Beers and Beards

Chapter 76: You Can Lead A Goat to Beer

“Lily-liver oil seems to be a pretty standard ingredient in potions.” I passed her the books we’d bought, complete with strips of paper marking the relevant sections. “But it’s from the dungeon, so I think our water is out as a contamination source.”

Annie nodded. “I agree. Balin said the [Alchemist] he went to gave it the all clear too.”

“That leaves Alchemist Black’s bittering agent as the most likely suspect.”

“I agree. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to prove it though.” She said bitterly.

I looked around, but didn’t see Jeremiah. “Where’s your dad?”

Annie frowned. “He came and went.”

“What did he say?”

“He used [Check Quality] on the tanks and gave me the all clear - the drink isn’t poisonous. He actually found it funny for some reason; started laughing really hard. Then he started crying again and went back to the house to drink.”

“That’s… a bit weird. Maybe he thought it was hilarious that your first brew had such a crazy mishap?” It sounded dumb even to my ears. Midna\'s Mullet, Jeremiah was taking this bad.

“Who knows. Did you find out anything else?”

“Aye. I went through my [Minimap] filters on the way here, and both ‘unrefined’ and ‘refined’ lily-leopard liver oil are available options. I think that means when I used [Refine Brew] the oil was ‘refined’ before it was subsumed into the brew.” I shrugged. “The refined stuff is actually good for you and counts as a healthy magical ingredient. I may be able to use that in our advertising. We didn\'t follow the proper procedures for using it, so I\'m not sure what its efficacy will be though. How did the math turn out on your end?”

Annie sighed and massaged her temples. “The pub is bringing in enough that we can afford to lose this batch if necessary, but I still want to try. At least I’m not going to be up all night worrying about it. Just most of the night.”

I considered her haggard appearance. She was distraught, stressed, and losing sleep, and most of it was over a monetary problem I had secretly solved. As her future brother-in-law, and as a good dwarf, I couldn’t keep ignoring it. There was always a chance that she’d simply toss the brew if she knew money wasn’t really an object, but I was fairly confident she wouldn’t. She was just as curious and hard-headed about brewing as me, and she would want to see this brew to the end. Plus, I needed her approval to move forward with my bottling scheme.

It was time to tell her how much money we really had. “Speaking of tonight, can I talk to you after closing? It’s really important.”

“Again? I hope you haven’t gotten your next Specialization already. I’d need to shave your beard off in sheer jealousy.” She gave a pained laugh.

I crossed my arms protectively over my beautiful bristles. “No, it’s good news.”

“I could use some. Anyone else need to be there?”

“I think… just you and Balin for now. Aqua may ask some questions I’m not ready to answer yet. Speaking of which, where is she?”

“I sent her to go and ask Alchemist Black some leading questions with [Truespeech]. I… really hope this was all an accident, but we need to make sure.” She nodded at Richter, who had entered the building behind me. “Richter, could you make some deliveries tonight? A new drinking competition is being held at one of the nearby beer gardens and they want some kegs of our beer.”

“Aye miss. That’s excitin’!”

“Isn’t it! Things are coming together. Other than -” She gestured expansively at the tanks, “all of this.”

“Can I take da princess ta ‘elp pull tha cart?”

“Sure. Probably for the best, Bran found out she’s been getting into his cold storage, and he threatened to use her for tonight’s braised goat.” She passed me a few silvers, her lips a thin line.

“You’re terrible at betting.” I remarked with a grin.

“Shove it.”

“I’ll shove it right into my wallet.” I tossed the silver in my coin-pouch. “If there’s nothing else, I need to go help Bran. Crisis averted, contamination vector narrowed down, mission accomplished.”

While I cut vegetables with a halfway-apoplectic Bran, a certain quest sat uncomfortably in the back of my mind. We’d narrowed down the [Alchemist] as our most likely source of contamination.

Except, my quest hadn\'t been updated. We probably had to find proof first - but how?

