Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 52 Soy Sauce King

The trial production of soy sauce was a great success, and Yuanye was very satisfied. However, Ah Man suffered misfortune and was polluted and turned into a little otter. He frowned and pondered a philosophical question: In the river? In this river? Am I in a world in the river? !
However, the brothers Qing, Yayoi, and Momoi were not as curious as she was. They wanted to get to the bottom of everything. They had no idea how long it took to brew soy sauce using the traditional method. They took it for granted and were not surprised at all. Perhaps this is why the smarter and more knowledgeable people are, the more likely they are to go crazy!
After tasting the soy sauce, they also liked it and praised it highly, thinking that it tasted great. Yayoi even scooped some away and prepared to go back and divide it into pots so that everyone could eat soy sauce with rice in the evening.

Yuanye didn't stop him. Although the soy sauces definitely contained excessive amounts of chemical residues, and many people in future generations would cry out that they were carcinogenic and would kill people if they ate them, the food modern people eat is not very clean. Food problems are emerging in an endless stream in every country, and the risks are equally high. So don't worry too much about it. It's okay to eat it occasionally.

Of course, he is now in trial production, and the production process is definitely not perfect. In the future, he will gradually improve the purification process and be able to produce qualified soy sauce even if "tons, tons, tons" are dried up in a pot. But this takes time, and there is no need to rush.

He has even begun to consider the issue of market segmentation. For example, Kaito County is adjacent to Ise Bay, so kelp must be very cheap. He could buy some of the broth and add it to soy sauce, greatly improving the freshness of the soy sauce and producing delicious "broth soy sauce", and then increase the selling price five to ten times to satisfy the high-end pretentious market.

You can also find a way to purchase some crops with high sugar content, or roots and tubers with high starch content, such as boiling taro into sugar juice and adding it to soy sauce to increase the sweetness of the soy sauce, producing "sweet soy sauce" and targeting the market of literati, aristocratic women and children. It should be a good idea.

Anyway, he would definitely make some money, and the money he earned would be enough for him to renovate his house to make it look like new, and to carry out super luxurious decoration to greatly improve his quality of life.

By dinner time, he was still there pondering over various techniques, preparing to open his "high-end soy sauce workshop". He had already designed more than 20 sub-products in his mind, and achieving financial freedom was just around the corner. At this time, Aman gradually came to her senses - she simply couldn't understand how Yuanye did it, how he shortened the brewing cycle of a year to seven or eight days, and she couldn't understand why wheat bran, rice bran, and other almost garbage things could be used to brew expensive soy sauce, so she simply stopped thinking about it.

She gave up, but she didn't pester Yuanye to ask what the hell he had poured into the jar. After all, although she was young, she had been through a lot and knew the value of this "secret recipe". She knew that no matter how she asked, Yuanye would not tell her - if she had this secret recipe in her hands, she would stab anyone who dared to take a look at it into the stomach, and if anyone hesitated for a second, she would be sorry to her ancestors.

So she simply didn't ask, but reached out and picked up the soy sauce bottle and poured some into the dish, then held it in front of her eyes to take a closer look - the soy sauce was bright brown in color, and it had a very soft warm tone under the light, which was very comfortable to look at.

She picked up the plate again and sniffed it gently. The alcohols, aldehydes, carboxylic acids, esters, phenols, acetals and furan compounds rich in soy sauce formed a multi-layered complex smell. It was a soft soy aroma that was captivating and fascinating.

Finally, she held up the dish with both hands, tilted her head back, and drank the soy sauce in one gulp. The taste in her mouth started out salty, then fresh, and finally sweet. It was salty with a hint of freshness, and fresh with a hint of sweetness. In any case, it was much better than the pitch-black soy sauce brewed by the monks, which had a somewhat bitter taste.

She slowly put down the plate, exhaled lightly, closed her eyes silently to savor the moment, and when she opened her eyes again, she looked like the upgraded zombies in the movie, with green light emitting from her eyes.

Damn it, this soy sauce is top quality! This is a miracle! That guy didn't mess around, he really succeeded, brewing a top quality soy sauce that is equivalent to the top quality winter storage in sake, it will definitely sell for a high price, and the cost is very low!

Although she hadn't succeeded in her previous rant, and all the nonsense she had come up with with great difficulty about dung beetles, soy sauce and fools was wasted, she participated in the entire soy sauce-making process, so she had a rough idea of how much raw materials were involved and what the production rate was. She immediately started to calculate on her fingers.

One stone of bean cake, wheat bran and rice bran can produce more than one stone of soy sauce. Bean cake costs only one hundred and thirty or forty coins per stone when bought in large quantities. Wheat bran and rice bran are only eaten by poor people when they have nothing else to eat, mixed with buckwheat. They are even less valuable. You can get a lot of them by paying a few dozen coins at the mill.

