Preserves jars vs Kegs profitability

[Pangaearocks]

People often ask what is the best of these in terms of profits, and the answer thrown out is usually kegs. Which is mostly true in pure value, as in when you compare the final products. It is much less true if you factor in processing time. Fruit in kegs take roughly a week, while only 2-3 days in a preserves jar.

Over the last few days I've attempted producing a direct comparison on the wiki. More work than I hoped (why is this always the case??), partly because the wiki has few options in terms of automation. In the end I took some shortcuts just to get over the line, but it will have to do -- at least for now. Some of the high percentage products don't tell the whole story ofc, because putting a bunch of salmonberries or blackberries through jars or kegs isn't the best idea ever, because the added value is low (or even at a loss). However, the overview does show that almost without fail, the jar is the better option. Ofc, this ignores that jars are overall more tricky or expensive to build in large quantities, mostly due to the coal requirement, but the comparison is still nice to have. Due to the lower processing time, it also involves more work ofc, because the jars need to be refilled more often, and if you want to put stuff in casks you must naturally put it in kegs first. So there are many other factors at play here, but take it for what it is. A direct comparison of input products in light of processing time.

The table is here if anybody wants to take a look. Sure, it's a bit rough around the edges and I could have worked more on the template, but it's just a bunch of workarounds no matter what, and I just wanted to get it done. If the wiki had other extensions installed, even just Variables and DPL3, stuff like this would have been much more bearable.

Spoiler: An example

PS: The values used here is with the Artisan profession.

As with most such tables on the wiki, the columns are sortable. Click the same column twice to get it in descending order.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Besides the raw value for what to put into which. Also do note another factor which that jars are much better when you have considerably more crops than processing machines. This works near the opposite for legs when you have close to, equal or more machines than crops.

You should also note on the page that the per g is based vs. Raw selling price.
It might make it easier for people to understand quicker.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Thanks for this, it is quite helpful to have both the Keg and Jar list mixed together in one place. Generally I follow what FilthyGorilla mentioned in that I tend to accumulate an excess of produce so I find Jarring to be a reasonable method to gain more g. But like I mention below, that incurs a time penalty over the Kegs.

And note that the crops which require replanting incur the additional cost of buying the Seeds, or the relative cost of not selling the previous Crop which is run through the Seed Maker. As well as the time penalty for buying/seedmaking and replanting. That last bit can't be quantified of course as its penalty is perceived differently for each player.

 

[Pangaearocks]

Many other factors can go into something like this. However, I wouldn't say that seed price really does. After all, it's the same input product whether you put kale or whatever in a keg or a jar, and the growth time is still the same. You need more to keep 100 jars occupied all the time vs keeping 100 kegs occupied, but the replanting price doesn't really go into it. We probably all love re-growables though, so we don't have to run around re-planting all the time. Money in starfruit is great, but all those seeds and replanting is less fun :P

Thought it was interesting to see this lined up side by side, to get an even better idea of just how superior preserves jars are, as long as you have the crops to put into them. Of the ingredients that can be directly compared, not many come out better in kegs. Hops, Wheat, Tea leaves, plus iridium Starfruit and Ancient fruit. But of course, if you want to process e.g. Starfruit wine in casks, you need to put them through kegs first. The cellar capacity is pretty limited, tho, and it takes half a year (or was it a full year?), so the daily profit for that is pretty small tbh.

Also, the daily profit of very short-producing things such as coffee is hard to maintain. Still great profit in it, but a hell of a lot of work to replace it all after only two hours. The way this was done (originally on the wiki) is to compare everything in g/min, and then convert it to g/day -- which is the data I used in this table. Therefore it's not likely to be accurate for coffee for example, unless you really keep tabs on that one keg I suppose :D

 

[Farrow]

First off thanks this is awesome and I've thought about it alot. But when this is useful is at the point in the early to mid game when you can plant more than you can process, and in the time I also tend to build alot of pj's (persevere jars) and then plant my acorns (about 100-200 by that point) and start crafting kegs and once I have enough kegs I phase out the pj's for everything but my sturgeon ponds (for caviar which is my preferred food for Skull cavern)

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

My problem with this is that it is entirely true and very misleading.

For example, with Ancient Fruit, the chart says that on a gold per day basis it is more efficient to use preserves jars. However, Ancient Fruit takes a week to produce more fruit which also happens to be how long it takes to brew, which nets a higher total value. More importantly, it means that most of the Preserves Jar's 'value' is wasted, as it is waiting for the next batch to ripen for most of the week. So in reality, you want to Keg your Ancient Fruit, not Jar it.

