Beers and Beards Book 3: The Big Brewhaha

I was excited enough about my idea that I spent the rest of the afternoon huddled in my bedroom cave-nook, brainstorming and making notes in my brewing journal. I really got into it, so I was lucky to emerge from my hideyhole in time to make the clan meeting.

We were holding the meeting in the big sunken library in the manor house. We usually held these meetings in the restaurant during off hours – mostly so we could snack, but this time we really needed things to be top-secret, so Annie had declared it would be in the manor.

I was the last to arrive at the meeting, and stared in shock at what I saw.

There was a moveable chalkboard on wheels up against one wall, and several kegs of beer and bowls of munchies were set up on the low bookshelves. Kirk, Johnsson, Aqua, Annie, Richter, and Bran were all in attendance, and everyone was chatting and socializing. Penelope was there too as well, snuffling at drinks and taking handouts. I rubbed my eyes and stared, was this a party? Had I missed the invite? What was going on?

“Ah, Pete’s here!” Annie announced, noticing my entry. “Come on in, we were just waiting for you, so now we can get started.”

I descended the few steps into the sunken seating area, giving Kirk a nod as I passed. “What exactly are we gettin’ started? What’s going on? Did I miss somethin’?”

“Nope. We were just waiting for you.” Aqua passed me a Whistlemug full of barista brew. “Bando was telling everyone that you had ‘some great idea’ so we planned for a long speech.”

I gawped. “EXCUSE me!?”

“We’re not complain’, now that we know you aren’t just talkin’ smoke out yer stovepipe.” Johnsson raised his own mug in a cheers. “Learnin’ things from another world is interesting, so we thought we’d do it in comfort.”

“Aye, you can go on. So let’s enjoy ourselves in da meantime!” Richter added, cheerfully munching on some pretzels.

“Well excuuuse me!” I growled.

“And I know several others had some ideas too, so I decided to turn it from a plain old staff meeting into something more fun.” Annie smiled, and pointed to an empty padded bench. “Now sit, so I can get started.”

I flopped into my seat, mutely. Caroline always said I could get carried away with beersplaining…

“I am now calling this meeting of the Thirsty Goat Brewpub into order!” Annie cleared her throat and clapped her hands. “Richter, you’ve checked for magical eavesdropping?”

“Aye!”

Johnsson popped his hand up. “Why aren’t we trying to eavesdrop on the competition? Lucky Jean’s is our competition for this round right? Should we set up some listening spells? We even have our own mage!”

“Because we’re honourable dwarves.” Annie scolded. “And the superior brewers. We don’t need to cheat.”

“And we’re not scheduled ta scope ‘em out and set up the enchantments until Arday.” I muttered, sharing a fist-bump with Richter. There was a general chuckle and Annie gave me a glower.

“Enough of that. Time is of the essence, so I hope you all put a lot of thought into this. Pete apparently has a ‘great’ idea, so I’ll have him go last, and you can all have your moment in the solstone. I’ll go first, and then we can go round the circle. If you have an idea, come up to the blackboard and write it down.” She held out a piece and chalk and indicated a roughly clockwise rotation around the library, with me at the end. Eh, that was fine.

Annie broadly wrote ‘Ideas for most valuable beer’ on the board, then began, “My idea actually connects to the work I’ve already been doing with the bittering agent – which I’ve taken to calling Goldstone Bitters. I’ve been focusing on using local ingredients to cut down on cost, since most of the Sacred Brew’s regular ingredients are imported from Greentree. I realized that since we were using all-local ingredients, we could play on the heavy patriotism and general air of ‘Kinshasa is the best’ that we’ve all been grumbling about. We have the perfect opportunity to advertise a truly ‘made in Kinshasa beer, with all Kinshasan ingredients’. And that may fit the bill of a truly ‘valuable beer’ to the locals. We could call it Kinshasa Brew and everything!”

She scratched her idea down in brief on the board as she spoke, and finished with a flourish of the chalk.

As she finished her pitch, there was loud clapping and cheers of approval. I was in full agreement, it was a great idea, and was in fact nearly the same conclusion I’d come to – to a point. Good for Annie! She was really putting those business lessons and her brewing techniques to good use!! Earth history was full of beloved local beers made with local ingredients and named after the city. Heck, even the beer I was going to recommend today was named after its point of origin.

Next was Johnsson, but he wasn’t too into the brewing side of things, so Annie gave him a brief glance then moved on to -

Johnsson cleared his throat. “*Ahem* I actually had an idea.”

Annie gave him a shocked look. As did the rest of us. “Really?”

