Beers and Beards

Chapter 51: Through the Door

"Three hundred five mugs of beer on the rack, three hundred five mugs of beer! Take one down, swirl it around, three hundred four mugs of beer on the rack!"

If dishes were wishes, I’d own this whole damn brewery.

Pick up the mug, rinse the mug in scalding hot water, look for the soap.

Fail to find the soap. Because apparently, DWARVES DON’T USE SOAP!

Put the mug on the drying rack and move to the next mug.

The party had ended sometime around noon the next day. Pong was a big hit, and I was slightly bothered that it didn’t count towards my otherworldly beer knowledge quest. At around five in the morning, the last beer from the brewery got hit with my new Milestone every time it came off cooldown.

[Bottomless Barrel]

You can touch a container that contains no more than forty-eight liters of non-magical liquid and grant it a touch of infinity. For the next one minute, any drink you pour out of it does not reduce the liquid level. If the liquid is not poured into an appropriate container or imbibed within the next twenty-four minutes, it disappears.

You can use this ability once per hour.

It was super neat and an absolute joy to use. I’ve had fun with my Milestones and Blessings, and they’ve even saved my life, but this Milestone was the first one I had earned the normal way. And it felt the most me out of everything I’ve received on Erd.

I could touch a bottle of Romanée Conti red wine, pour it out to a dozen people, and never use a drop of wine in the bottle. I imagined my expensive alcohol collection back on Earth, with its forty-year-old whiskeys, rare wines, and specialty craft beers. A skill like this would have allowed me to share those delicacies and still have a full bottle!

It was a shame that opening a bottle was a countdown to destruction for the drink within. Uncorking introduced oxygen to the drink, which allowed for an oxidization reaction to occur. It was the exact same process that created rust, with a similar outcome. The flavour would slowly be destroyed, and in some cases, all that was left after oxidation was pure vinegar. I could use a trick involving a nitrogen filled barrel, but there was no guarantee nitrogen even existed here. Then again, it would be a bit too much of a cheat to open a bottle, use [Bottomless Barrel] and then re-bottle it with no possible downside.

I paused in the middle of placing a mug on the rack. Wait.. could I actually do that re-bottle trick? I popped open my character sheet. As I did, a few ‘failed quest’ notifications popped up. One was expected, but the next was a surprise.

Championship Road Part 2/2 Failed!

Looks like you hit a speed bump on the road to success.

Requirement: Enter the top 3

Reward: None

Quest: An Ore-Able Time Part 3/10 Failed!

You don’t plan on mining ever again. Some dwarf.

Collect: 140.7/400 Tonnes of Ore

Reward: None

Failing Ore-Able time was a surprise. I was used to taking a hundred quests and letting them sit on the backburner; the thought one would simply fail on its own had never occurred to me.

It did make sense. Now that I was officially in the brewery, I wasn't ever going to complete that quest. It was a massive, subconscious, 'abort quest' in my soul. Ore-Able Time had probably been one of Tiara’s quests? Sorry, yer worship!

Onto my milestones! Let's see if they had what I was looking for.

Status: Provided by the Firmament

Name: Peter Phillips Samson Roughtuff Age: 49

Conditions: Tired

Race: Dwarf

Blessings: [Flesh to Stone], [Flash of Insight], [Strength of All: Held], [Regeneration]

Title: [Alchemist]

Milestones: [Outworlder], [Power Pick], [Ingredient Scan], [Stabilize Mixture], [Basic Slash], [Bottomless Barrel]

Strength 15.2

Vitality 17.3

Agility 11

Dexterity 11

Wisdom 14

Intelligence 12

Perception 15.1

Charisma 12

Yep, there it was. I popped open [Stabilize Mixture] and gave it a read through.

[Stabilize Mixture]

You are able to make an unstable mixture reach perfect equilibrium. It will no longer react violently unless you force it to do so.

You can use this ability once per minute.

Would that allow me to keep a drink from being oxidized? The Milestone seemed to have two parts. The second part was clearly focused on explosives, but the first part specified ‘allowing an unstable mixture to reach perfect equilibrium.’ Oxidization was essentially an instability within the alcohol. If I re-corked a drink, could I use [Stabilize Mixture] to prevent it from going bad? I HAD to check. I may have just discovered the first synergy in my skills! Who doesn’t love cool synergies?

Sure, it wasn’t big or fancy, or freaking magic, but unlimited expensive alcohol with no downsides!! I almost dropped a mug before I re-focused my attention. Some experimentation could wait; Annie was letting me on the brewery floor as soon as the dishes were done. At least I was better off than poor Balin, who was going to be fixing tables outside till next week.

