IMPORTANT: Always call the business before going to take the factory tour. We try and keep our data s up-to-date as possible but you should always check first.

Company
Sechler's Pickles, INC
5686 SR 1, St. Joe, IN   46785
Latitude: 41.329046   Longitude: -84.887327
Email Address: [email protected]
http://www.sechlerspickles.com
This tour is free

Description
For all the technical advances in food processing in recent years, many of our processes have changed little or not at all. We avoid any shortcuts that might detract from the quality of our pickles.

Farmers from across northern Indiana, northwest Ohio and Southern Michigan bring us their freshly picked cucumbers straight from the fields. They are immediately "graded", that is, sorted into seven sizes. From there most will go to tanks for curing. The tanks, mostly of cypress, contain a salt brine solution in which the cucumbers will be transformed into pickles over a period of three months or longer. We're best known for our many varieties of processed pickles.

Those cucumbers that don't go immediately to the tanks become "fresh pack" pickles. These are washed, usually cut, packed and pasteurized. They can be eaten within three or four days of being packed. For example, Sechler's Bread and Butter Pickles and Kosher Spears are fresh pack.

Nobody takes more time and care in the process of making sweetened pickles. All of our products labeled "sweet" or "candied" have been through this process, the candied having been sweetened twice. We take up to two weeks for the sweetening process alone, (many pickle companies take only one day) to insure our pickles are sweetened all the way through. As we like to say: "We could make them faster, but that wouldn't make them better." All the candied and most of our sweetened products are tank-cured, but you'll also find some among the fresh pack items.

As you'll see while perusing our product pages, cucumbers are only one ingredient among many to go into our product line.

Defects are minimized by our stringent quality control, another tradition at Sechler's. We inspect pickles at the grading stage, after processing and, if they're sliced, again after that.

Hours
A group tour of our plant can be scheduled for between 9:00 am to 3:00 pm weekdays. Please call a week or more ahead for a reservation. Tours are available from April -October, Monday - Thursday.