Sukang Paombong : Vinegar making can be lucrative

Imagine generating sales of P5,000 a week – P20,000 a month or some such amount and achieving an 80 percent return on investment (ROI) or a whopping P16,000, labor, which is minimal, included. That, to put it mildly, is already sweet success from a sour liquid product to 42-year-old Mario Coronel.

Mario has been in the business of vinegar-making for 10 years, an enterprise he learned from his father and learned to like it in no time. His product the so called "sukang Paombong," is widely known and sought in Central Luzon and Metro Manila, one wonders why no commercial company has ever thought of making and bottling it. Which is for the good of all the household enterprises in Paombong, Bulacan. Otherwise, they would’ve been deprived of their time-honored livelihood.

Sukang Paombong has that full body and delicate tingling sour taste verging on a kind of sweetness that makes it excellent stuff for dip and for cooking, among them, paksiw na bangus or tilapia and all types of isdang kilawen. This vinegar comes from the sap of young nipa fruits collected at the break of day, the same raw material that is made into the so called agua de pataranta bottled and marketed as lambanog in Quezon province.

The nipa sap (tuba) is delivered in containers of five galoons each right to Mario’s home at Barangay Sapang Patay, Sitio San Isidro Dos, along the provincial highway where he ferments the raw materials in 120 cloth-covered clay jars lying around their side yard and front yard.

One container of five gallons yields four gallons of vinegar in two weeks of fermentation; this type costs P50 per gallon and P5 per long neck bottle. The better tasting puro (pure or first class) takes another four and a half months to six months of fermentation which is a very simple process of just leaving the sap in the jars for a longer period – no fuzz, no hassle.

A gallon of this type (by this time almost black in color) fetches varied prices ranging from P100 to P150 depending on taste – meaning quality – and length of fermentation; one long neck costs P12.

Buyers come to Mario’s place and other vinegar-making home enterprises in the neighborhood so they do not have any marketing problem inherent in most businesses with products to sell.

Aside from doing the household chores, Mario’s wife Fely helps in bottling the product and putting it in containers and in attending to walk-in customers, some for take home by travelers and some for the buy-and-sell business of middlemen.