"Three hundred mugs of beer on the rack, three hundred mugs of beer! Take one down, swirl it around, two hundred ninety nine mugs of beer on the rack!"

—

“And, here it is!” Annie swung open the door and let me onto the brew room floor. I had been inside for a brief, incredible moment yesterday, but now I had the time to fully appreciate it. I took a deep sniff and the scent of boiled wort and musty malt assailed my nostrils. I closed my eyes and thought back to my first brewing room.

—

Caroline’s cheerful laugh echoed in the large, mostly empty warehouse. “Ha! I can see under my skirt on the floor. Why is it so shiny?”

“Careful! You’ll slip, and I don’t want to spend the next eight hours in Emerg!” I glowered in mock disapproval.

*bleh* Caroline stuck her tongue out at me. “I’ll be fine, worrywart.”

“I'm not worried about you.” I walked over to pat her burgeoning belly. “Is our little girl kicking yet?”

“Mmmm,” Caroline closed her eyes and leaned her head into my shoulder, “not yet. The doctor says it’ll be soon though.”

We stood there for a moment until Caroline pulled away. “You’re avoiding the question, why does the floor of our brewery look like an ice rink?”

“Well… It cost a bit extra, but I got the concrete sealed. With all the spills in a brewery, we want to keep the concrete floor from staining or cracking, so I had them put epoxy over top.”

“Was it expensive?”

“A little, but we need it to be up to code anyway.”

“Keep to the code?”

“Arrr, that’s right, me hearty!”

The two of us shared a hug as we gazed upon the gleaming rows of fermentation tanks in Beavermoose brewery.

—

That damn floor had been way too expensive, but had also been so wonderfully easy to clean. It was the first thing that came to mind as I looked out over the brew room floor here. The dirty, dirty, brew room floor. There was mud caked in places from spilled beer mixed with dirt, and while it certainly wasn’t a pigsty, it was nothing like the pristinely clean brewery I remembered. I knew that dwarves weren’t that big into hygiene, but this was a bit ridiculous.

The floor was an enormous slab of grimy, off-yellow granite, while the dusty walls were made of a combination of wood and stone. A warm yellow light shone down from several solstones set in the rafters. A large brick fireplace with a chimney up to the ceiling sat beneath a copper-bottom boiling tank at the center of the room. The pungy aroma of coal smoke added to the various earthy scents wafting through the space.

Still, even with the slight patina of dirt and grease on everything, it was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in this life. Most of the usual brewing equipment was there, alongside rows upon rows of barrels and kegs. A few things were missing, but I could fix that soon enough. Thankfully, all the equipment was clearly well maintained and in top shape.

There were three other dwarves hard at work and they all looked over as we entered. There was the braided viking John, and his pretty-boy son Johnsson, alongside the massive Richter. They were busy levering a large wooden trough from the boiling kettle to one of the many open-topped fermentation tanks. Looks like I’d guessed right about the open air tanks. Score one for Pete.

Annie cleared her throat for attention, “Ahem, we have decided that Pete is going to join us on the brew room floor.”

There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Johnsson gave a hoot and a holler.

“That’s great! Welcome to the family Pete!” He came over and gave me a pound on the shoulder. He was covered in sweat and grime from a day of hard labour, and he positively exuded 'thank the Gods, someone my age' energy.

“Thanks Johnsson, it’s great to finally be a part of this brewhaha!” I gave him a friendly pound back. He looked confused for a moment, though John gave a small snort from where he was locking the trough into place.

Richter came over and shook my hand.

“I sah ya workin’ ‘ard wit tha priss, ya?”

“Priss? Do you mean Penelope? She’s not that bad!”

“Yer brudda’s in love wit’ tha biggest troublemaker in Minnova. I tink tha Roughtuff clan ‘as a ting fer punishment.”

“Excuse me!?” Annie protested as the rest of us laughed. Her cheeks grew more and more crimson as the laughter grew until she finally pulled back a fist and swung at Richter. He deftly dodged with the grace of long practice, and her punch connected squarely on the laughing face of Johnsson. He went down with a squawk, and the rest of us laughed harder.

Annie turned to me, her eyes promising murder. “Do you want me to show you around, or should I leave you with these louts? Maybe we could go wash more dishes?”

I stopped laughing and stood to attention. “Yes ma’am! No ma’am!”

“That’s what I thought. The rest of you, we have two large orders to fulfill within the month, and someone just emptied out all our stock! We need those three batches done by tonight! Pete bought us a few months, don’t waste it!”

Johnsson and Richter scrambled back to work, though John took his time. He gave me a wink as he passed. He struck me as the silent and thoughtful type compared to Jeremiah Goldstone's jolly giant.

