Beers and Beards

Chapter 79: Rack 'em and Stack 'em

“Oh Gods, oh Gods, oh Gods.”

“Lever goes there, Balin.”

“Got it.” *Clank*

“Oh Gods, oh Gods, oh Gods.”

“Is the spigot in place, Richter?”

*meeeeeh!!!*

“Aye.”

“Let it go, Balin!”

*CRUNCH*

“Oh Gods, oh Gods, oh Gods.”

“Was it supposed to make that sound?!”

“Uhh… let me check.”

“Oh Gods, oh Gods, oh Gods.”

“Aqua!” I grabbed the pacing dwarfess as she walked past me and shook her shoulders. "It’ll be fine! Calm down!”

“Calm down!?” Aqua was nearly in tears. “How am I supposed to calm down?! We started a Feud with the entire Brewer’s Guild last night! The GODS THEMSELVES are judging it, and the whole city is going to have their eyes on us! Do you know how many Feuds the Gods have judged in the history of Minnova!?”

“Erm, no. I’m surprised the number is higher than one, actually. How many?”

“A couple hundred.” Richter grunted, as he tightened a rope.

I looked at him in surprise. “What, really?”

“We ‘ave a long history, and tha Gods are nosy.” Richter chuckled.

I patted Aqua on the shoulder. “See? It isn’t even that uncommon.”

She rounded on Annie. “Arrgh! Annie! I can’t believe you agreed to this! Even if those rat bastards poisoned our brew!”

Annie sighed. “I’ve explained this to you Aqua. They didn’t poison it, they contaminated it.”

“Same difference! How can you beat the entire Brewer’s Guild? We’re barely a tenth their size!”

“Size doesn’t matter, Aqua.” I muttered slyly. She looked me in the eye and stomped on my foot. “Ow!”

“It’ll be fine, Aqua.” Annie came down and held her friend’s hand. “We have a really good chance. The Brewers actually have an uphill battle! Do you want to explain, Pete?”

“Yep. The trick is that the Contest is ‘who can make the most dwarves talk about their beer’. It isn’t ‘who sells the most’ or ‘who makes the best’, just ‘who gets the most talking’.”

“Oh.” Aqua stood still and thought for a moment. “OOOHHH!!!!”

“Right? They think we’re going to try and do it with the radler. But that stuff is so radioactive it’d be dead in the water. It's too different, which means a significant swath of the population would ignore it completely. Especially if news about Midna’s involvement spreads.”

“Radler would be a terrible idea.” Annie agreed.

“But Browning doesn't know -'' I gestured around the fourteen full tanks, “about this.”

John laughed. “This stuff will certainly get Minnova talking.”

“Do you really think so? Won’t people still think it’s too different?” Aqua whined.

John made a ‘perish the thought’ gesture. “It tastes just like True Brew, it’s just… different. You and Richter drank the completed product Aqua, how was it?”

“Amazin’” Richter said. “Best beer I’ve eva had. Tha fizz, da flavour, da colour. I can’t put it inta words, John. Dis lot’s a pale imitation right now. Wait and see what it’s like after tha’ bottle conditionin’!”

Aqua nodded reluctantly. “It really was good. I can’t wait to try it with this cleaner, clearer, batch.”

“Aw, thanks guys.” I clasped my hands over my heart. “That means a lot to me!”

“Yer welcome Pete. But if we lose tha’ brewery ova this, I’m gonna make you pay.” He flexed his biceps in a fake threat. At least, I hoped it was fake.

“Ooookay. I guess I feel a bit better.” Aqua huffed. “What is this thing you’re setting up?”

“That depends on if it just broke. How is it Balin!?”

“All good! Just a crack in one of the smaller pipes. I’ve blocked it off, but we won’t be able to use it.”

“Just one?”

“Aye.”

“That’s fine.” I pointed to the long bamboo pipe with a series of small wooden spokes that Richter and Balin had attached to the spigot on tank number one. “I present to you the amazing, incredible, ‘Udderly Fantastic Bottle Stick’!”