It's just that coarse salt is a little more expensive, but Haidong County is close to the sea and has a large supply of salt. The price of salt is only slightly higher than that of rice. Moreover, if you go to the salt fields to steal a lot... no, if you buy a lot, it can be even cheaper.

If you calculate it this way, the cost of brewing one stone of soy sauce is only about 200 wen, and one stone of soy sauce can sell for more than two kan. No, with such good quality, it should be sold at the standard of high-end sake, more than three kan. That would be 15 times the profit, which is more satisfying than robbery! After completing the book, the green light in Ah Man's eyes became stronger. If it materialized into a laser scanning around, it could cut into pieces Ah Qing, Yayoi and others who were eating soy sauce rice, drinking soy sauce radish soup, tasting soy sauce stewed fish, and were always amazed.

Of course, she couldn't do that. She hadn't trained to the point where she could shoot lasers with her eyes. But she certainly didn't care about eating. She immediately moved closer to Yuanye and asked in a low voice as if she was going to trade him for a drug: "What you poured on the bean cake before, and what you sprinkled on it later... Don't be nervous. I'm not asking you what that is. I just want to ask if it's expensive and worth the money."

Yuan Ye was slightly stunned, and immediately guessed that she wanted to know the cost, and said directly: "It's not expensive. On average, each stone of soy sauce costs about a hundred coins! Well, this is the current cost. It will be cheaper in the future. I am sure I can reduce it by another 20%-30%."

He was not lying. Japan has four volcanic belts, and volcanoes are everywhere. Sulfur is extremely cheap, and even ordinary villagers can pick up high-purity natural sulfur blocks by going into the mountains. One of the four major volcanic belts passes through Owari and enters the Ise Peninsula, so it is really possible to pick up natural sulfur blocks in the mountains, which is almost a no-cost business.

Not to mention earth soda, the working people in medieval Japan used this thing to wash clothes on a daily basis. Since they used it to wash clothes on a daily basis, this thing must not be expensive.

The raw materials were already so cheap, not to mention that Yuanye was also planning to design the steaming equipment carefully, do anti-corrosion treatment, and try to condense most of the dilute hydrochloric acid for reuse, which would make the cost even lower. In later generations, that is, in the 1950s and 1960s, Japan did this. The dilute hydrochloric acid was used in a circle with very little loss, so soy sauce was so cheap. Even in an era when materials were scarce and prices were rising every day, the price of soy sauce remained consistent and everyone could afford it.

Of course, the reuse of dilute hydrochloric acid is still just Yuanye’s idea. Whether it can be really done remains to be seen. He can’t get glass now, so he has to think of other ways. But even if the dilute hydrochloric acid is not reused, it doesn’t matter. The cost is still acceptable.

Ah Man thought so too, and murmured quietly: "There's no need to lower the price any further. With a cost of over 300 wen, a profit of ten times is already very good..."

Ten times the profit, it’s no problem to say it’s huge profit. For this secret recipe, she dared to kill the emperor!

But Yuanye didn't mind taking it. Yuanye treated her very well. Yuanye never refused her food or drink. She was always treated the best. Of course, she had no objection to Yuanye making money. Yuanye was not as stingy as other warriors. He was stingy all day long, as if he would die if he spent one more penny. She would definitely benefit from her in the future, and her life would definitely become more and more comfortable!

This time she really made a fortune. She didn't expect that after her righteous plan of robbing another gangster failed, the benefits she gained would actually increase. It was truly a blessing in disguise!

The more she thought about it, the happier she became. She was already imagining her wonderful days of living a life of debauchery in the future. Her thick eyebrows couldn't help but tremble. The green light in her eyes when she glanced at Yuanye became even stronger. The more she looked at him, the more she felt that he was "a king". Maybe he would be the future "Soy Sauce King". Just by sitting next to him, she could smell the faint aroma of money coming from him, which made her feel dizzy and unable to control herself. She had always had a dream, not the one about Tiepao, but another one, which was to buy a big barrel of good wine, soak herself in it to sleep, sip it while sleeping, and feel very happy.

Now, she smelled the scent of money on Yuanye Soy Sauce King and felt that she was not far from realizing her dream. It was just around the corner!

Yuan Ye felt a little uncomfortable when she looked at him. He looked down at himself and then at her, feeling a little confused. He suspected that the chemical residue in the soy sauce exceeded the limit and made her drunk. But thinking about it, it was impossible, so he talked about business and whispered to her, "How do we sell the soy sauce now?"

He is very good at using modern industrial principles to make soy sauce, but he has been in this era for too short a time and is not sure how to sell the soy sauce for money. He can only rely on Aman, the "know-it-all".

Well, sell the soy sauce and earn the second pot of gold after traveling through time, which will be a good start for the leisurely and high-quality life in Japan's Warring States Period!
(End of this chapter)