmer, yeehaw), it would be inefficient, especially if you have a set number of plants, jars and kegs and are deciding between the two like we are discussing. Overall, to make more money with kegs than jars, you need way more plants than would be sufficient to make a similar salary with pickles. Time isn't really an issue because of the regrowth schedule and also it's likely that you have more preserve jars than tea plants, so might as well make more money with pickles.

Of course all of this is under the assumption that you have a large number of tea plants at all. Not very realistic otherwise. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm very tired and my math might be way off haha.



Or maybe you do want to devote your life to farming tea, no matter the cost, leaving me in the wrong.

 

[imnvs]

Of course all of this is under the assumption that you have a large number of tea plants at all. Not very realistic otherwise. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm very tired and my math might be way off haha.

Or maybe you do want to devote your life to farming tea, no matter the cost, leaving me in the wrong.

You're not entirely wrong about the math, except that it is multiplicative. This means that it doesn't matter if you have a small or large number of tea bushes, processing them multiplies base value by the same amount no matter how many you process. The only consideration is the frequency at which you have to collect and re-begin the processing. Tea is labor intensive, but it is quick money that doesn't require many machines. Tea pickles is not labor intensive and has a higher profit margin, but it requires more machines.

In a day we have 24 hours, except we can not act past 2 am or before 6 am... so that's 20 hours left. That means that if you can get a round of tea in in the morning you can ideally get 6 batches done in a day, but let's be more realistic and say you'll get 4 batches. If you have 100 bushes that is 2100 tea leaves per year (100/day for 7 days for 3 seasons). With about 100 non-festival days every year (we'll assume no processing on festival days because it will be reduced and simply reducing that day's production to 0 makes the math easier) that means you can turn it all into tea quite easily with only 5.25 kegs. To process the same lot with jars you're looking at 63 jars to process them all in a year. (This is all assuming these machines are dedicated to process tea leaves.) And with the kegs you're visiting them 4 times a day every day. With the jars you're only visiting them once every 3 days.

 

[MissDandy]

And with the kegs you're visiting them 4 times a day every day. With the jars you're only visiting them once every 3 days.

So I guess a big factor would then be your devotion to maintaining the machines. I know that it's all too easy to forget when the kegs are ready if it's so frequently, because if you forget about them it's such an insignificant profit you might as well forget about it all together.

Just as a side thought, you have to think about actually producing those 63 jars like you said, if you were to do that. In late game it's easy to just buy the coal, stone and wood if you need, but then you have to account for that cost too. 63 jars would cost 535,500g if you bought all the materials (I know that's not too realistic because you would likely be able to get a lot of that material by other means). Despite, it would take a long time to make back your costs. I personally wouldn't have patience for getting all those items myself so it would be somewhat costly. 5.25 kegs would only cost you 18,375g (not counting coal to make bars and assuming you have oak resin) which is also not reasonable because it's silly to think you would buy the materials to make that small of an amount of kegs.

Assuming that is what you did though, it would take you 184 teal leaves to make back a profit with the kegs, while for the jars it would take 3,570. Eventually, the pickles would be more profitable, but not for a long while. But then again, checking jars once every three days is realistic, but checking kegs 4 times a day, while doable is more unlikely.

Using mostly your own materials though (and instead trading your time to find them) even if not fully all yours, would make the pickles a feasible option in relation to the tea, especially in files that go well into the double-digit years.

I don't think I've ever talked about tea so much in my life

 

[imnvs]

The only issue with your profit analysis, @MissDandy , is that if you make enough jars for processing everything else, you already have the infrastructure to process the tea leaves. For example, in different seasons you aren't stocking up on the same sorts of produce, and during winter you're not stocking up on much of anything to process. I migrated away from planting some things that I process in jars, planting more red cabbage, melons and pumpkins which I process in kegs. In Summer and Fall I don't plant much of anything else for processing compared to Spring when I plant a virtual aircraft carrier's load of cauliflower which I process in jars. This means that during Spring I'm saving up stuff that I'll process over the course of the rest of the year when I'm not growing as much for jars. (During all 3 seasons I do grow the seasonal berry, of course.)

 

[MissDandy]

The only issue with your profit analysis, @MissDandy , is that if you make enough jars for processing everything else, you already have the infrastructure to process the tea leaves.