“Alright Pete, let me show you around. I will remind you that all of this is confidential." Annie's voice carried a tinge of warning. "The methods of beer creation are a secret passed down from generation to generation, and jealously guarded by the traditional brewing families and the Honourable Guild of Brewers.”

“Oh, those guys? They seem a bit… uh…”

“Set in their ways?” Annie sighed, “Don’t I know it. You said you know a bit of brewing?”

“That would be correct.” And an understatement.

“Can you tell me what everything in here does?” She waved her hand around the room.

“Absolutely, but is this your tour or mine?” I waggled my eyebrows.

“Humour me. Balin said some stuff that has me curious, but he clams up whenever I push.”

Uh oh. That wasn’t good. Communication issues like that could be a problem in a relationship, and I was the direct cause. Well, Annie had let me into the heart of her family, so maybe we could let her into the Roughtuff clan’s.

“Let me talk a bit with Balin.”

“Does it have something to do with your ‘amnesia’?” I could practically feel the air quotes in her voice and winced a bit. Yeah, that excuse had been wearing thin recently.

“Sort of. I promise it’ll make sense.”

“Fine. Do you want to do the honours?”

“Sure.”

We dodged out of the way as Richter walked by carrying a giant bag full of Erdroot. He dumped it into a metal hopper and went to get another sack.

I pointed to the hopper. “That there is the grist mill, and it’s where you mill the Erdroot into malt.” The hopper dropped into a large grinder, and Johnsson got to work turning a crank nearly as tall as he was.

“That’s right. We get most of our Erdroot from local farms, but it’s gotten a lot more expensive. The price dropped back down recently, but that may not last for long.”

“Do you take turns on the crank?”

“No, Johnsson does most of it since he’s the youngest. I think he’s looking forward to giving someone else a chance.” She grinned maliciously.

“Um.”

“What about this?” Annie directed me to a pair of large apparatuses. One was the copper-bottom boiling tank and fireplace combo while the other was a large wooden barrel. They were nearly thrice my height and equally as wide. They were empty at the moment, though I could see leftover bits of gunk inside. A ramp led up to sturdy scaffolding constructed around the two barrels, and a complex series of pipes ran back and forth between them. John was busy shoveling coal into the fireplace.

“Easy enough. You put all the milled malt into that wooden barrel, which is the mash tun. Next, you boil water in the copper brew kettle beside it. Then you pipe the hot water into the mash tun to make your wort.”

“Yes, that’s all correct.” Annie’s eyes narrowed. “And all classified. I need you to have that conversation with Balin about your amnesia sooner rather than later.”

“I will, I promise.” I pointed to an enormous wooden spoon up on the scaffold. “Who stirs the mash?”

“Richter mostly. He’s tall enough and strong enough for it. My dad used to do it before, and then Richter’s father.”

“What happened to Richter’s father?”

“You’ll need to ask him.” Annie said coolly. Oops, some kind of history there. I pointed back at the copper tank.

“Next, you pump the wort back into the brew kettle, where you boil it for a few hours. During this phase you add some flavours and bittering agents.”

“Correct again. Do you happen to know what we use?” She asked sweetly, but I could sense the slightly bitter undertones. It was clear that the secret ingredients were a touch more sensitive than everything else.

“No idea.” I shrugged. I left the 'they suck though', unsaid.

She sighed in relief. “Well, that’s something at least. Dad buys the ingredients and puts them into sacks.” She pointed to a series of brown burlap bags lying against the scaffolding. “You’ll just dump it into the boil, so don’t worry about it.”

“Aww, not even a clue?”

“No, we need to keep some things secret.”

“Fiiiine.” I whined, petulantly. “After you boil the wort, it gets filtered through the hopback and chilled before it goes into one of the fermentation tanks. Or it should, but I don’t see any equipment for that. The last step is to add some yeast and wait.”

“What’s a hopback?” Annie asked. “You’re mostly right, but we don’t chill the wort, it just gets pumped through those troughs into the fermentation tanks to cool.”

“Ugh, that’s the no-chill method. And no hopback? That explains so much.”

“What are you talking about?” Annie asked as her eyes gleamed with curiosity. That’s right, Annie was a rebel who believed there could be a better way to make beer. Well, two could play the ‘mysterious secrets’ game.

“I'll tell you, but you need to do something for me first.”

“What?” Annie folded her arms in the universal ‘I’m about to deny your silly request’ pose.

“Get me a pair of mops and buckets and I’ll tell you while we work.”

Her arms fell to her side in confusion. “Why mops and buckets?”

I looked around me and said, “Because if there’s anything I’ve learned recently, it’s that all good things in this world start with cleaning up shit.”