Stardew Valley Artisan Goods: Kegs, Jars and Machines

Kegs and Preserves Jars are how a farm goes from good money to big money. The two questions that matter are which machine to use for each crop, and how many machines you need so nothing sits waiting in a chest.

The short version: wine from expensive fruit belongs in kegs, cheap fruit and vegetables often do better in jars, and almost every farm has fewer machines than its fields can feed. Our tools show the gold per machine, not just the price per bottle, because machines are usually what runs out first.

Start here

1. Keg or jar for a crop? Keg vs Preserves Jar.
2. How many machines to build? How Many Kegs Do I Need?
3. Which machines are worth their materials? The Crafting Calculator adds up the ore and wood.

Which machine for which crop

For one piece of fruit, the Keg earns more than the jar for 14 crops, including Ancient Fruit, Cactus Fruit, Cranberries, Grape, Hops. The jar earns more for 21 others. Blueberry is a tie.

That is the per-item answer. Per machine per day it can flip, because the two machines take different lengths of time to finish. If your harvest is bigger than your machines, the better question is how much each machine earns per day, and the Keg vs Preserves Jar tool shows exactly that.

How many machines each plant keeps busy

A machine only helps if it is free when the crop is ready. These are the kegs one plant needs to avoid a backlog, worked out from how often the plant fruits and how long the keg takes:

Plants that fruit every day, like Hops, need more than one keg each, while slow fruits like Starfruit need less than half a keg. Most farms end up short of machines, not crops, so build for the crops you grow most.

Casks, the third machine

Casks age wine, cheese, ale and more to higher quality, and they take a long time. The cellar comes with the third Farmhouse upgrade, starts with 33 casks already placed and has room for 189 in total. Because casks need space and months of waiting, they pay off slowly, but they earn without any daily work. The Are Casks Worth It? guide has the gold per cask per day.

There is a fourth option for fruit: the Dehydrator turns fruit into dried fruit, which can earn more per machine per day than wine. Dehydrator vs Keg compares them.