As Jeb entered his home to drop off his lute, he ran into his aunt.
“I hope you’re ready to learn how to Brew,” she said.
“I am!” Jeb rushed to his room to quickly drop everything off. When he came down, she was sitting by the stove, heating a kettle.
“Since we want to make sure you get Brewing and not Fermenting or Beer Brewing, let’s start with tea. Pour the water over the tea leaves and try it every ten seconds. Tell me what you notice.”
Jeb did. The first drink tasted like water, as did the second and third. Slowly, though, the floral notes started coming through. Earthy flavors came in later. As he kept steeping the leaves, though, bitter flavors came in as well. By the time his aunt told him he was done, the water was cold and the tea was borderline undrinkable.
“Now, then, time to actually unlock the Brewing Skill. There’s two ways to do this: the fast way and the easy way. The easy way is just brewing a barrel of something potable. Sadly for you,” she said with a wink, “I don’t keep quick yeasts around and nothing we have is worth wasting on a first brew. Instead, you get to earn the Brewing Skill the fast way: helping me with all of the brewing I have for the next week.”
Jeb was honestly excited to help. First, he’d always been curious what was in the barn. Second, he knew that being able to brew would help him make any potions he could need.
“I’m going to lecture first,” his aunt called behind her as they walked to the barn. “So, though the Skill is called Brewing, it is also incredibly helpful with wine making as well. In fact, it really helps with any sort of drink-making.”
“Mostly, though,” she continued, “Brewing helps with non-distilled alcohol production. We can categorize the non-distilled alcohols into two categories. Generally, this means we have beer and everything else, but there are some exceptions on either side. The difference is in whether the sugar you ferment is readily available, or whether it needs to be extracted from the starting material. Once you’ve gotten the sugar out, though, the two processes are identical. The general process is really just adding yeast to water and the sweet thing you want to ferment, but there are a lot of details involved that I will be covering with you.”
“When making beer, we can’t just extract the sugars from the grain. We first have to prepare the grain to convert its starch into sugars yeast can use. We start by malting the grains we’ll use. Follow me.” His aunt started walking away, so Jeb hurried after, trying to remember everything she’d said.
“Over here is the malting area.” Jeb saw the room was filled with bags of dried barley, if the labels were accurate. “We start by soaking and draining barley until it starts to germinate. Before malting, the grain will be starchy, which I’m sure you know from all the barley bread you’ve had through the years.” She handed Jeb one of the kernels, and motioned that he should eat it. It tasted like barley, which shouldn’t have surprised him.
“When barley prepares to grow, it converts its starch into sugar so that it can grow. Once it has started to sprout, we spread the grain onto a single layer,” she gestured to the little seedlings of barley which occupied most of the storage area, “and we keep them humid until the barley has germinated. We also need to keep the air circulating around them so they don’t cook themselves. Expect to have that as one of your responsibilities. After this stage, the barley has become sweeter.” Jeb tasted one of the green pieces, and it was a little sweeter.
“Now, if we let the barley keep growing, we would end up with a field of barley, which is not our goal. So, we need to kill the barley seedlings, which we do by drying it off. Drying it serves two goals. First, it lets us store the finished malt almost indefinitely, which means we don’t need to make a new batch of malt for every single brew. Second, though, is that it changes the flavor profile of the barley.”
His aunt gestured to the corner of the room that seemed to be covered in flames, for all that Jeb could tell there were none there. “The traditional way to dry your malt is still the one your grandfather prefers. We put a mat on top of a large flame. The heat rising off of the pit slowly dries the malt as we monitor and turn it. It adds flavor from the smoke, but does not change the flavor of the barley itself too much. This is some malt from the last time we did that,” she said, and handed him another grain. It tasted a little smoky and even sweeter.
“Another advantage of drying the malt is that it makes the growing bud dry and fall off. If we left it in, our beer would extract off flavors, like in the tea you just made. Now, while we still kiln some of our malt in the traditional way, I did convince your grandfather to build us a modern malting kiln.” She led Jeb over to the large barrel of iron which had been turned on its side.