Johnsson frowned. “Aye. I may not be a brewer or mage or whatever in tha’ nether Aqua is now, but I do put effort in for tha clan.”

Annie had the good grace to look apologetic. “Sorry, Johnsson. What’s your idea?” She motioned to the blackboard and he waved her down.

“I don’t need to come up, it’s simple enough to explain. You know how Berry’s been our ‘Celebrity Endorsement’ as Pete calls it? For barista brew and liquid gold? In Minnova, anyway. Well, that’s valuable. Reputation is valuable in Kinshasa. I spend a lot of time in the beardy salons, and the main topics of conversation are the Octamillenial contests, tha nobility, the refugees and monster attacks, and tha local hitball and wrestling scenes. Couldn’t we make our beer seem valuable, by getting the local teams and wrestlers to endorse it?” Johnsson trailed off as he finished, looking around at the eyes staring wide eyed back at him.

“That’s brilliant!” Aqua shrieked. “I don’t care what we go with, we need to do that too! Even if it’s only to make sure nobody else does it first!!!”

Annie nodded and wrote “Celebrity Endorsement” up on the chalkboard and circled it twice.

The rest of us heartily agreed, calling encouragement and clapping. For his part, Johnsson sat smugly back into his chair and blushed slightly under all the applause.

Leave it to Johnsson to think outside of the brew!

Next was Bran, who scowled and jerked his head to his left. “I don’t have time ta think about you lot when I’m workin’ hard on my own contest. I’m just here to see if there’s any good ideas I can steal.”

“Oh, my turn, my turn!” Aqua bounced up to the board, her blue beard flouncing, and snatched the chalk from Annie. Annie rolled her eyes and stood to the side. “Okay! Why does everyone drink beer!”

We blinked in silence, until Richter held up his hand first. “Because dwarves love beer?”

“Yes, but no! Why else!”

We were soon throwing answers out at random, with Aqua growing more and more agitated as nobody guessed the answer she was looking for.

“It tastes good!”

“Water tastes awful!”

“It was good enough fer our ancestors, it’s good enough for us!”

“It’s fun to drink?”

*Baaaaah!!!!* [Translated from Prima Donna Goat] “I’m helping!”

“It refreshes the parts other drinks can’t reach!”

“Arghhh! No! And Pete, what the heck!? The parts other drinks can’t reach!? Ew?? The answer is: getting drunk!”

There was a general murmur of agreement, bleating, and nodding of heads. Why yes, we did enjoy drinking beer to get drunk, what dwarf or goat didn’t?

“I’m willing to bet that with Pete and Annie here, it should be easy for us to make a beer with a higher alcohol content! More alcohol for less drinking! That’s really valuable!” Aqua wrote ‘more alcohol’ up on the board, surrounding it with stars and a small stick figure of a dwarf with drunken bubbles and confusion circles over his head. It was cute, but she definitely wasn’t an artist.

Annie chuckled as she swiped the chalk and gestured back to the seats. “Thank you, Aqua. That's an interesting idea. Pete, is it possible?”

I nodded, pulling at my beard in thought. “Aye, should be easy, actually. I dunno if it would meet tha most valuable criteria. There’s a type of beer called an Imperial that's got a high ABV. It may be worthwhile ta make it anyways, but we should hold it in reserve fer a later round.”

“Alright. Next up is Richter. Richter?”

Richter smirked, and raised his arms with a flourish, revealing a small potion bottle held in one hand. We all leaned in to look closer. It was a fairly standard glass flask, with a gently swirling black liquid inside it. The liquid was flecked throughout with glittering sparkles and seemed to shine with an inner light. “I know what we were all t’inking; just add gold to da brew. But, that wouldn’t actually work, since de gold would just float to de bottom. This potion is used by de nobility ta spot poisons in food. You pour a bit on de plate and it glitters if it finds poison. I was t’inking about somethin’ Pete said a long time ago, dat alcohol is a poison. So, I asked an [Alchemist] if de potion could search for alcohol instead. He made a few changes, and…”

Richter took his Whistlemug and dropped several drops in. For a moment, nothing happened, and we all craned our necks to look deep into the mug. Then, flecks of light glittered in the depths of the mug, like gold in a pan, or stars in the night sky. Everyone “oooh’d” appreciatively.

“I like it, Richter! How long does it last? How much is the potion? Would it work on a whole batch?” I chattered excitedly.

Richter’s smile turned into a frown. “That’s de problem. It’s expensive, and only lasts a few hours. And it looks pretty, but I dunno if people will say it’s de most valuable. De [Alchemist] said he could make it last longer, and maybe reduce the price, but he’d need a month ta study it.”

