Brewing

The purpose of this article is to provide some rules and guidance for the process of brewing ale in the world of Isteria.

Contents

• Assumptions
• Time and initial costs
• Styles of Beer
• Quality of Drink
• Sale Pricing
• Alternative Pricing Structure

Assumptions

Brewer's Kit

The basic kit of a brewing is the Brewing Kit as outlined in the PHB.
Since this is light and compact enough to be carried around by one Medium sized person it may contain one barrel/keg large enough to hold 10 gallons of liquid.

The kit also includes the necessary tools for cleaning, preparing and storing the beer as it brews.

Scaling

There is the chance for the brewer to scale up production throughout their career. This is done through obtaining more kegs, warehouses or perhaps an Inn. Consideration should be given to the amount of space that would be required to store vast amounts of liquid throughout the brewing process and the additional cost that this could incur, perhaps including workers to maintain the equipment and building.
At the Grunky Lizard in Carracosta, for example, Ma has a couple of 100 gallon kegs she can rent out for 5GP each for one brewing period.

Time and Initial Costs

Time

The amount of time it takes to brew a batch of beer can be broken down into three stages, which takes a combined four weeks to complete:
1. Preparation This is the amount of time it takes to prepare the kit, ingredients and generally set everything up in the right place for the brewing to take place. The time included to perfect a recipe is also included in this. A DC 18 Brewer's Kit (Intelligence) check must be succeeded upon to successfully create a new recipe. This phase takes one week of downtime. Using a random brew from the table below does not require a DC 18 Brewer's Supply check.
2. Fermenting In this phase, we are adding the alcohol to the brew! Yeast is added to the prepared mixture, resulting in a production of alcohol and CO2 from the sugars. This part takes two weeks to achieve and requires no downtime.
3. Conditioning Once the brewing is complete then the drink needs to be stored in the containers it will be shipped or distributed in. This can take the form of kegs, bottles or any other type of container.
Once in the containers the drink needs time to settle, perhaps further fermenting in the container, and become suitable for consumption. This process can take anywhere from a day for a small batch to a week or several weeks for a large one.

Initial Cost

The cost of the initial ingredients required to brew beer is relatively low. This covers the cost of the flavours and base ingredients to brew a beer with.
Since the brewer already has a container in the brewing kit then there is little initial outlay needed. However, as the production scales up then the initial cost will also increase along with the aforementioned costs of storage, hirelings etc.
Initial cost is 1 gold pieces per 10 gallons/keg.

Styles of Brew

Determining The Style

With the ingredients bought and the process underway the style of the beer being brewed needs to be determined.
Initially this is done using the randomised table below. Once a brewer has crafted a style of beer with at least 'Above Average' quality then they are free to choose that particular style in future without having to roll on the table. This reflects the brewers familiarity of the process for that style and expertise with it.
The following table contains some basic notes pertaining to Appearance, Smell and Taste of the brew. A more experienced brewer might be able to mix up his own brews.

Quality

Determining the Quality

With the style of beer now determined it's time to see how successful the brewing process was. Throughout the process there are things that can go wrong.
Perhaps the recipe wasn't quite right, the temperature was off, or something contaminated the batch. Of course these can often result in unexpected improvements as well as detrimental effects. First, roll a Brewer's Supplies (Wisdom) check. Then, roll a d100, add these two results together and consult the table below to determine the quality of the brew:

Sale Pricing

Who will buy it?

The price that the beer will get for your brewer depends on a couple of factors:
The quality of the beer
The standing of the establishment being sold to
Regardless of the quality of the beer some establishments will either not be interested in the product or will not be able to afford its full worth and recoup their cost.
I've assumed that there are three different types of establishments in the word:
Poor, Standard and Wealthy

Types of Establishments

Poor establishments comprise of seedy bars, taphouses for the poorest citizens and generally not very pleasant places. It may also be that if a village or poor town has only one drinking place it falls into this category. The latter is the case for the drinking places in the outposts on Carracosta that possess no tavern or inn.

Standard are the majority of inns, taphouses and establishments that sell drink. Most types of people frequent these establishments from general workers, adventurers and people just wanting to relax, grab some food and rest. This is your general roadside inn in Illish or Omea or the Grunky Lizard in Carracosta.

Wealthy establishments are the drinking places of the upper class. Good food, good drink and highly reputable business places. These places demand high quality for the high prices that they charge. The Spicy Lantern in Carracosta is such an establishment.

A brief explanation on pricing

The standard pricing structure is based upon the cost of a gallon of ale as outlined in the PHB which is 2 silver. When the beer is sold we have to assume that the business selling it will want to make a profit on their investment as well.

With this in mind the table below shows the quality of the beer from worst to best going down, the type of establishment across the top and then the price that they will buy the drink for. The number in the brackets illustrates the return on cost for the brewer.

All prices are per 10 gallons/keg.

While the actual cash make is not a huge value it does represent a decent return on investment considering the low amount of time the brewer has to spend on the task. It also means that a brewer could potentially have multiple batches of beer being brewed at the same time and stagger the release.

There's also the chance that if the quality is consistently high and word begins to spread (the brew is traded in the local area or wider) then the brewer becomes well known and commands a higher price for their produce; especially if supply is low and demand is high.