Everyone gave me a blank look. “The what!?”

“It’s a giant udder! See?” I made a grand gesture.

There was some uncomfortable silence.

*meeeeeeeeeh.* [Translated from prima donna goat] “Pervert.”

—

“It’s not a bad name, Pete.” Balin patted my shoulder. “Just a bit odd.”

“The name is fine.” Johnsson said. “I don’t see what’s wrong with it.”

“See? Johnsson thinks it’s okay!” I whined. “There’s nothing wrong with udders! They’re perfectly natural. The name even kinda rhymes!”

“Ehh, my boy may not be tha best judge of that, Pete.” John remarked. “Some dwarves can get weird around udders.”

“Dad!” Johnsson cried indignantly. “Your own flesh and blood!”

“Enough!” Annie shouted from her perch on-top the catwalk. “We have an immense amount of work to do today, and I don’t want to waste any more time. Pete, show everyone how your -” She put a hand over her face, “no, never mind, I can’t do this. Balin! Give me a name!”

“It’s an industrial bottle stick.” Balin shrugged. “Made it out o’ bamboo and corks.”

“Perfect! Pete, can you show everyone how to use your industrial bottle stick?”

“Fine.” I grumped, and walked up to the contraption. It consisted of a thick five-meter long bamboo pipe running parallel to the ground. Ten smaller pipes, each just wide enough to fit inside a bottle, hung off the bottom. At the end of each small pipe was a cork with a stick poking out of it. The main pipe was attached to the spigot at the bottom of the fermentation tank and was supported by some wooden sawhorses.

“This is a bottle stick. It’s really easy to use, but this job is still goin’ to take a long time.” I pointed at the boxes of bottles lining the walls. “Those are going to all need filling, and it’ll take a couple thousand bottles to empty a single tank.”

“Ugh!” Johnsson shouted in shock. “We can’t use the kegs!?”

“Not this time.” I shook my head. “Until we get some steel casks I don’t want to chance it. We’re going one hundred percent keg free this time. They'll be useful for a demonstration though. Pass me one.”

Richter tossed me a small keg and I took it over to tank number two. I crouched down next to the spigot and began my demonstration. “When racking - that means filling - a keg, or any other kind of container, the most important thing is to minimize the amount of air that comes in contact with the alcohol. In the case of a keg, we do that by inserting the spigot into the bunghole - that's the hole right here.”

Johnsson raised his hand. “We know what a bunghole is Pete.”

“Aw, go put a cork in yer bunghole.” I waited for any other interruptions then continued. “It's important to fill the barrel all the way. You don’t want any excess air at all. If you have to, let a bit spill out of the bunghole when you push in the cork. Why is that?”

Annie put up her hand and I pointed at her. “The beer still comes into contact with the air in the barrel, which is why our beers have a shelf life. As soon as it enters the barrel, there’s a chance the beer will go bad in under a week.”

“That’s right, thanks Annie.” I nodded.

“So that’s why we don’t store any of our beer? And why we try to make sure it all sells within a week or two?” Aqua asked, leaning over to look at the barrel.

“Correct, but my [Refine Brew] changes that!” I stated proudly. I opened the spigot and allowed the beer to fill the barrel. When it reached the lip, I stamped a cork into the bunghole, spilling a small amount of beer on the floor. I gestured to Richter, who grabbed a mop and cleaned it up.

“This beer is now on a timer, but with the Blessings of the Gods the oxidation reaction is stopped before it even begins! [Refine Brew]! ” My hand glowed briefly and then flickered out.

Balin put up his hand.

“Yes, Balin?”

“Ya dont’ need ta’ call out tha Blessin’s, Pete.”

I slit my eyes. “Penelope, go say ‘Hello’ to Balin.”

*Meeeeeh!*

“[Golden Armour]!”

“Hypocrite!”

