Guides/Beer

Brewers!

In an effort to make the sharing and finding of beer recipes (and yeast locations) easier,
a database has been created at http://beer.drunkenfumble.com/. If you're interested in
sharing your research, please check it out.

Overview

Beer is made from honey, malt and/or wheat (anything else displays "You can only use Malt and Honey in beer."), brewed in a Beer Kettle.

What You Will Need

To get started in the exciting world of beer brewing, you will need the following:

• The Beer Brewing tech.
• At least one Beer Kettle.
• At least one small barrel in which to collect the result of your work.

You will also need a supply of ingredients for the beer itself. You will not need these for yeast testing, though, so you can build your ingredient supply while you look for a good place to keep your kettle:

• A supply of honey.
• A supply of malt. (Don't forget to build a Malting Tray!)
• A supply of wheat.
• A Grain Oven in which to roast your malt and wheat.

The Beer-Making Process

It takes 60 Wood and 25 Water to start a kettle of beer. Once started, the beer making process goes through two phases:

• Brewing (20 minutes) -- in which grain and honey are added to the brew.
• Fermentation (40 minutes) -- in which local microbes enter the kettle and convert the brew's sugars into -- ideally -- alcohol.

The brewing phase counts down from a 1200-second timer. At any point during this stage, you may add grain and/or honey. The type and amount of ingredients, and how early or late in the process they are added, determine a number of factors -- not least the amount of sugar and vitamins available in fermenting.

The fermentation phase counts down from a 2400-second timer. At any point during this stage, you may seal the kettle. Sealing the kettle prevents any (more) microbes from entering. While you can get drinkable beers from an unsealed kettle, most of the time you will want to seal the kettle after the yeast microbe has entered, and before bad microbes enter. (See below, #How to Find and Isolate Yeast.)

Once the fermenting is done, you may leave the beer in the kettle indefinitely. With an empty small barrel in your inventory, you may Take the beer (kegging it). You are given a display showing the statistics of your beer.

• If the beer is undrinkable, it will automatically be thrown out, and your barrel is left empty.
• If it is drinkable, you are given an opportunity to name the beer for later use. (Once you use the beer, your barrel is returned.)

The Brewing Phase

The brewing phase lasts for 1200 seconds, or roughly 20 minutes. At any time during this phase, you may add ingredients (honey, malt, and wheat) to the kettle. The type and amount of these ingredients will determine some of the attributes of your beer. These attributes are further modified by the time at which the ingredient is added.

• Glucose is a sugar, and is provided by all ingredients. Honey adds 10 glucose per unit. Light, medium, and dark roasted malt add 2 glucose per unit. Raw malt adds 1 glucose per unit. Burnt malt adds no glucose. Wheat provides 120% of the glucose of a similarly roasted malt.
• Maltose is a sugar created by grain. Light, medium, and dark roasted malt add 10 maltose per unit. Raw malt adds 5 maltose per unit. Burnt malt adds 2 maltose per unit. Wheat provides half the maltose of a similarly roasted malt.

