The fix was in: Our beer was incredible, the ambiance was electric, and the tosses were sky high. A [Healer] and [Innkeeper] on staff was just the cherry on top. Two days later, our numbers were still good, but much more manageable. We even had a few people staying in the inn!

With the Diggers running things, the rest of us were free to start doing some brewing, so that’s what we did.

Annie had out her brewing journal as she called the brewroom to order. “Alright everyone. I wanted to open by saying good work. It looks like things have calmed down, and we’re now in the long haul. Richter, thank you again for Titling as a [Healer]; that has been a major draw for visitors to the inn.”

There was a general murmur of agreement, and Annie waited for silence before continuing.

“For today’s agenda, Johnsson and Kirk finished moving the batches of Liquid Gold to the maturation tanks, and Copperpot has agreed to add the dwarven Barista Brew to his own brew line. Since we only need a couple tanks of Ass-Blaster and New Brew, that leaves us an opportunity to experiment!”

I felt a flash of warmth in my heart at her words. Last year a conversation like this would’ve been hush-hush, if not unthinkable, but now we were openly discussing making changes to the Sacred Brew!

She turned and looked at me, then cleared her throat. “Pete has dibs on at least one or two of the fermenters for his sorghum beer. What did you call it Pete?”

“Umqombothi.”

“.... that’s unpronounceable, give me something better.”

What did I know that was pink? The only things that came to mind were my daughter’s rainbow sea of toys. “Howsabout Pinkie Pie?” I asked.

Aqua and Johnsson gagged in unison, then looked at each other and laughed.

Annie gave me a black look. “I can’t believe that with all your word plays you can’t come up with something clever.”

“Word plays are the best kind of plays! Even better than Shakespeare!”

“Can we get started?” Richter interrupted. “I’d like ta get this all done before de dinner rush, aye? Mebbe ‘ave time ta study a new spell I’m workin’ on.”

Annie and I glowered at each other, then turned away.

“Fine,” Annie grumbled, “Pete has one fermentation tank to make his Um-whatever, and I want to try something new with our bittering agent. We’ve changed a lot of things on Pete’s say-so, but this is my own idea. Pete, you can make yours first, I have a list of ingredients I’ll need Aqua to get before I get started. But I’ll repeat that you only get two tanks, Pete! The rest are mine!”

I perked up at that. “Oooh! Are we finally changing that awful guck!”

Annie frowned. “Yes, yes. Maybe now you’ll shut up about it.”

“Not until you tell me what it is!”

Annie’s frown turned into a blinding grin. “I’ll take it to my grave! You’ll never know!”

I shook my fist, “Yearn take yer soul to tha Nether!”

Aqua hopped up from her seat, “Alright, if I’m heading out into that mass of bodies that is the Grand Market, I’ll need to leave right away. Gimme that shopping list.”

Annie handed her a slip of paper and Aqua skipped out the door with a dismissive gesture to the rest of us.

Annie nodded. “That’s it for me. Do you need me for anything, Pete, or can I go start working on tax paperwork.”

I groaned. “Is it that time? Am I going to get audited again!?”

“At least we can be miserable together. With the tavern, and the Goat now spanning two cities and subsidiaries on top of that, we’re getting an audit too.”

“Hah! That does make me feel better. Misery loves company.”

Annie headed to our office, a small glass-enclosed room adjoining the brewroom, just like in Minnonva.

Johnsson rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Well Pete, what’re we goin’ to make first?”

I grinned. I’d been waiting for this moment for three freaking months! “I’m proud to say that I managed to find a local malt-house that’s willing to play around with malting something other than erdroot – Main Malt Malthouse. I gave them the grass-lion’s mane and some killer corn, and last week they reached out to notify me that they’d finally figured out how to properly malt it. The first batches were pretty expensive, but they said it’s not that bad, and they’re happy to provide bulk malting services or cheaper in the future.”

“Are ya buyin’ da malt house?” Richter asked. “I know you were t’inkin’ about dat.”

I sighed. “The malt houses in Kinshasa are all a bit too big and old, with too much history. I looked, but there was nothing we could easily afford. Especially with the extra cash we had to front for this place. I expect to have enough eventually, but with M&M&M agreeing to provide malting services I don’t know if it's even necessary. Seriously, the local malt houses are huge.”

