Beers and Beards Book 3: The Big Brewhaha

Ah, new brew day, my favourite!

There was always something special about taking all the ingredients that you’d painstakingly researched and purchased and then repurposing them to become something new and delicious.

That was doubly true now that I was finally looking forward to trying new drinks again!

The whole crew was in attendance, except Balin who’d gone to the dungeon to fight the carp-whatever boss monster. Our hopes and prayers went with him.

I bustled about the brewroom floor with [Crafter’s Eye] activated, quickly pulling out any erdroots that appeared red in my vision and applying [Spot Clean] to any surfaces that showed the same.

I freaking loved [Crafter’s Eye]. From a management perspective it made everything so much quicker and easier. It was as if the universe itself had noticed my hard work up till this point and condensed all that experience and knowledge into a cheat code.

And it could still evolve! Eventually. Blessings took much longer than regular Milestones to evolve, so it would be a while. For now, it felt like the perfect compliment to my [Minimap].

“‘De equipment is all ready, Pete.” Richter called from beneath the brewing apparatus. “You said we’re doin’ a lotta brews today, so it may need a recharge partway through.”

“My mana’s topped off and ready fer it.” I flexed my arm, which of course had nothing to do with my mana.

“As long as you don’t waste it all.” Annie muttered. “Twice in one day, Pete? Really?”

I pulled at my moustache sheepishly. I’d been practicing spell-work almost constantly recently, and I’d gone a bit overboard. Annie had found me face down on the table and groaning from Mana deprivation twice yesterday. I was still getting used to my limits, and doing magic was just so much fun!

As soon as everything looked to be in ship shape, I called the team to attention.

“Okay everyone! We’re doing something special today! We’re going to make a kind of beer called a bock. It’ll require a few different types of Erdroot to start, along with our Goldstone Bitters. From my earlier experiments, we’re going to use a mix of Eastern and Western Erdroot, along with a bit of the burnt Umber. Annie’s given me the go ahead to use some of the hops as well.”

A bock normally used less bittering agent than a usual beer, and avoided the use of aromatic hops. As such, I was going to use one of the bittering hops that I hadn’t given a name yet. It was closest to what I’d consider a good lager hop, akin to the dual-purpose Perle without the more aromatic qualities usually associated with it.

Aqua held up her hand. “What’s bock mean?”

Annie snorted. “It’s an Earth word that means Goat.”

Aqua sniggered. “Goat beer? Penelope’ll love that.”

*maaah!!!* [Translated from Primma Donna Goat] “You speak of me and my most noble race! Is my beauty on your mind, peasant?”

“Ahem.” I pointed at Richter. “Richter, you said you had a breakthrough on the alchemical side?”

Richter nodded. “Aye. Summa you may remember ‘dat I was working with an [Alchemist] ta make beer ‘dat glittered like gold. We succeeded, but it was too expensive.”

Everyone nodded. It’d been his contribution to the quarter-finals brainstorming. His example beer had looked like it was suffused with flakes of gold, with no change to taste or actual gold flakes required.

Unfortunately it cost almost as much as real gold.

“We went back to work.” Richter continued, puffing himself up. “And I build an enchantment fer ‘im like we made with tha Nether bottler. Except instead of Nether, it can be used ta infuse a space with a catalyst.”

There was confused silence, until Kirk spoke up. “That’s… neat? But what does it do?”

Richter’s face drooped with disappointment. “Sometimes I ferget you lot don’t know much about magic. In short, it allows the [Alchemist] ta infuse a drink without tha need of Abilities or magic. It’s expensive up front, but it reduces the cost of alchemical infusions long term.”

“That sounds… quite valuable.” I mused.

“It is!” Richter thumped his fist on his chest with pride. “Me partner’s taken it ta be registered at city hall. He’s gonna present it at the Octamillenial faire!”

“Have you tested it?” I asked.

“Aye, ‘de gold effect is still too expensive, but there were quite a few other things we could do to ‘da beer without changin’ ‘de flavour!” Richter excitedly pulled out a notebook and flipped to the middle. “For cheap effects, we made beer ‘dat glowed, beer ‘dat smoked, beer ‘dat looked like it was burnin’, and beers of a buncha different colours. We could probably do more too! There’s no limit besides cost. We made beer ‘dat stayed cold, but like ‘da gold, it woulda been too expensive.”

He bowed as we all clapped and cheered. That did indeed sound impressive! And it had implications for gimmick or special edition beers. Like a green beer for Sainty Patty’s back on earth. We’d need to brainstorm a list of local holidays and how we could commercialize them.

Oh Pete, you dirty capitalist you.

“Pete…” Aqua mused. “you said that we were making a bock. How does it meet the contest requirements, and can we use Richter’s new invention?”

“Technically, we’re making a Doppelbock. It’s a bock with double the alcohol content. A bock is a beer that’s heavy in malt and flavour, and a doppel is heavy in alcohol. It’s a ‘more an bigger beer’ that’ll hit like a… a… cart. That’s all, so we could absolutely use Richter’s invention too. Any ideas based on what he told us?”

To my surprise, Johnsson’s hand immediately jumped and I pointed at him. “Johnsson?”

“Things went really well with Beuregard last time. We should capitalize on that. Richter, you said you could make beer that smoked and shone like fire?”

I gave him a blank stare. “Beauregard?”

“Aye? Ah, that's Draconis’s name.”

“His name is Beauregard??”

Johnsson frowned. “Well, it’s not Draconis.”

Well, obviously. But Beauregard? I tried to square the image of a shirtless dwarf in leather pants and coated in flames with the name Beauregard.