• Barley flavor is created by malt. The earlier in the brewing phase you add the malt, the stronger the barley flavor. Raw malt gives twice as much barley flavor as light, medium, and dark roasted malt. Burnt malt has no barley flavor at all. The counterpart flavor in wheat beer is Bread.
• Bread flavor is created by wheat. The earlier in the brewing phase you add the wheat, the stronger the Bread flavor. Raw wheat gives twice as much Bread flavor as light, medium, and dark roasted wheat; burnt wheat has no Bread flavor at all.
  • In addition, Bread flavor is produced by yeast whenever there is wheat in the brew. This is added to the Bread flavor created by the ingredients. The amount of flavor created per alcohol varies by yeast.
• Honey flavor is created by honey. It works the opposite of barley flavor: the later in the brewing phase you add the honey, the stronger the honey flavor.
  • In addition, Honey flavor is produced by yeast whenever there is malt in the brew. This is added to any Honey flavor created by the ingredients. The amount of flavor created per alcohol varies by yeast.
• Color is created by malt. The earlier in the brewing phase you add the malt, the darker the color. Also, the darker the roast of the malt, the darker the color. Burnt malt is mainly used to create color.
• Tannin, a bitter flavor, is created by malt. The earlier in the brewing phase you add the malt, the greater the effect on tannin. Also, the darker the roast of the malt, the less tannin it creates.
• Vitamins, which are consumed by microbes during fermentation, are created by malt and honey. The later in the brewing phase you add the ingredient, the more vitamins are created. The darker the roast of the malt, the fewer vitamins it creates; honey creates fewer vitamins than dark roasted malt, and burnt malt creates no vitamins at all. Raw malt is mainly used for vitamins.
• Grassy flavor is created by raw and light roasted malt. (Grassy flavor can also be created by yeast during fermentation.) The earlier in the brewing phase you add the malt, the greater its effect on grassy flavor. Raw malt adds significantly more grassy flavor than light roasted malt. If grassy flavor goes above 100, your beer will be undrinkable. The counterpart flavor in wheat beer is Herbal.
• Herbal flavor is created by raw and light roasted wheat. It functions the same as Grassy flavor does with malt beer, except that a high Herbal does not appear to ruin a brew.

Note that Banana, Blackberry, Cherry, Date, Grapefruit, Orange, Pear, Prune, Jasmine, Vanilla, Cinnamon, Clove, Nutmeg, and Nasty flavors are determined entirely by the yeast being used. They are not created by the ingredients.

Malt beer is able to produce the following flavors: Barley, Banana, Cherry, Date, Orange, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Grassy, Nasty.

Wheat beer is able to produce the following flavors: Blackberry, Grapefruit, Pear, Prune, Jasmine, Vanilla, Clove. They also produce Bread and Herbal flavors, which are the equivalent of Barley and Grassy in barley beer.

Ingredient Characteristics

Ingredient	Glucose	Maltose	Color	Vitamins	Barley Flavor	Bread Flavor	Honey Flavor	Tannin Flavor	Grassy Flavor	Herbal Flavor
Malt (Burnt)	--	2	12 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Malt (Dark Roasted)	2	10	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	6000 / (T + 240)	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--	1.5 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--
Malt (Medium Roasted)	2	10	3 * (T + 240) / 1440	8400 / (T + 240)	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--	2 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--
Malt (Light Roasted)	2	10	1.5 * (T + 240) / 1440	12000 / (T + 240)	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--	3 * (T + 240) / 1440	1.5 * (T + 240) / 1440	--
Malt (Raw)	1	5	1 * (T + 240) / 1440	15600 / (T + 240)	12 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	12 * (T + 240) / 1440	--
Wheat (Burnt)	--	1	12 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Wheat (Dark Roasted)	2.4	5	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	8400 / (T + 240)	--	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	1.5 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--
Wheat (Medium Roasted)	2.4	5	3 * (T + 240) / 1440	9600 / (T + 240)	--	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	2 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	--
Wheat (Light Roasted)	2.4	5	1.5 * (T + 240) / 1440	10800 / (T + 240)	--	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	3 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	1.5 * (T + 240) / 1440
Wheat (Dried, Raw)	1.2	2.5	1 * (T + 240) / 1440	12000 / (T + 240)	--	12 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	6 * (T + 240) / 1440	--	12 * (T + 240) / 1440
Honey	10	--	--	1200 / (T + 240)	--	--	1200 / (T + 60)	--	--	--

T = Time remaining (based on nearest tick; see below)

Formula is for 1 deben of ingredient -- multiply result by # of ingredient.

Each calculation is rounded off to the nearest whole number.

Example #1: Adding 30 Malt (Light Roasted) with 300 seconds remaining creates 60 glucose, 300 maltose, 17 color, 667 vitamins, 68 Barley flavor, 34 Tannin flavor, and 17 Grassy flavor.

Example #2: Adding 30 Wheat (Medium Roasted) with 900 seconds remaining creates 72 glucose, 150 maltose, 71 color, 253 vitamins, 143 Bread flavor, and 48 Tannin flavor.