This is true. It wouldn't really be that much of a loss since you're making use of the jars with a multitude of other vegetals. This would only apply if you were, say, filling sheds full of tea plants and making jars explicitly for that. In reality, you are correct that it wouldn't be that much of a hit as it would be if you were only counting your gross profit from pickling tea and making sufficient jars for that alone.

Is is a waste of space/time, would you say, to put plants in garden pots in a shed (such as tea) for all-season use?

 

[imnvs]

Is is a waste of space/time, would you say, to put plants in garden pots in a shed (such as tea) for all-season use?

Short answer? Yes. Long answer...

Myself, I only have as many tea bushes as I need for fencing off the pasture for my aminals. In my current save that's just over 50. I'd rather use shed space for my jars/kegs as there are lots of other things to process in them and much of that has a higher base price than the tea leaves.

If you're doing sheds with garden pots for all-season use, the ideal plant is pineapple. 1 tea bush in 1 garden pot is 28 tea leaves/year and at 150g each that's 4200. If you change to a pineapple, you're getting 16/year and pineapple wine is 900, so that's 14400g, over 3x as much. (Numbers are before artisan, but as always, artisan is multiplicative and applies to everything involved so doesn't really change the result/conclusion.)

 

[MissDandy]

Short answer? Yes. Long answer...

Myself, I only have as many tea bushes as I need for fencing off the pasture for my aminals. In my current save that's just over 50. I'd rather use shed space for my jars/kegs as there are lots of other things to process in them and much of that has a higher base price than the tea leaves.

If you're doing sheds with garden pots for all-season use, the ideal plant is pineapple. 1 tea bush in 1 garden pot is 28 tea leaves/year and at 150g each that's 4200. If you change to a pineapple, you're getting 16/year and pineapple wine is 900, so that's 14400g, over 3x as much. (Numbers are before artisan, but as always, artisan is multiplicative and applies to everything involved so doesn't really change the result/conclusion.)

Thank you very much!

 

[chaskuchar]

i'm confused. you didn't use melons and i use melons for my wine. but i don't know how long it takes to make wine with different vegetables. however, i thank you for giving me information to use. i do the forest map because it makes my farming more difficult but i have places to put my kegs and jars. i am on my umteenth game and always quit in winter 2 but figured out how to get greenhouse in year 1 so now i am on spring 2 with the big coop. i don't understand the sheds but it might be a better place to put my kegs and jars. very interesting game.

 

[imnvs]

i'm confused. you didn't use melons and i use melons for my wine. but i don't know how long it takes to make wine with different vegetables. however, i thank you for giving me information to use. i do the forest map because it makes my farming more difficult but i have places to put my kegs and jars. i am on my umteenth game and always quit in winter 2 but figured out how to get greenhouse in year 1 so now i am on spring 2 with the big coop. i don't understand the sheds but it might be a better place to put my kegs and jars. very interesting game.

Well, this was all about vegetables. Fruit is a an entirely different equation. Melons should definitely go through kegs instead of jars.

And yes, sheds are the best place to put either kegs or jars.

 

[Boodylis]

When it comes to deciding between making juice or pickles, it really depends on the veggie you're dealing with. For most veggies, like pumpkins and red cabbage, pickling them tends to result in higher value products, especially if you have more vegetables than machines. However, there's a special case with tea leaves where making green tea in kegs actually gives you more profit over time, despite the quicker processing in jars. It's all about finding the right balance and maximizing your profit. If you want to learn more about canning and preserving, I recently got into it and found some great tips at https://justcanning.com/

 

[imnvs]

When it comes to deciding between making juice or pickles, it really depends on the veggie you're dealing with. For most veggies, like pumpkins and red cabbage, pickling them tends to result in higher value products, especially if you have more vegetables than machines.

That it depends on the vegetable is the entire truth... but I think you missed an entire paragraph of my first post in this thread.

Yes, higher value veg will always realize higher value products. If you have the machines to do it, though, you will make a greater profit in the long run by putting all veg through jars... except pumpkins and red cabbage. You'll get more profit in the shortest amount of time by putting them into jars, sure, but you'll still get more in the long run by putting them in jars.