“With this, we can control exactly how dark the malt becomes, and we don’t add any smokey flavor. The kiln sits over the flame and we rotate it, checking on the color of the malt frequently. It lets us darken our malt completely uniformly, and is where the science of beer brewing becomes a subjective art.”
“The less time you heat the grain for, the lighter the malt is. The lighter the malt, the less sugar you’ve burnt, and so the more sugar you can ferment. That means that darker malts require more grain to get to the same amount of alcohol. However, the fermentable sugars you lose are converted into different and deeper flavors. Of course, there is also a color change. Darker malts are, as the name implies, darker. Beers brewed with them will be darker.”
She handed Jeb examples of the different grains, and he tasted them one after another. He noticed the way the flavor changed as the grains grew darker and darker. They were less sweet, but they gained new flavors.
“From here, we grind the grain into coarse meal, and we heat it to extract the sugars. In addition to extracting the sugars that have already been converted, the grains have catalysts that convert the rest of the starch in the meal into sugar. Once we’ve finished extracting, we have a sweet beverage, known as wort.” Jeb tasted a batch that she had apparently been making that morning. It was almost sickly sweet.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“From there, we add bittering agents, which serve three roles. First, they help prevent other bacteria from invading the beer. Once you have the Brewing Skill, that shouldn’t be an issue. Before you have it, though, adding the bittering agents can’t totally protect from other bacteria. Second, it helps to keep beer fresh for longer. Third, it adds more flavors. The Empire standard is to use hops alone, though that has never been the norm for Brewers, so I will make sure you learn how to Brew with a variety of agents.”
Once more, Jeb tried a liquid. This one was bitterer, as he’d expected.
“Once you’ve gotten your future beer to the same point as just crushing some grapes, you have a sweet liquid. You can add yeast at this point. Now, yeast is not a single ingredient, but an entire range of creatures. There are yeasts which ferment faster and slower, and yeasts that prefer hotter and colder temperatures. There are yeasts that add more and less flavor, and different yeasts add different flavors. It is vital that you pick the right yeast for your project. Some of the yeast we’ve bred to work well on malted wort, while others we’ve kept for wine or cider. If you use the wrong yeast for whatever you brew, you can end up with something that tastes wrong for the style, or something that may not ferment well at all.”
Something seemed strange to Jeb. “If making beer is so much more work, why do we do it at all?” Jeb asked, since it seemed so much easier to just have apples.
“Good question!” his aunt said, “A variety of reasons, five of which I can think about right now. First, we can store malt year round far more easily than fruit for wines or honey for meads. Second, wort generally has all of the nutrients yeast needs, which means that a beer ferments far more easily than other kinds of alcohols. Third, tradition. We have always made beer, and what kind of a Brewer would I be if I didn’t follow suit? Fourth, the fact that we have far more barley and wheat than we do fruit, so it’s less of a problem to take it for brewing. And finally, beer just tastes good in a way that the other drinks don’t.”
“That makes sense.” Jeb hadn’t considered the fact that fruit was not as easy to grow in large quantities as wheat and barley. As he thought about what the farm had, though, it made sense.
“I think that’s enough learning for today. Your eyes are glazing over the way mine used to when I’d learned too much.” Jeb was shocked to see that it was already getting dark out by the time he left the barn. He helped his mother with dinner and went to sleep.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 1703/100
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Total Statistic Load: 182 Physical Load: 109 Strength: 25 Dexterity: 18 Endurance: 27 Vitality: 35 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 73 Intelligence: 21 Willpower: 20 Magic Affinity: 16 Mana Depth: 3 Charisma: 13
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Mana: 335
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Glyph Attunement: 9 Least Conjure Water Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Create Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth - Efficient Tier 3 Spell Least Move Air Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire Tier 1 Spell Least Create Mud Tier 2 Spell
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Skills: Least Mud Magic Meditation Mana Manipulation Spell Glyphing Improved Glyph Groking Gift of Gab Running Identify Soil Savvy Animal Handling Fertilizing Lifting Athletics Lute Playing Singing Musician Pollination
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)