Example #3: Adding 60 honey with 600 seconds remaining creates 600 glucose, 86 vitamins, and 109 Honey flavor.

Timing and "Ticks"

For the purpose of these above formulas, it should be noted that the game views the brewing phase not as 1200 seconds, but as a series of "ticks" spaced 12 seconds apart. Ticks occur on every second evenly divisible by 12 (except for 0): 1200, 1188, 1176, etc. When making calculations, the game will round off to the nearest tick. If the add time is exactly halfway between ticks (e.g. 1194 is halfway between the ticks at 1200 and 1188), it will round downward to the lower tick. The only exception is the final six seconds of the brewing phase (between 1 and 6 seconds remaining): this range is not rounded down to zero, but rounded up to 12.

In other words, adding an ingredient with anywhere from 1200 and 1195 seconds remaining will be calculated by the game as an add time of 1200. Adding between 1194 and 1183 will be treated as 1188, and so on. At the end of the brewing phase, anything between 1 and 18 is counted as 12. To put it graphically:

Actual Add Time	Effective Add Time
1200 - 1195	1200
1194 - 1183	1188
1182 - 1171	1176
(...)	(...)
42 - 31	36
30 - 19	24
18 - 1	12

The Fermentation Phase

The fermentation phase lasts 2400 seconds, or roughly 40 minutes. During this time, local microbes -- most importantly, yeast -- will enter the kettle and go to work on the sugar in the brew. It is not possible to add further ingredients during this phase.

During fermentation you may take one action: sealing the kettle. Sealing the kettle prevents any further microbes from entering for the remainder of the phase. This allows control (in a limited fashion) over which microbes will act in your brew.

There are 100 numbered microbes in the game, of which over half are useful yeasts. The remainder are Lactobacilli, Molds, and Acetobacteria -- these are generally harmful to a brew and should be avoided. In order to make drinkable beer, a brew needs alcohol and therefore at least one yeast. Thus, it is necessary in many spots, and useful in others, to isolate a yeast before you try to make beer.

• Yeast

A desirable microbe which converts sugars to alcohol and flavors.

• Mold

An undesirable microbe which converts sugars to mold.

• Acetobacterium

An undesirable microbe which converts sugars to acetic acid (vinegar).

• Lactobacillus

An undesirable microbe which converts sugars to lactic acid.

(For simplicity, this article will use "yeast" interchangeably with "microbe", since yeasts are the important microbes for brewing beer.)

Fermentation Timing

Much like the brewing phase, the fermentation phase is broken into a series of discrete "ticks". In the case of fermentation, each "tick" lasts 24 seconds, with the exception of the first tick (2400 to 2389 seconds), which is 12 seconds long. Presumably the last fermentation tick is either 12 seconds or 36 seconds; it's unknown which is the case. But in general, we can say that fermentation consists of about 100 24-second steps.

Time Remaining	Size of Tick (in seconds)
2400 - 2389	12
2388 - 2365	24
2364 - 2341	24
2340 - 2317	24
(...)	(...)
1236 - 1213	24
1212 - 1189	24
1188 - 1165	24
(...)	(...)

And so on.

When microbes enter a kettle, they do so at the start of a tick. There are thus about 100 different possible entry times for microbes: 2388, 2364, 2340, ... 1236, 1212, 1188, etc.

How Microbes Behave

(For a full listing of microbes and their characteristics, see the Microbe article.)

All microbes consume the sugar (glucose and maltose) in a brew, generating their product -- alcohol, in the case of yeasts -- on a 1:1 basis. Glucose is always converted first, then maltose. Microbes also consume vitamins as they work. A microbe will produce up to its alcohol threshold provided it has enough sugar and vitamins to eat.

Every microbe shares six characteristics: growth rate, alcohol threshold, glucose floor, maltose floor, vitamin ratio, and vitamin threshold.