For low-cost produce, use Jars. This includes things like Blueberries and Cranberries and the like. For higher-cost fruits, Keg them. That's going to be things like Ancient Fruit, Melon, Starfruit, and the like. Of course, always Keg hops and wheat, since they blow the top off the curve.

In either case, not processing your produce provides poor performance and promotes penury. Process your produce, people!

 

[FilthyGorilla]

My problem with this is that it is entirely true and very misleading.

For example, with Ancient Fruit, the chart says that on a gold per day basis it is more efficient to use preserves jars. However, Ancient Fruit takes a week to produce more fruit which also happens to be how long it takes to brew, which nets a higher total value. More importantly, it means that most of the Preserves Jar's 'value' is wasted, as it is waiting for the next batch to ripen for most of the week. So in reality, you want to Keg your Ancient Fruit, not Jar it.

For low-cost produce, use Jars. This includes things like Blueberries and Cranberries and the like. For higher-cost fruits, Keg them. That's going to be things like Ancient Fruit, Melon, Starfruit, and the like. Of course, always Keg hops and wheat, since they blow the top off the curve.

In either case, not processing your produce provides poor performance and promotes penury. Process your produce, people!

The point though for the ancient fruit example is you can have half the jars, you still process the same amount of crops but it requires less infrastructure.

And @pangearocks, it’s 2 months for full iridium.
It goes two weeks, two weeks, one month as it scales with profitability.
1.25x for silver
1.5x for gold
2x for iridium

 

[imnvs]

The one thing I would recommend, if you're doing something on the wiki, you should be including the Artisan and non-Artisan values. I know that adds work, but that's how most of them are presented.

Also, it's not just about gold over time to determine profitability. You may get more profit per day with 1 jar producing ancient fruit jam compared to 1 keg processing ancient fruit wine, but you can have 2 kegs. Infrastructure differences change the equation. With 2 kegs I can process roughly the same amount and make over 1.5x as much.

You're looking at g/day. I'm looking at g/year. I discuss some of this in my guide thread you can spot in my signature down there. Take a look.

 

[Pangaearocks]

It goes two weeks, two weeks, one month as it scales with profitability.

Thanks. So one can have two batches per year then. Which means that the best case scenario for casks, starfruit wine, is the equivalent of ~56g per day in added value. But sort of like for kegs, it's easier to stuff wine into casks (we get 33 for free after all) than crystalariums for example, although a crystalarium gives 3 times the added value (for diamonds).

More generally, seeing the replies from several people here, I'm surprised people are so resistant to this idea. But like with everything else in this game, it somewhat depends on what kind of farms you're running. If you have 5-6 sheds full of kegs, maybe even the quarry, then it's definitely harder to keep that same amount of jars 'fed', because you only have so much farming space (let's say around 1000 crops on the standard farm + greenhouse). However, in my experience, I tend to have way fewer keg sheds than that, certainly for a long while at least, and typically end up with many chests filled with thousands of fruits and vegs, waiting for their turn, and then I periodically sell a lot because I can't process it all anyway. Kegs are easier to mass produce on your own though, provided you have a decent bunch of trees tapped, while for jars you probably need to buy a lot of the coal (or farm iron floors in the mines until your eyes bleed). So yeah, many factors are at play, and people will have to make a judgement call. I merely wanted to open some more eyes to the power (and profit) of preserves jars. And I thought having them side by side like that would be valuable, if you can excuse the pun, and seeing that jars often have +100-150% of the profit margin over kegs. That isn't small... And unless you're pretty much running a pure vegetables farm, jars can process stuff at least twice as fast as kegs, meaning you can get by with only half the jars (vs kegs). In my mind, there are some factors that speak in their favour.

 

[Pangaearocks]

The one thing I would recommend, if you're doing something on the wiki, you should be including the Artisan and non-Artisan values. I know that adds work, but that's how most of them are presented.

Based on previous experience on the wiki and reading around, I have basically zero hope of getting this onto the main part of the wiki (this article is in my personal userspace), so doing all that extra work is wasted and pointless. This is fort Artisan profession, which basically everybody are picking, and it's mostly for my own eyes. If others like the info too, then that is a bonus. Doing this table plus background template already was a TON of work, so I have no desire to do that another two times, copying thousands of values manually. If the wiki had other extensions installed, and it was more likely to get new information added without the handwave of "but we need it translated to 11 other languages first", then it would perhaps be something I'd undertake. But for now, this will have to do.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Thanks. So one can have two batches per year then. Which means that the best case scenario for casks, starfruit wine, is the equivalent of ~56g per day in added value. But sort of like for kegs, it's easier to stuff wine into casks (we get 33 for free after all) than crystalariums for example, although a crystalarium gives 3 times the added value (for diamonds).

