Chapter 153 Plum Sauce (Part 2)
Jiangyou's brewing workshop has been open for six days, and the products sold have naturally undergone many adjustments based on the opinions and preferences of the customers.
The best-selling items in the store right now are: roast meat, fruit beer, and sweet soy sauce.
Plum jam is indeed very popular, but the raw materials for this thing were insufficient and the production could not be increased a few days ago. Apart from meeting the requirement of giving it away for free with the daily roast meat meals, the remaining stock in the cans would be bought by the nobles waiting in line through their connections as soon as it was boiled and bottled, and it would never be put on the shelves.
The clever common people then turned their attention to roasting meat.
Each serving of crispy roast pork and roast duck comes with a serving of plum sauce as a dipping sauce. The amount is not much, just a dollop slightly larger than the knuckle of your thumb, but as long as you use it sparingly, there will be some left after eating the roast meat, which is a wonderful dip for other meats and bread.
The common people were all geniuses at calculating. Roast meat and plum jam were delicious in themselves, not to mention that the story of how the city lord's housekeeper had argued for a long time in public and bought a small glass jar of plum jam with a gold coin had spread throughout most of the city, and people were already calculating.
A jar of plum jam, weighing only one pound, costs one gold coin, and that small, free dollop of plum jam weighs 5 to 8 grams. Doing the math, that little bit of plum jam is worth just one silver coin! And buying a serving of crispy roast pork or roast duck costs just two copper coins! In other words, for every two copper coins they spend on a serving of roast meat, they net a silver coin. The more they buy, the more they earn!
People couldn't fathom this. They thought the lich shop owner wasn't doing charity; giving away plum jam for free was sheer madness. But wasn't the shop owner's madness the greatest benefit for his customers? People couldn't resist a bargain, and their desire to buy roast meats skyrocketed. Jiangyou went from two batches a day to three or four, each one packed to the brim, yet they still sold out in an instant.
Jiang You naturally smiled from ear to ear. The guests couldn't figure out the cost, but Wu Lich knew it well—contrary to their expectations, her costs were unexpectedly low.
The plums used in plum jam originally came from the trees in her backyard, but today they've been replaced with the "investment" Holly sent. Naturally, the actual cost is far lower than the market price of one silver coin per pound. As for sugar, Takuyu had been using ready-made malt sugar purchased from the Witch's Forest a few days ago. Now that the malt has fermented, he can make his own from millet. This will keep costs even lower.
Making plum jam is also very simple: scrub the green plums with salt, soak them in water, rinse, and dry them. Remove the stems and place them in boiling water for a minute and a half, then remove and cool them in cold water. Once cooled, halve the plums, remove the cores, scrape the flesh from the skins, and mince them into a puree. Next, add maltose water in a 1:1 ratio and simmer in a large pot.
Next, just pay attention to stirring and skimming off the foam. When it reaches a thick amber color, you can turn off the heat, remove from the pot, let it cool, put it into a clean and sterile glass jar, and then use the purification magic to sterilize it for storage.
A pound of green plums plus a pound of malt sugar can produce about 1.2-1.5 pounds of jam after boiling, because the water and some sugar will be lost during the cooking process. According to ordinary people's cognition, the cost here will be two silver coins, but Jiangyou actually only needs to spend 30-50 copper coins.
Even at the highest cost, Jiangyou only spent six nickels per gram of plum jam. Add to that the low prices of Uncle Wolf's random meat blind boxes, a roast meat for two coppers, and she could easily recoup the cost of the meat and plum jam and still make a net profit of one copper. Not to mention the nobles who paid her a high price of one gold coin to boost her reputation and supplement her income.
——Massive profit!
From her small storage room (the brewing room), Takumiu pulled out a dustpan lined with gauze, which was already covered with lush green malt. These malts had grown to 2-3 centimeters in length, the peak of their amylase activity. She pulled the malt from the gauze and chopped it up to release the amylase during the brewing process.
After soaking, cooking, and cooling, millet can be mixed with chopped malt to saccharify and ferment the starch. While millet's starch content is naturally lower than glutinous rice, it was a classic ingredient in maltose in the ancient times of Jiangyou's previous life. As glutinous rice production continued to increase, millet naturally became obsolete.
For modern people, if there are better materials with better quality and larger output, they naturally have to use better ones.
But back in the Principality of Huntington, where Jiangyou lived, glutinous rice was difficult to grow and incredibly expensive, while millet was cheap to grow and raise, and a few nickels could buy a large pile. Even though millet had a lower sugar yield than glutinous rice, using more ingredients and boiling it repeatedly could achieve the same yield, but the cost was vastly different.
After draining the maltose juice through clean gauze, the residue can be saved as animal feed. Although Jiangyou didn't raise livestock, Uncle Wolf did collect feed. After hearing about this from the delivery boy, Jiangyou had him come every evening after his delivery to take away the soy sauce dregs and maltose residue from the brewery, earning him quite a bit of money.
Boiling maltose juice into sugar is also a long process, but Jiangyou does not need to make the maltose into solid sugar blocks, he only needs to boil it into a thick liquid before bottling it.
She separated half of the boiled malt sugar into a glass jar for later use, and mixed the remaining half in the pot with water and green plum pulp to make plum jam. The sweet fragrance filled the kitchen, attracting many customers into the store.
This was the last wave of customers before closing. Although the customers were somewhat dissatisfied with Jiangyou's decision not to serve dinner, considering the safety of the area, they could not help but agree with her approach. They packed up what they needed and delivered what they needed. After a busy period, it was time to close the brewery for the day.
However, just as Jiangyou was about to close the shop, a round-faced young girl came running over, panting, and took down the job recruitment notice that Jiangyou had posted on the courtyard wall: "Don't close the shop yet! I'm here to apply!"
"Huh?!" Jiang You didn't expect someone to come apply for the job so soon. She was overjoyed: "Okay~ Don't worry, come in and we'll talk slowly."
The person who came was Nasha Huo Chena.
As soon as the Baroness's luncheon was over, Nasha fled without paying any attention to Kirsina, who was still trying to curry favor with the nobles. She crossed most of the city alone and finally arrived at the brewery before closing time.
Seeing that the Skeleton Shop owner was already closing the shop, Naxia was anxious. She glanced at the conspicuous "Job Recruitment Notice" on the courtyard wall, and her mind raced as she directly peeled off the paper.
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