• Growth rate is either 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40%. During fermentation, a microbe will consume sugar and vitamins in a series of "bites", taking one bite each 24-second tick in the fermentation phase. Each "bite" is larger than the one before it. The microbe's growth rate describes how quickly the bites increase in size.
• Alcohol threshold is the maximum alcohol level at which the microbe will continue to take "bites". When the alcohol level of the brew reaches this level, the microbe will stop working.
• Glucose floor is the minimum amount of glucose that the microbe will leave behind. When glucose reaches this level (or if it was less than the floor to begin with), the microbe will stop consuming glucose and start working on the maltose.
• Maltose floor is the minimum amount of maltose that the microbe will leave behind. When maltose reaches this level (or if it was less than the floor to begin with), the microbe will stop working.

Example:

• Yeast-27 has a glucose floor of 7, maltose floor of 203, and alcohol cap of 573.
• A brewer is using Y-27 to make a beer, adding 20 honey and 50 medium malt during the brewing phase.
• Total sugars in the brew: 300 glucose, 600 maltose.
• During fermentation, Y-27 will first convert 293 glucose into 293 alcohol (leaving 7 glucose).
• It will then work on the maltose, converting 280 maltose into 280 alcohol (leaving 320 maltose).
• It will then stop because it has now created 573 alcohol (the alcohol cap).

Additionally, a microbe consumes vitamins as it works. If the vitamin level drops below a certain threshold (which, again, varies by microbe), the microbe will stop converting sugar into alcohol, no matter how much sugar it has to work with.

• Vitamin ratio ranges between 1 and 8. It measures how much alcohol is produced by each vitamin eaten. For instance, a microbe with a vitamin ratio of 6 will need to eat 1 vitamin for every 6 alcohol it produces. (Due to the rounding that takes place with each "bite", the overall ratio of total alcohol produced to total vitamins consumed may not exactly equal the vitamin ratio, but it will be close.)
• Vitamin threshold is the lowest vitamin level at which the microbe will continue to take "bites". As long as vitamins are equal to or above the threshold, the microbe can take another bite of sugar and vitamins. Once vitamins drop below the threshold amount, the microbe will stop working. (The vitamin threshold is not the same as a vitamin floor. It is perfectly possible for the vitamin level to fall below the threshold; this merely ensures that no further bites will be taken.)

A sealed kettle which contains a single yeast may be modeled as follows:

1. If the vitamins remaining is less than the vitamin threshold, stop.
2. If the alcohol in the brew is greater than the alcohol threshold, stop.
3. Take a "bite" of sugar. The first bite is always 10 sugar; further bites increase in size as governed by the growth rate.
4. Consume glucose, up to the limit set by the glucose floor.
5. If no more glucose can be eaten, consume maltose, up to the maltose floor limit.
6. Produce 1 alcohol (and proportional flavors) per sugar consumed.
7. Consume vitamins equal to the number of sugar consumed divided by the vitamin ratio.
8. If both the glucose floor and maltose floor have been met, stop.
9. Return to step 1.

In other words, the yeast will produce alcohol until one of three things happens:

• It runs out of sugars
• It runs out of vitamins, or
• The alcohol level is greater than its alcohol threshold.

Yeasts will always convert glucose in preference to maltose.

Alcohol Threshold vs. Max Alcohol

As a brewer, you will of course want to know the maximum amount of alcohol possible with each yeast. If you look on the Yeast page, you'll see that each yeast is listed with a Max Alcohol value. That value is not the same as the alcohol threshold we were discussing above, though. Alcohol threshold is the point above which the yeast stops taking "bites" of sugar; the alcohol level at the end of that final bite is the maximum amount of alcohol that yeast can produce.

Figuring out max alcohol for a yeast is easy: do a test brew with lots of sugar and lots of vitamins, and see how much alcohol you get. Figuring out alcohol threshold is far trickier -- in fact, we don't even know what the alcohol threshold is for any of the yeasts in T5, and we only know it for a few non-yeasts. Nonetheless, we know it exists because of the way multiple yeasts interact with each other. If there were no such thing as an alcohol threshold (as separate from max alcohol), we would expect a multi-yeast brew to always produce right up to the max alcohol of the largest yeast in the brew. In practice, that doesn't happen -- multi-yeast brews cap out at a slightly lower level.