More generally, seeing the replies from several people here, I'm surprised people are so resistant to this idea. But like with everything else in this game, it somewhat depends on what kind of farms you're running. If you have 5-6 sheds full of kegs, maybe even the quarry, then it's definitely harder to keep that same amount of jars 'fed', because you only have so much farming space (let's say around 1000 crops on the standard farm + greenhouse). However, in my experience, I tend to have way fewer keg sheds than that, certainly for a long while at least, and typically end up with many chests filled with thousands of fruits and vegs, waiting for their turn, and then I periodically sell a lot because I can't process it all anyway. Kegs are easier to mass produce on your own though, provided you have a decent bunch of trees tapped, while for jars you probably need to buy a lot of the coal (or farm iron floors in the mines until your eyes bleed). So yeah, many factors are at play, and people will have to make a judgement call. I merely wanted to open some more eyes to the power (and profit) of preserves jars. And I thought having them side by side like that would be valuable, if you can excuse the pun, and seeing that jars often have +100-150% of the profit margin over kegs. That isn't small... And unless you're pretty much running a pure vegetables farm, jars can process stuff at least twice as fast as kegs, meaning you can get by with only half the jars (vs kegs). In my mind, there are some factors that speak in their favour.

Yeah I usually rush 3000+ kegs in the first 1-2 years to burn my extra crops fast.

For my save right now I think I’ll cap it at 1.5-2k

 

[Pangaearocks]

Christ on a pogo stick. Somehow I don't think your way of playing the game is a typical use case!

(In year two, my farms tend to look like an overgrown crotch with a house off on the side somewhere)

 

[Farrow]

Christ on a pogo stick. Somehow I don't think your way of playing the game is a typical use case!

(In year two, my farms tend to look like an overgrown crotch with a house off on the side somewhere)

I don't think anyone plays the typical way if their on the forums. We're all experienced players looking for our favorite ways to play. But your preserve jar vs kegs is if you limited by machine not by crops which is what most people are missing

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Christ on a pogo stick. Somehow I don't think your way of playing the game is a typical use case!

(In year two, my farms tend to look like an overgrown crotch with a house off on the side somewhere)

We all have the things we are good at, for you it’s definitely sc.

About that though I’m trying to get better at early game sc though it’s a pain, spring and summer sc without massive cash flow that min maxers have is tough…

 

[Farrow]

I forgot to mention this but thank you for making this as it's very nice to have this, it's something I wondered since I started playing and my play style isn't as extreme as some people so I don't typically have enough kegs and this definitely helps show what I should focus on converting first when I have excess

 

[Arithonne]

Completely anecdotal, but I've actually done perfection on a no alcohol beyond what's needed for perfection farm. I was surprised a lot by it.

General thoughts on a jelly farm vs a wine farm:

• Wine makes more money overall, but jelly makes money much faster. I hit perfection about a week earlier on the jelly farm than I did on my most profitable wine farm (end of fall year 3, and the golden clock was the last thing I needed on both farms).
• Jelly farms are much less resource intensive. You can buy everything you need to make preserves jars, whereas you need to tap trees to make kegs. Also because you make money faster, you can afford to buy those resources and ramp up your production a lot faster
• Ore is not a problem on a jelly farm, you'll have an excess. If you don't like mining for ore, you might want to try a jelly farm.
• I used my basement to keg cheese on the jelly farm, so I didn't optimize for profit there.
• In total you probably spend the same amount of time filling machines, but the wine will be one full day a week, where the jelly will be parts of 2 or 3 days a week.

 

[Jayamos]

Completely anecdotal, but I've actually done perfection on a no alcohol beyond what's needed for perfection farm. I was surprised a lot by it.

I’m planning a no-alcohol run, and this is helpful information.

 

[Farrow]

So as an example for everyone to note, this is good for when you can't keep up with converting in kegs a good example is like salmon and blackberry harvests for those of us who do it it's very helpful to know how much more time (not money) effective it is to convert when you limited by you machine count and want to ship so much before a certain time (or need to build up a stack of artisan goods quickly)

 

[Arithonne]

I’m planning a no-alcohol run, and this is helpful information.