—

A week passed in relative boredom. There were no other emergencies with the fermentation, and the pub was thriving. We had two small brawls, but those were standard in dwarven establishments. Between Balin and Tania - who was becoming a regular while Greentree was still off-limits - any fights were quickly stomped out.

Aqua gave Alchemist Black the all clear. He either didn’t know there was contamination in our bittering agent, or had a Milestone that could bypass [Truespeech]. Aqua seemed to think a Milestone like that was highly unlikely for an [Alchemist], which left ‘freak accident’ as our most likely scenario.

Normally we would have moved on at that point, and counted ourselves lucky that the worst had been avoided. But I had a little quest that said we were off base. I confided it to Annie, and she asked me to keep an eye out, but not to tell the others for now. We’d just be extra

careful for the next batch. I left lily-leopard lily oil up on my Minimap just in case. If any came near the brewery I\'d know about it.

I considered making some new advertising posters for Whistlemop’s cart, but decided to wait until we knew the quality of the brew. Even if it was safe to drink it could still turn out awful.

And then, it was the big day.

—

The crowd in the brew-room was a bit smaller than usual; Tom and Jeremiah were notably absent. John and Johnsson were in attendance, and were talking up a storm with Richter. Johnsson had changed his haircut again, this time he’d frosted the tips and put dozens of fine braids in. It looked good on him.

There was a fairly obvious undercurrent of nervous expectation. Everyone was worried the brew was going to taste awful, or be completely undrinkable. We’d know as soon as Penelope took her traditional first drink. If she drank the whole bowl the batch was a success. If she spurned it, we’d need to throw it all away.

“Is Mr. Goldstone seriously not coming!?” I whispered up to Annie, who was standing on the catwalk preparing for her usual speech. “I haven’t seen him all week!”

“No! He gave me some lame excuses and disappeared.” Annie’s face was a bit drawn. It was clear that Jeremiah’s absence was a pretty big emotional blow. I was seething too; regardless of how Jeremiah felt right now he shouldn’t have missed this. It was like skipping his child’s graduation ceremony because he had empty-nest syndrome. I was going to give him a piece of my mind later.

“Any luck getting in contact with his old fishing buddies?”

“Sort of. I asked Drum and Captain Morris and they agreed to help. Drum was strangely agreeable, and Captain Morris is more than happy to take him fishing.”

“Sounds good. I like Drum, and Captain Morris seemed like a good guy when I met him in the mine. Heck, I may want to go fishing with them!” I briefly thought of Wreck’s little barb about strength. “Maybe I’ll go to the gym too; I need to increase my strength.”

“Couldn’t hurt. All of Bran’s fine cooking is going straight to that paunch.”

“Oof!” I doubled over in mock agony.

Annie waved her hand in a clearing gesture. “Setting aside my father’s issues, is everything ready?”

I rubbed my own hands with glee. Annie had been angry at my deception at first, but eventually agreed it had been a good idea. Especially when I gave her my last bottle to drink; then she’d enthusiastically agreed. With her approval, I’d set Balin to crafting the final piece we needed, and he finished it just in time.

“Balin did a great job, it works perfectly. We hid it behind the tanks this morning and Whistlemop’s men arrived with the bottles a few minutes ago. They’re waiting out back with Balin.”

“Ok… let’s do this.” Annie slapped her cheeks then raised her arm. “EVERYONE! I want to thank you for coming to the very first racking of the Thirsty Goat Brewpub!”

There was a general cheer. I felt tears welling in my own eyes, a mix of pride and nostalgia. It reminded me a bit of our first batch at Beavermoose Brewery back on Earth. That had been one of the greatest moments in my life, besides my marriage to Caroline and Sammy’s birth. I habitually reached out beside me for a warmth that wasn’t there, and a single tear broke free to trickle down my cheek and wet my beard.