For most practical brewing purposes, alcohol threshold isn't important -- max alcohol is the thing that matters.

Flavor Production in Fermentation

We've seen above that some of the flavors in a beer come from the ingredients: Barley and Grassy flavors from malt, Bread and Herbal flavors from wheat, and Honey flavor from honey. In addition to these, there are a variety of flavors which are created by yeasts during fermentation, as a byproduct of alcohol production. Every yeast produces these flavors in their own fixed proportion to the alcohol produced.

Because every yeast has a limit to the alcohol it can produce (the alcohol cap), so too does each yeast have an effective limit on how much it can create of a given flavor. Every yeast produces every flavor to some extent, but only some yeasts are capable of producing a flavor in sufficient quantity to be "tasteable" (200 or more). For instance, Yeast-82 can produce up to 254 Vanilla, and is thus desired for making vanilla-flavored beer. Some yeasts produce no special flavors in any significant quantity. A few yeasts produce large amounts of undesirable flavors, such as Nasty or Grassy.

There are two sets of flavors produced in fermentation: those generated by malt and those generated by wheat. If you have no malt in your brew, none of the malt flavors will appear; similarly for the wheat flavors.

Flavors derived from malt:

• Orange (fruity)
• Banana (fruity)
• Cherry (fruity)
• Date (fruity)
• Honey (fruity) - Note that this adds to any Honey flavor created by the ingredients
• Nutmeg (slightly bitter)
• Cinnamon (slightly bitter)
• Grassy (unpleasant) - Note that this adds to any Grassy flavor created by the ingredients
• Nasty (unpleasant)

Flavors derived from wheat:

• Bread (pleasant) - Note that this adds to any Bread flavor created by the ingredients
• Grapefruit (fruity)
• Pear (fruity)
• Blackberry (fruity)
• Prune (fruity)
• Jasmine (pleasant)
• Clove (slightly bitter)
• Vanilla (pleasant)
• Herbal (unpleasant) - Note that this adds to any Herbal flavor created by the ingredients

(Note that Honey, Bread, Grassy, and Herbal flavors are also created in the brewing phase from ingredients. Yeasts will produce additional quantities of these flavors during fermentation.)

Flavor in Mixed Malt/Wheat Brews

What happens if a brew contains both malt and wheat? In that instance, it will produce both malt and wheat flavors, in proportion to the relative quantities of malt and wheat it contains.

• Example: A brew is made using 30 raw malt and 20 medium wheat (plus some honey). 1000 alcohol is produced. Of the grain that was added, 60% was malt and 40% was wheat; thus, the beer will generate 600 alcohol worth of malt flavors and 400 alcohol worth of wheat flavors.

If a brew contains neither malt nor wheat (that is, it only contains honey), then none of the malt flavors or wheat flavors will generate. This situation pretty much dooms a brew to failure: since honey does not create tannin, there will be no bitter flavors to counteract the sugar, and the brew will end up "Cloying Beer" and be undrinkable.

Output

You can collect your finished brew anytime after the end of the fermentation phase. You must be carrying a small barrel to do this. When you keg your brew, you will receive data on its attributes -- you will never know for sure how your brew turned out until you try to keg it. If your brew is undrinkable for some reason, it will automatically be thrown out. If your beer was successful, it will be stored in the barrel and you will have the option to name your beer.

Beer Attributes

When you keg a beer, you will be shown the levels of the various attributes as well as the final flavor. The attributes are:

• Alcohol

The higher the alcohol value, the more potent the beer.

• Color

The higher the color value, the darker the beer.

• Mold

Produced if there was mold among the microbes that worked on your brew. If there is too much mold, you get undrinkable Moldy Beer.

• Vitamins

Vitamins remaining; no effect on the taste of the beer.

