Working Poor

Last edited Mon Nov 2, 2015, 02:08 PM - Edit history (1)

Those little bottles people use in baking cookies and whatnot, that sell for 2.39 an ounce.

I grow black raspberries, so I'm making black raspberry extract now. If it works out well, I'll branch out into other flavours.

I used a quart of black raspberry juice and a 750 ml bottle of 100 proof vodka - cost so far, under $15. I'm thinking I'll wind up with somewhere around 50 ounces of extract when all's said and done. That would run me around $120 or so to buy in the store at 2.39 an ounce. I'll still have to buy some bottles to put it in, but it's homemade, it's a flavour that's next to impossible to even find, and I'm guessing even with the bottles, I'll have spent about 25% what it would have cost me to simply buy it to hand out.

The jellies (and jams I used to make) are not as much of a saving. The jars, pectin, wax, and sugar all add up, so I don't save too much, but at least again, they're homemade from organic berry bushes and a flavour that's more rare on grocery shelves.

(I like black raspberries because they're pretty easy. Once they get established, you just basically ignore them until it's time to pick them., then, after you pick them clean, you cut down the stalks that had raspberries on them, and leave the ones that don't, because those are the ones that will have raspberries next year. Bush cherries are also low maintenance, it looks like, just starting to get more fruit off the one I planted around 4 years ago.)

ETA - Just ordered the bottles to put the extract in. $11.44 per dozen 4 oz bottles and caps, so my cost to make each 4 oz bottle of extract will come in at $2.20, just under 25% of store-bought cost, so I was dead on in my guesstimate.)