It was difficult.

“That may work.” Richter nodded. “Two effects would be a bit more expensive than one, though.”

“Then let's make some brews!” I cheered.

I turned to point towards the long line of carboys that were piled up against one wall. “Since this is our first time making a bock, I want to test a bunch of different ratios of grains and bittering agents. That’s a problem, because a bock is a type of lager, it’ll take at least three to five weeks before each new brew is ready to taste. In short, our beer is at lagerheads with our timing! Nyuck!”

Everyone smiled and nodded, but I continued unabashed.

“That’s where [Rapid Aging] enters the picture. We’re going to do a dozen different brews today, and then [Rapid Age] them all in carboys in the cooling tanks. That’ll let us taste test a bunch of different beers in a single day, but it’ll be a lot of work. So let’s hop to it.”

The brewroom immediately jumped into gear, as each dwarf ran to their station. Johnsson and Richter were a machine, and the erdroots were soon a pile of grist ready for the mash tun. It was dumped into the tun, and I instructed the pair to increase the ratio of malt to water, as that was the first secret to a higher alcohol content.

When making a bock, the majority of the hard work went into the mash right at the start, so I carefully walked Annie and Richter through the extra steps. She had her notebook out and was listening with rapt attention. I really did love a serious student!

“There’re two additions to the process when making a doppelbock. The first happens during the mash, and the second during mash-out. You know how we use a step method for the Barista Brew?”

“How can I ferget!” Richter groaned from where he was turning the blades in the tun. “Makes everything take twice as long!”

“We’re gonna do somethin’ similar. When the mash has been at tha required temperature fer long enough, we’re gonna step up the temperature using a method called decoction.”

Annie nodded. “You mentioned that the other day.”

“Aye. It’s simple enough. All we need to do is take out some mash, and bring it to a solid boil in the boil kettle. After a while we feed it back into the mash tun to step up the temperature to the next stage. That’s it!”

“Sounds easy enough…” Annie mused.

“Eh, yes and no. There are triple decoctions, double decoctions, so and and so forth. We’re going to do a simple single decoction, which’ll only add about an hour to the mash.”

“‘Dey really do this fer all yer beers back on Earth?” Richter complained. “How do ‘dey ever actually get any beer made??”

I laughed out loud at that one. “Oh, many a brewer has agreed with you! In modern times decoction is a bit controversial. Outside of bocks, very few beers use it anymore. Modern modified malts make the process mostly unnecessary, as they can use a regular mash for mostly the same effect.”

The brewroom lapsed to basic chatter as the malt was turned. When the temperature and time were right, we grabbed a sanitised bucket to pull out some of the mash and then boiled it in the kettle before sending it back to the tun. A quick [Spot Clean] and a splash of sanitiser had the boiler back in shape and ready for boiling the soon-to-be-ready wort.

When it was time for mash-out, we fed the wort to the boil kettle, and I called for everyone’s attention again.

“Alrighty! The moment of truth! We’re now going to check the eventual alcohol content of the beer!”

“How’ll you do that?” Aqua asked. “Did you get an Ability for it?”

“Kind of?” With that, I activated [Pete’s Miniature Remembrance] and revealed one of two brewing tools that I’d been overjoyed to find I could summon. In my hand was a metal and plastic tool that looked vaguely like a recorder flute. It was a long telescope-like tube that ended in a triangular wedge. The wedge was made of glass and had a flap of glass covering it that could be levered up and down. “This is a tool called a refractometer, and it allows us to guess the eventual alcohol content of the beer based on the amount of sugar in the wort. It won’t work as well after it’s been fermented, there’s a different tool for that, but it’ll help us get a baseline.”

Richter held his hand out to see, and I passed him the instrument. He looked over it with interest before handing it back. “How’s it work?”

“Easy enough. I just take a drop of wort,” I dipped a finger into the wort, and dribbled a few drops onto the glass wedge before covering it with the flap. “Then sandwich it between the two glass panes. With that done, I just need to hold it up to a light source, and look through the bottom like a telescope.”

I passed the tool back to Richter, who walked over to one of the light sconces and peered through the round base of the tool. “There’s a buncha lines and odd symbols. What are ‘dey?”

“Those are numbers from my world, and the lines are a graduated measure. Do you see how there’s a darker line? That’s the wort.”

Annie took the refractometer from Richter and looked through it as well. “What’s it measuring?”

“Sugar! A refractometer bends light based on the amount of sugar in the wort. The more sugar, the more it bends the light, and the higher it is on the scale. This particular refractometer uses something called the Brix scale.”

“It’s up about…. fifteen lines from the bottom. Does that mean it has 15% sugar!?”

“It’s complicated.” I shook my head. The Brix scale doesn’t translate straight to sugar, it translates to a measurement called specific gravity which then translates to sugar, and there’s some complex equations involved. Normally I’d use a special tool for it, but between my beer notes and [Mental Math]....” I flipped to my conversion notes and fired up the number crunching ability, which only took a few seconds to churn out an answer. “That’s a specific gravity of 1.08 and it should lead to around nine to ten percent ABV when it’s all said and done. Perfect! We’ll need to take some more measurements as fermentation proceeds, but we’ll get to that. Great first run everyone!”

There was the standard round of back slapping and goat bleating, and then work resumed. With the first mash done, it was time to boil the wort, then do it all again. I wanted at least a dozen different ratios of bitters and grains done by dinnertime.

I sang a little ‘Defying Gravity’ from Wicked under my breath as we worked. We were in for a long day of brewing.

Marvelous!