• Glucose

A sugar; the more sugars, the sweeter the beer.

• Maltose

A sugar; the more sugars, the sweeter the beer. Not as sweet as glucose.

• Lactose

A sugar. Despite being displayed, there is no way to get lactose in a beer.

• Citric Acid

Despite being displayed, there is no way to get citric acid in a beer.

• Lactic Acid

Produced by lactobacteria; too much will produce undrinkable Sour Beer.

• Acetic Acid

Produced by acetobacteria; too much will produce undrinkable Vinegar Beer.

• Barley

A flavor produced by malt.

• Bread

A flavor produced by wheat.

• Banana

A fruity flavor produced by yeasts from malt.

• Blackberry

A fruity flavor produced by yeasts from wheat.

• Cherry

A fruity flavor produced by yeasts from malt.

• Date

A fruity flavor produced by yeasts from malt.

• Grapefruit

A fruity flavor produced by yeasts from wheat.

• Orange

A fruity flavor produced by yeasts from malt.

• Pear

A fruity flavor produced by yeasts from wheat.

• Prune

A fruity flavor produced by yeasts from wheat.

• Honey

A fruity flavor produced by honey.

• Jasmine

A pleasant flavor produced by yeasts from wheat.

• Vanilla

A pleasant flavor produced by yeasts from wheat.

• Nutmeg

A bitter, spicy flavor produced by yeasts from malt.

• Cinnamon

A bitter, spicy flavor produced by yeasts from malt.

• Clove

A bitter, spicy flavor produced by yeasts from wheat.

• Tannin

A very bitter flavor produced by malt and wheat.

• Herbal

An unpleasant flavor produced by raw and light wheat.

• Grassy

An unpleasant flavor, produced by yeasts or by raw or light malt. Too much grassy flavor will produce undrinkable Grassy Beer.

• Herbal

An unpleasant flavor, produced by yeasts or by raw or light wheat.

• Nasty

An unpleasant flavor produced by yeasts. Too much nasty flavor will produce undrinkable Nasty Beer.

• Microorganisms

A list of the microorganisms that entered your brew during the fermentation phase, listed in order of when they entered. You can control the list of microorganisms, to an extent, by choosing when to seal your kettle.

Beer Qualities

A beer may have the following qualities:

Property name	Condition to be met
Very Potent	Alcohol >= 1200
Potent	Alcohol >= 800
(no name)	Alcohol < 800
Dry	(Glucose * 2) + Maltose < 150
Sweet	(Glucose * 2) + Maltose > 300
(no name)	150 < (Glucose * 2) + Maltose < 300
Black	Color > 500
Brown	Color > 200
(no name)	Color < 200
Fruity	Orange + Banana + Cherry + Date + Honey > 500
Spicy	Cinnamon + Nutmeg > 300
Bold flavor	Flavor > 1000
Noticeable flavor	Flavor > 400
Hint of flavor	Flavor > 200
(no description)	Flavor < 200

Each flavor in the beer (cherry, nutmeg, etc.) may be "bold", "noticeable", or just a "hint". A flavor that is very strong can drown out a weaker flavor; if you have 1000 honey flavor and 200 barley flavor, the barley will not appear. A flavor is drowned out if it is less than 50% of the most powerful flavor in the beer.

If two or more other flavors are greater than 50% of the strongest flavor, it will have "muddled flavor", and none of the flavors will apply.

Unsuccessful Brews

Not all brews become drinkable beer. There are many situations which will cause a brew to fail:

• Nonalcoholic Soup (undrinkable)

Alcohol < 100

Any brew with alcohol < 100 will be described as "soup" instead of "beer". Moldy Soup and Vinegar Soup are also possible, if mold or acetic acid are high in addition to low alcohol. (High lactic acid just makes Nonalcoholic Soup.)