“Hmmm…” Annie murmured, and wrote the idea up on the board.

‘Hmmm’ was my opinion too. It was a neat idea in concept, and I was 100% behind more magical beer, but one month was too long for the time frame we had. Worth exploring in the future, though.

Anie looked next at Kirk, who shrugged. “I carry the beer, not make it,” he said. “Can you make light beer that’s easier to carry? That could be valuable. Pete?”

“Light beer is the way madness lies,” I growled. “Even if ‘Light Brew’ is already a thing, I refuse ta teach anyone how ta make ‘light beer’, that way lies madness, and bud light.”

Annie held her hand out in my direction. “So the brewer of a thousand brews says. And speaking of which, what’s your great idea, Pete?”

She came down and took a seat, passing me the piece of chalk as she did. Everyone else jumped up to refill bowls of pretzels, mugs of beer, and then settle back down to get comfortable. I waited in strained silence until everyone was done, then began.

“My idea is actually quite similar to Annie’s. Rather than approaching the valuable side, I approached the Kinshasa side. What do Kinshasan’s find truly valuable?”

Bran immediately grumped around a mouthful of deliberately unsalted pretzel. “SALT.”

I pointed at him. “Exactly! So, I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce salted beer!”

Annie leaned forward in her chair, elbows on her knees. “Go on…”

I began writing point-form notes up on the board, teaching as I did so. “Back on Earth, the most popular type of salted beer was a drink called gose. It’s actually named after the river and city where it was first made, the Gose river in Goslar. So Annie, your idea for a Kinshasa Brew is right on the mark!”

Annie preened as I continued, “While modern brewers add salty water to the beer to make gose, the first goses simply used the naturally salty water of the local aquifer. Kind of like Ruddy Bloodbrew’s iron-flavoured beer.”

“So, we just add salt to the beer?” Aqua asked. “That’s all?”

“Not quite!” I drew a circle off to the side and added a small picture of a goat. Penelope gave a small bleat of approval. “Just addin’ salt… makes it salty, obviously. To counteract tha saltiness, goses add a bit of sourness and spice, with a bacteria called Lactobacillus and a pinch of coriander. In fact, there’s a whole family of beers that use Lactobacillus, called sours!”

“Lacto… So, it’s milk?” Bran asked, frowning.

I nodded. “Close! It’s mostly yogurts that contain Lactobacillus. In fact, one of tha easiest ways to make a sour is ta pitch some yogurty wort in when you pitch the ancestral seed after the chill. In a regular sour, the sourness is counteracted with some sweet, like fruits or other adjuncts, but in a gose it's usually just the salt. Gose’s are also usually made with half-wheat for the grist, but I think we’ll skip that step.”

We all shivered, remembering the nightmare that had been the witbier.

“Goses were actually a lost beer,” I continued, “and for a brief period there was none to be found on the entire planet. It was during a time of our history called world war two, when the last brewery making it was taken over by the German government and shut down. Thankfully, one of their workers remembered the recipe and opened his own brewery after the war. He restarted the gose trade, and it's now all over the world.”

I then went into a long description of the most common gose adjuncts, and various other ways Lactobacilus could be added to beer, and the history of its use. I had a rapt audience, and it was nice to finally share this information without worrying about being caught out as an Otherworlder.

I finished with, “I honestly think a gose will be a shoe-in for this contest. If we source local goat yogourt, add Annie’s local ingredients idea, and find some wrestlers to endorse us, we could have a slam dunk!”

“A what – “ Johnsson began, but Annie cut him off.

“You said this gose would be sour, Pete, about as sour as your Umqubothi? That was… too sour.”

“Hmmm, it should be less than that. And the salt should really cut it.”

“Then, I say we should try it.” Annie said, with finality. “We’ll use my new bittering agent, and source some local yogurt. I’d like to try one batch without the yogurt too though; just some salt in the beer, because I do think that’s a good idea. Richter, Aqua, I like your ideas too, but I don’t think they’ll work for this case.”

The pair nodded, understanding.

“Alright Pete, we’ll run a batch tomorrow, and see how it tastes. Then we’ll test on a few locals to see if it can win.” Annie gave me fist-over-the-chest salute..

I grinned. “Even if it doesn’t win, it’ll be good for the Thirsty Goat.”

Annie sighed. “And how do you know that?”

“Because what’s good for the gose is good for the gander.”

“You’ve been waiting all night to use that haven’t you. And I don’t even know what it means.”

“Bah.”