“Soooo…?” Johnsson drew out the question.

“So, Kirk?” I turned to our big friendly giant.

“Aye, aye, bossman.” Kirk saluted and laid out his hand. Several large crates popped out of his [Storage] and onto the floor. “Two crates of Sorghum malt and two more of corn, just like you asked!”

“Excellent. Richter, if you and Johnsson could please start milling those, and dump the grist in the boil kettle when you’re done.”

“Not in tha tuns?”

“Nope! It’s made quite a bit differently!”

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“Yer tha boss.”

“That I am!”

As Richter and Johnsson began singing their gristing song, I pulled out my brewing journal. I’d copied my old Earth version down so I wouldn’t need to keep calling it with [Pete’s Miniature Rememberacnce], and this new one had both my old earth notes and my new dwarven brewing notes in it. I flipped to the entry on Umqombothi and hummed and hawed.

Real umqombothi used maize meal instead of malted corn, though some craft versions did split them. It would be interesting to see how my own creation here differed from what I’d tried in the past. The traditional boil kettle was called a potjie, and was just a plain kettle over a fire, but our fancy brew kettle would work just as well.

The big problem was that our setup was designed to go through a mash step, but umqubothi was supposed to ferment the mash before removing the grist. Essentially, our setup was out of order, so I was going to need to reroute some pipes, or at least mess around with stuff.

“Pete! Millin’ is done!” Johnsson shouted, breaking me from my thoughts. “Right in tha brew kettle? Not in tha tun??”

“Aye!”

What followed was a lot of grunting and swearing as Johnsson and Richter tried to figure out how to maneuver all the grist through the hatch on top of the kettle. Kirk and I watched, grinning like loons for a moment, before Kirk went to use his Abilities to transfer the grist into the tank.

Johnsson pumped in some water, Richter fired up the runes, and the mix of corn and sorghum was soon bubbling away. The brew-kettle had a viewing window, and we peered inside. The inside looked more like oatmeal than beer.

“Glad Annie isn’t here ta see this…” Johnsson chuckled. “She’d freak. This is gonna be a pain to clean.”

I shrugged. “Meh, we’ll just get the elementals to do tha hard work.”

“What’s da next step?” Richter asked, coming up alongside to peek into the kettle. “Ugh, looks worse ‘dan me mum’s groats.”

“We’ll let it boil here for a couple minutes, then leave it overnight. In a day or two, when it starts bubbling and showing signs of fermentation, we boil it again then add a bit more grist and some sugar and send it to the fermentation tank with some ancestral seed.”

“If it’s overnight, then Annie won’t be able to do her new brew today…” Johnsson gave me a look.

I returned it. “Maybe if she didn’t tease me about the bittering agent so much, I wouldn’t be so bitter about it.”

“But… tha fermenters aren’t set up fer solids.” Richter said, looking over at the shiny new tanks. “De hopback is before them.”

“Yep, which gives us about a week to get a [Mattershaper] out here to bend some pipes to reroute back to the filters. And they’re gonna be a pain to clean.”

“Not more construction.” Johnsson muttered.

“Big moustached baby.” I sniffed.

—

That evening we had some special surprise visitors.

It wasn’t busy enough that I needed to help, so I was sitting at a table in the raised area doing taxes alongside Annie. We were trying to figure out how to proportion our income between Minnova and Kinshasa when a rowdy group of a dozen dwarves burst through the doors and sat themselves around the central fireplace. Bando was at their side a moment later, taking orders.

From where we were sitting, I could clearly see all their faces, and I gasped as I recognized two of them. Sam and Drum!

“Sam! Drum!!” I called, waving my arm. Annie glanced up, huffed at the distraction, and went back to her taxes.

Sam spotted me and beamed, then smashed Drum in the back of his head to catch his attention. Drum went to punch back, saw me, smiled, and then punched Sam in the stomach.

Ah, they hadn’t changed a bit.

I stood to join them, but Sam waved for me to sit, and he and Drum headed up. Drum’s silver arm was currently hidden under a long sleeve and glove, and his eyepatch was red instead of black now. His beard was also a completely different style, and greyer than I remembered.