• Cloying Beer (undrinkable)

Glucose + (Maltose/2) > Tannin + Cinnamon + Nutmeg + Lactic

• Bitter Beer (undrinkable)

(Glucose * 2) + Maltose < Tannin + (Cinnamon + Nutmeg)/5

• Caustic Beer (undrinkable)

(Glucose * 6) + (Maltose * 3) < Cinnamon + Nutmeg (very high fruity flavours can also produce Caustic Beer)

• Grassy Beer (undrinkable)

Grassy > 100

Although a too-high Grassy flavor will ruin a beer, I have yet to observe a similar failure with Herbal flavor. I've brewed wheat beers with as high as 380 Herbal which are perfectly drinkable. --Hekatef)

• Moldy Beer (undrinkable)

Mold > 50

• Nasty Beer (undrinkable)

Nasty > 100

• Sour Beer (undrinkable)

Not well understood, but may be (Lactic + Acetic) > (Glucose + Maltose)

• Vinegar Beer (undrinkable)

Acetic > 50

(my first attempt yielded Acetic = 73 and an undrinkable Vinegar Beer: Temm) (my first attempt yielded Acetic = 62 and an undrinkable Vinegar Beer; Fugue) (ditto, Acetic=62, Vinegar Beer --Numaris) (My experiments show brews becoming Moldy upon mold > 50; therefore I would assume the same threshold exists for the Vinegar fail. --Hekatef)

The exact effect of Lactic is still uncertain, but I have had several beers that should have been Cloying, but were drinkable, and had some lactic acid. Simply adding lactic to tannin in that formula fits all my results.

(It appears that lactic acid does not directly spoil a beer the way mold and acetic acid do, though the sour flavor might ruin a beer -- or possibly save it from cloying or bitterness. In this respect, one could say that lactobacilii are the least useless of the useless microbes. --Hekatef)

Multiple-Yeast Brews

The simplest brewing is done with single-yeast beers -- that is, brews where the kettle is sealed to let in only one yeast. You can enjoy a long and varied brewing career making only these (and most brewers do), but it's also possible to brew beer that involves the interaction of two or more yeasts. Since the mechanics of multiple-microbe beers are even more complex than those of single-yeast brews, why study them?

• Variety. Some flavor and attribute combinations are only possible by combining two or more yeasts. For example, in Tale 5, the only yeast that produces Prune beer is Yeast-89; however, Y89 tops out at 574 alcohol. If you want Potent or Very Potent Prune beer (so that it will last longer on the tasting table), the only way to make it is to combine Y89 with something else.
• In particular, some tests, such as the Test of Festivals and the Test of the Banquet, may call for specific beers which are not achievable with any one yeast (Very Potent Cherry, for example). Tracking down yeast blends that can fulfill these demands will make passing these tests a little easier for everyone (and just might make you a Great Big Hero in the eyes of your fellow Egyptians).

Overview of Multi-Yeast Fermentation

Here's basically how it works when you've got multiple yeasts in a brew. As described in previous sections, yeasts (and other microbes) work in steps, processing sugar in ever-increasing "bites" until the yeast reaches the alcohol threshold, or it runs out of sugar to eat, or it runs out of vitamins.

When there is a second yeast in a brew, both yeasts work simultaneously in this step-by-step process -- but the process is staggered. The second yeast starts in after some fixed # of steps.

• Example: In a brew which contains Yeast A and Yeast B, Yeast A comes in first and takes the first 12 bites on its own. Then Yeast B comes in, taking its first bite while Yeast A takes its bite #13. On the next step, Yeast A takes bite #14 while Yeast B takes bite #2. And so on.

A yeast will still stop when it reaches the alcohol threshold, vitamin threshold, or sugar floor, but the other yeast will keep going if it hasn't reached its own limits. Fermentation stops once all of the microbes in the kettle have reached their respective limits.

What governs the stagger time between two microbes? It appears to be location-specific, based on the difference in entry times between the two microbes. The correlation is still being worked out. But it's important to keep your specific kettle location in mind when you're working with multiple microbes. It's possible for even a small change in location to show a noticeable difference in relative entry times of your microbes -- and that in turn may lead to noticeable changes in your results.

