Stardew Valley Preserves Jar
The Preserves Jar is a piece of equipment in Stardew Valley which is crafted to age fruits and vegetables into the artisan goods. The Preserves Jar can be crafted by obtaining a recipe after the last home improvement; this instrument can be placed in your basement. Jars placed outside of your basement will not work.
After the 3rd house expansion, you get a basement with 33 Preserves Jars. The cellar can fit up to 189 jars, and to use them all, you must place and fill them all at once by placing them one after one and moving toward the exit. To collect the produced goods, you have to remove jar after jar in the same way you put them. It’s a very time-consuming process, so it is recommended to barrel-aging a costly product that takes a long time to age.
To age the product, you must put it in the Preserves Jar. When the product is aged to iridium quality, you can pick it up. If you want to get the item in advance, you need to hit the Barrel with a pickaxe, thereby knocking it out of place. It takes different amounts of time to age different items, the wine takes the longest to age, so it’s more profitable to age it from expensive crops.
- Pickles — Any vegetable, 4000m (2-3 days) for production
- Jelly — Any fruit, 4000m (2-3 days) for production
- Caviar — One Sturgeon Roe, 6000m (4 days) for production
- Aged Roe — One Roe, 4000m (2-3 days) for production
Stardew Valley Keg
A keg is a piece of equipment in Stardew Valley designed to produce craft goods. Barrels can be placed on a farm or in buildings, including a Warehouse or Barn. One can be obtained as a reward for harvesting a Household Knot, while other barrels can be crafted yourself by getting a recipe after reaching the 8th level of the Farming skill.
Items processed in the Keg (except some flowers and berries after receiving the special skill Bear Knowledge) always cost more than the items used to make them, so using the Keg is usually profitable. The profit gained from processing items is lowest when using iridium quality and highest when using regular items. Alcoholic beverages may be aged in the Barrel to increase profits further.
- Beer — produced from Wheat within 1750 mins (1 Day)
- Coffee — produced from 5 Coffee Beans within 2 hours
- Green Tea — Tea Leaves, 180 mins (3 Hours) for production
- Juice — Any Vegetable (1), 6000 mins (4 Days) for production
- Mead — One Honey, 600 mins (10 hours) for production
- Pale Ale — One Hops, 2250 mins (1-2 Days) for production
- Wine — Any Fruit, 10000 mins (6.25 Days) for production
Stardew Valley Keg vs Preserves Jar
The Preserves Jar production increases the profit of a crop using a simple formula: (2 × Base Crop Value + 50). The Keg works a bit differently: it multiplies Fruits’ base value by three and Vegetables by 2.25. It causes cheap high-yield crops like Corn or Tomatoes to be more valuable in the preserves jar. Consider putting them into the kegs if you grow crops with a higher base value, such as Ancient Fruit or Melons.
Preserves jars are faster than kegs but usually yield less profit. However, cheaper crops with high yields like blueberries, green beans, and corn are more profitable and faster to process in Preserves jars than in a keg. For example, corn juice made in a barrel costs 113 gold, while canned corn made in a can costs 150 gold. Wine made of salmonberries in a barrel costs only 15 gold, but a jam made of salmonberries costs 60 gold. Many villagers also enjoy jams and preserves, so it’s possible to use them as gifts. Consider that the effects of Tiller or Artisan professions reduce and increase the profit from a Keg.
The quality of ingredients for the Preserves Jar makes no difference to the finished product. The finished product’s value is determined using the base value of the item. However, the preserved version will always be more profitable than even gold star produce, although the profit margin is lower than average production.
The processing times of both methods are approximate since time passes differently from 2 am to 6 am. One hour takes 60 minutes from 6 am to 2 am, but 1 hour is also 100 minutes from 2 am to 6 am. One full day is 1600 minutes, where the day is 1200 minutes, and the night is 400 minutes.
Preserves Jars and Kegs Storage
The Preserves Jars can be stored anywhere on the farm; however, it’s more space-efficient to keep them inside farm buildings or outside the farm altogether. Kegs can be stored in farm buildings.
A Shed, optimally filled with kegs, holds 67 of them while occupying only 21 tiles of land. An upgraded Big Shed, optimally filled, has 137 kegs on the same land space. A Barn is cheaper and holds 90 of them on 28 tiles of land. The Deluxe Barn can fit 136 kegs on the same land space as the initial Barn. Cabins are the cheapest initially, fitting only 42 kegs without upgrades if the cabin is unclaimed and the parsnips and bed remain. The first level of the upgraded cabin can hold 113 kegs at a lower cost than any other option.