“Sam, you old goat! It’s been a long time!” We fist bumped, and the two took a seat across from me. Drum gave a small shiver as he looked at the tax paperwork. “How’s it goin’? Still hanging with this fugitive? You know he’s a wanted dwarf, right?” I pointed at Drum, who frowned at my finger.

“Bah! It was worth it!” Drum grumbled. “I’d do it again any chance I got!”

During the regional Octamillenial contest, Drum had spiked the Rusty Battleaxe’s beer with some kind of alchemical agent, and it had caused Lord Louis Blackbeard’s entire body to erupt with hair. He’d been a wanted dwarf ever since, for ‘assault on nobility’. The punishment was time in actual jail, not just a reform mine.

“I don’t want any trouble.” Annie hissed, glancing up. “You’d better not bring the guard down on us!”

Drum and Sam nodded, their eyes wide and innocent. Annie snorted, clearly not buying it.

“I have to ask.” I whispered, drawing closer to the two. “I heard that Blackbeard disappeared. Was that you two?”

Sam and Drum shared a look, then glanced around the tavern. Right now it was just their group, and a pair of blonde dwarves having a drunken date on the opposite side from us.

Drum spoke up first, whispering. “Blackbeard had a bit of a run in with us, aye. Was a happy accident, actually. We were hittin’ that Ambermine fellow Copperpot put us onto, and he happened to be with Blackbeard.”

I felt my eyebrows pop to the top of my head, and my vision started going red. I tamped it down. “Blackbeard was working with Ambermine!? He was practically begging us to work for him, and he was trying to off us at the same time!? You were right, Drum! Nobles are fulla goat shite!”

Drum frowned. “Hrmm… not quite, though Blackbeard is fulla shite. Cannae say more about it, but tha beard’s a lot longer than it looks. We’re on workin’ terms with Blackbeard now, and Ambermine…”

“I still think he shoulda let me gut that gnome like a fish.” Sam snapped.

“Ambermine’s on a short leash. And not happy about it. If he comes near you, feel free ta do yer worst,” Drum finished.

“Ambermine’s here, in Kinshasa!?” I jumped to my feet. The last time I’d seen the gnomish assassin, he’d been trying to turn Copperpot into sashimi.

Drum nodded. “Aye. We came ta warn you two. Things are goin’ ta be rough in tha city fer tha next few months. So you always go out with that big golden brother of yers, and make sure yer armed at all times. This is a good spot you’ve chosen, defensible.” He looked around the tavern, and indicated the front window. “You’ll want iron shutters fer that. Mebbe get some enchantments fer tha’ walls if ya can afford it. I’ll send some gold yer way.”

Annie sucked in her breath. “That bad? But everything’s so festive!”

Drum and Sam nodded.

“Big things are happening,” Sam said, “the city is crackin' down ta prepare fer tha contests and celebrations, and summa tha’ local gangs are pushin’ back hard. Then there’s tha refugees and general discontent about tha high cost of all this. Taxes are goin’ up, monster attacks are up, and blood pressures are up. It’s not spread outta Yellowwall yet, but it’ll come through here eventually.”

“Aye, so you stay safe. And if ya need ta contact me, just put out an adventurin’ board request fer a red rabbit.”

I snickered. “What if someone actually brings us a red rabbit?”

Sam grinned. “Eh, then we can roast it when we meet. You stay safe out there, meboy. Between Malt’s hard work, tha contests, and tax season, tha Master Brewers are too busy ta worry about you. But soon as there’s Ass-Blaster bein’ made in Kinshasa, they'll show up right quick. And they’re not like Minnova’s soft bunch. They’ll hit you hard, and where it hurts. Be careful.”

“Any more ‘friendly’ advice?” I asked, raising one eyebrow sardonically.

Drum nodded. “Aye. Keep to yer brewin’ and don’t get involved with anythin’ else.”

“I'll try, but no promises.”

With that, the two said polite farewells, then made their leave to go and sit with their party again.

Annie and I watched them go, then looked at each other, trepidation clear on our faces. What had we gotten ourselves into?