—

After we got Penelope off of Balin, I passed everyone a large box filled with small packets. Aqua looked at one suspiciously and gave it a sniff.

“Is this… sugar?”

“It’s priming sugar. I already explained it to Annie, but the long and short of it is that this sugar made the fizz you liked so much, Aqua.”

“What do we do with it?”

“Let me demonstrate.” I grabbed a bottle from a case and walked over to the *sigh* industrial bottle stick. “Did you turn the spigot already, Balin?”

“Aye, it should be full.”

“Okay. Observe.” I opened a packet of sugar and poured it into the bottle. “The bottle and the bottle stick have been sanitized. We want to keep it that way, so please make sure that you don’t touch the sugar when you pour it in. After that, you slip the bottle over like this." I slid one of the pipes into my bottle. "Notice the stick on the end of the cork? When that stick gets pushed, the cork is shoved into the pipe and the beer can flow out.”

I pushed the bottom of the bottle against the stick and the clear glass began to fill with bubbling brown liquid. The entire brewery leaned forward to watch the momentous occasion: The first bottle rack in the history of Erd! It took a while to fill; dwarves were big drinkers, so we’d made each bottle big enough to contain one litre of beer.

When the beer reached the lip of the bottle, I pulled the stick out.

“Next you lever this stopper attached to the bottleneck into place.” I demonstrated. “And swirl the bottle a bit to mix the sugar in. Put the bottle back in the case and you’re done! Oh, and please remember to give the bottle stick a rinse with boiling water every once in a while to reduce contamination. Any questions?”

A couple hands went up and I went down the line answering them. This crew was pretty sharp, and soon everyone was racking bottles one at a time. Assuming…. twenty seconds per bottle and six people working at once… I looked at the enormous tank. We’d be able to empty maybe one tank per day. We really needed more workers.

—

Four hours later, the first tank was empty and everyone was dead on their feet. Annie was forced to call a break to rest before we opened the pub. Thankfully, Beatbox had offered his daughter to help Bran prep in the kitchen. I don’t think we would have been able to keep the pub open otherwise.

Annie had me on full-time Feud duty, so I set to work using [Refine Brew]. Thank the Gods, I was able to activate it on an entire box of bottles at once! I’d been dreading using it on every bottle.

I looked up at the stacks and stacks of boxes and sighed in satisfaction. I had some ideas for names, but considering the circumstances… I’d go run them past Annie first. Time to design some ads, and find a starving artist to make bottle labels. Minnova wasn’t going to know what hit it!

And Bastard Brewer Browning was going to SUFFER!

—

Master Brewer Browning glanced possessively at his journeymen as they ran to and fro beneath him. They had just completed another perfect brew, and he stared deep into the murky wort. A stick bobbed to the surface like a salute, the universe itself telling him ‘good job!’

Did those upstarts really think they could take on the best brewers in the history of Minnova with something as simple as lemon juice mixed with beer?

That’s right, he knew the recipe for this dreaded ‘radler’. He'd obtained it from a prisoner that had been in the City of Minnova Prison Mine with Peter Roughtuff. The layabout had been overjoyed to tell him the recipe in exchange for a paltry dozen gold.

Browning chuckled darkly. The Thirsty Goat would need a massive number of lemons to make enough radler to even stand a chance. The Contest may be in brewing, but he could still throw around the weight of the Guild. His apprentices were out there right now, purchasing every lemon they could find in the city. He’d also contacted his primary suppliers and told them they might want to be ‘out’ of lemons for the next couple weeks if they wanted his continued patronage. It would be expensive, but it would also crush his opponent before they even got started.

This Feud was going to be revitalizing for the brewing industry in Minnova. Browning was looking forward to the droves of thirsty dwarves that would soon descend upon his brewery, desperate for the nostalgic taste of True Brew. Those pathetic wannabe ‘Brewers’ at the Thirsty Goat weren’t going to know what hit them.