I looked around at all the happy and excited faces. Aqua was jumping up and down, Johnsson was hooting, John was clapping calmly, and Richter was pumping his fist and hollering. I felt something in my heart shift, and a bit of the ever-present ache disappeared. Time would heal these wounds, and I had a lot of that, along with the best new family a dwarf could ever ask for. I raised my arms, and joined in with a ragged cheer.

Annie waited until the noise died down, then continued. “It’s been a hard couple of years. Between accidents, mass quitting, and money troubles, you are the dwarves that stuck with us through thick and thin! As a Goldstone, I want to thank you for your hard work and dedication.” She gave a close fisted salute at chest height. Everyone repeated the gesture back, and I copied it a beat behind.

“This marks a new page in the history of the Thirsty Goat. All of you are aware of the incident last week, and are probably just as anxious as I am to see Penelope’s reaction. Before that though, I want Pete to come up and tell everyone the exciting news!”

I walked up the catwalk to curious murmuring. We were close knit enough that everyone had a pretty good idea of what this was about. However, very few of them had the full picture. It was time to present that picture in 4k.

“Hi, Pete here with some awesome news! As many of you know, I’ve been working on a method to improve the carbonation of our beer using bottle conditioning. Some of you even tasted it already, and went to great lengths to tell me how good it was.” I pointedly glowered at Aqua, who blinked back in mock innocence. I raised my voice to a shout. “So here’s the news! Bring them in, Balin!” The doors to the back alley burst open as Balin pushed in a cart piled high with wooden boxes. Each box was just big enough to contain sixteen bottles, and was stamped with the Whistlemop logo. A string of carts stretched behind him in the alley.

“I’m proud to announce our partnership with Whistlemop’s Fineries as we release Crack’s first bottled brew!”

There was stunned silence. Then the shouting started.

—

The shouting eventually turned into a Q&A session. Aqua was first, and wanted to know how we were going to afford it. I told her how much money we had at our disposal and she kicked me in the shins then blubbered for a bit.

Johnsson wanted to know if the bottles were going to be sold as collectibles like the Whistlemugs. It was a great question, and one I’d spent a lot of time considering. I had an answer at the ready.

“No, I actually want people to return these. The plan is to sell them at an inflated price with a small refund for people that bring back the bottle. That way we can re-use them and not waste the glass. These are actually a bit of a stop-gap measure until we can get pressure kegs and fermenters up and running.”

“Couldn’t we ‘limited edition’ this first run though?” John asked, putting his hand up. “It worked really well for Whistlemop. Everyone’s still talkin’ about it.”

I looked at Annie, who shrugged. “Why not. It’s a bit late to etch each of them, though.”

“That’s fine.” I said. “We just need a tube of paper, some sticky-sap, and a starving artist. What do we call it though? \'The new brew’ is a bit on the nose.”

“Ah ‘tink y’all are gettin’ ahead o’ yerselves.” Richter interrupted. “We don’t know if da brew is tasty.” He pointed down at Penelope, who was growing increasingly irritated at being forced to wait. She pawed at her fancy goat-bowl and glared at us.

“Meeeeeeeehhh!!!” [Translated from Primma Donna Goat] “Where is my libation, peasants!? I’ve been waiting for minutes! MINUTES!”

Ah yes. The moment of truth.

Annie opened the tap of the first tank, and the beer fountained into Penelope’s dish. It had the same colour as usual, but was crystal clear with a creamy finish. The usual mishmash of cloudy proteins and leftover trub was nowhere to be seen. The hopback had done its job perfectly. Everyone *ooooh*’d at the sight.

Then Annie placed the dish in front of Penelope, who stepped forward and sniffed it. She took a hesitant lick and swished it around in her mouth. We all leaned in, our breaths caught in our throats and our eyes wide. If she spat it out, the batch would be considered a failure. But if she drank it -

She shoved her muzzle into the amber liquid and greedily chugged the rest of the bowl.

The room erupted into cheers and celebration. We clapped, hugged, and jumped for joy in the sheer relief of the moment.

Unnoticed amongst the shouting, there was a low bass *rumble*.