I hope you have as much fun with your no alcohol farm as I did with mine.

 

[One More Day]

I totally agree with @ShneekeyTheLost, that your table values are going to be misleading, even if they are technically correct, and your conclusion

the overview does show that almost without fail, the jar is the better option.

is simply going to be wrong in most cases. Once you consider the rules on how kegs and jars work and how they increase value, it should be intuitively obvious that expensive items should normally go in kegs, along with the special cases of wheat and hops, which make their own unique artisan goods.

Look, you've obviously gone to a lot of effort to produce this, and I'll freely admit I wouldn't know where to start if I wanted to create a table like this myself, but I'm not sure that what you've come up with is adding much value in terms of assisting decision making on processing your crops. The wiki already has pages dedicated to productivity tables for both kegs and preserves jars, and they are of far more practical use than this.

This whole OP is based on an assumption that you have definitely made but that you haven't even mentioned, an assumption that it's possible you haven't even realised you've made, which has badly distorted the way you've set it up. You've erroneously assumed that there is some sort of capacity limit for processing: whether that assumed limit is time-based (assuming produce must be processed by a certain date) or space-based (assuming that there is a cap on the number of machines available to do it), it doesn't actually exist in most cases. For the former, there is no actual time limit in Stardew, you can play a farm for 100 years if you wish, and for the latter, well, relative to the rather definitely limited growing space, there is so much available space around the valley in which to place your machines that to all intents and purposes it is unlimited, and you will run out of crops to process long before you run out of space in which to process it.

Given the reality that there is neither a time limit or a space limit, then unless you're always going to be desperate for cash in exactly 3 days, and if you're not playing with some rather specific, self-imposed limitation, you're likely better off in the long run waiting that extra 1 to 4 days to keg the valuable stuff for the maximum absolute profit per piece.

Furthermore, if you're spamming large numbers of your processing machines, then whichever way you look at it, jars are too expensive. Even if you can get away forever without buying the wood and stone, which is tricky, you'll certainly never be able to get all the coal you need for free, so that eventually means buying it in bulk from Clint. At 8 coal per jar, that's 1,200g even at Y1 prices, or 2,000g at Y2+ prices. If you have to start buying the wood and stone too, each jar could cost as much as an eye-watering 8,500g in Y2+. At that point, even with the absolute most profitable item put in there, a regular quality Starfruit, you'll still take 7 cycles just to get back your investment. The second best item, a silver Starfruit, takes 8 cycles, the third best, a regular Ancient Fruit, takes 9 cycles, and it just gets steadily and horrifyingly worse from there; something as good as a gold Pumpkin takes 14 cycles, (42 days, six weeks or a season and a half) just to break even.

Comparing these with a keg in that same time - instead of 7 cycles of regular Starfruit in a jar, you'll have made only 3 batches of wine in a keg, but you'll only have spent a maximum of 1,500g on wood for that keg (only 300g in Y1), plus the sell price of the resin and bars and instead of being at breakeven, you'll be showing an actual profit of about 5,000g. Instead of 14 cycles of gold Pumpkin, and remembering that veg only takes an extra day in a keg, rather than the extra 4 days that wine needs, in that same time you'll have made 10 batches of Pumpkin juice in a keg for a profit of almost 3,000g. On top of these missing profits, there's also the lost opportunity cost of all the time spent on extra loading and unloading operations for the jars. You could use that time to go mining for more resources and sellables, or you could go fishing or foraging for some of the completionist stuff, or you could simply have more time for romancing and socialising.

Finally, on top of this extra time and profit from using kegs, all those upfront savings, as much as 6,500g per jar if you're buying everything, can also be invested in more seeds or infrastructure to continue to expand your moneymaking potential more rapidly too.

Honestly, if you can afford those upfront costs, you don't need the timesave offered by the jars anyway, because you're already awash with cash.

As for the Oak resin and metal bars for the kegs, this table is clearly aimed at players who aren't new to the game and who will know that Oak resin and metal ore will be needed. So, they can therefore start planning for this and planting Acorns from day 2 onwards to get themselves a stand of 50+ Oak trees, most of which will be grown and ready to tap by the end of Spring, so the resin for the initial batch of kegs will already be in place when needed, and it can continue to be harvested on a weekly basis. It's also relatively easy to get the ore for bars for about15-20 kegs per day by repeatedly revisiting floors 21 and 61 for copper and iron respectively, as they refresh each time you visit.