General Strategies

Although multi-yeast brewing involves a lot of math and a lot of variables (not all of which may be understood even by tale's end), it doesn't mean it's not worth playing with. Some rules of thumb can be boiled down from all the complexities.

• If you want to know what a particular yeast mix does, then try it! Just get in there and make a beer and see what you get. Don't wait for Hekatef or anybody else to write a beer calculator that can predict what you'll get before you try. Predicting is pretty much impossible without knowing the relative entry times of the yeasts at your kettle spot, and you won't really know that until you do a test or two, so you might as well try first.

• When testing, add ingredients as though you were brewing for the largest yeast in your kettle. The ending alcohol level should be somewhere in between the lowest and the highest alcohol caps of the yeasts you're using.

• The best candidate for multi-yeast brewing is a spot with a low-alcohol yeast followed by a high-alcohol yeast. Remember, the first yeast in the queue gets first crack. If you have a low-alcohol yeast in the second or later spots, odds are good that the brew will already be at or near that yeast's alcohol threshold by the time it gets its turn, and it won't be able to contribute much. In an ideal spot, your yeasts will enter the kettle in ascending order by alcohol limit. Then each yeast in turn will have "room" to contribute to the overall beer.

So one really good use of multiple-yeast brews is when you've got a yeast that produces a neat flavor, but not a lot of alcohol. Find a spot where that yeast comes in first, then pair it with a second yeast that is Potent or Very Potent. You'll get the tasty flavor of the first yeast, plus the extra alcohol from the second yeast, and everyone will be happy. Good flavored yeasts to try combining with high-alcohol yeasts include:

• Yeast-16 (Vanilla)
• Yeast-17 (Cinnamon)
• Yeast-19 (Cherry)
• Yeast-27 (Clove)
• Yeast-42 (Vanilla)
• Yeast-59 (Grapefruit)
• Yeast-88 (Vanilla)
• Yeast-89 (Prune)
• Yeast-90 (Cherry, Date)

Practical Beer Making

Figuring out what will result in good beer takes three steps:

• finding and isolating a yeast,
• finding out what the yeast does,
• and then using that information to make beer.

How to Find Out What a Yeast Does, or the Fermentation Phase

Once you have isolated a yeast, if it has not already been analyzed, run a couple of test beers.

Making beer is just like doing a yeast test, except that a brewing period, 1200 Teppy seconds long, is added BEFORE the fermentation period. During brewing, you can add honey and the various malts at any time, though it calculates results in 12-second "ticks." Once you've finished brewing, it immediately goes into fermentation, and you should close the lid at a time that will catch the yeast(s) you want but no other microbes.

You should try:

• One test with low amounts of sugars and vitamins, which should get you at least one of the floor values for your yeast.
• One test with lots of sugars and vitamins, which should get you the max alcohol for your yeast and reveal any flavors it produces.

Don't expect these beers to be drinkable! These are just to get the yeast values which will allow you to make good beers.

Tools

Yeast Map

Yeast locations can be reported in the Beer Database for easy retrieval.

Yeast Attributes

See Yeast page to read or post yeast attribute results. These are the numbers you want to plug into the Spreadsheet below.

Tools

Beer Database - This is a database for cataloguing yeast locations and ready-made beer recipes all over Egypt. All users are welcome to add to it.

Updated 2/5/11: File:Beer Calculator.zip - Hekatef's beer calculator for Microsoft Excel 2010. Select your microbe from the drop-down box, enter ingredients and time, and get your results! Contains detailed information on all 51 yeasts, plus a few non-yeasts.

• NOTE: Most yeasts do not have a known value for vitamin threshold. The spreadsheet interprets these blank values as zeroes and calculates accordingly. In the case of low-vitamin brews, this may result in inconsistent results: a failed brew due to insufficient vitamins, even though the spreadsheet predicts a successful one. To compensate, be sure your brew contains plenty of vitamins -- 5 raw malt/wheat in the last 18 seconds will usually be enough. When a vitamin threshold is unknown, plugging in a value of 240 is a good conservative estimate.

Yerbouti User Page

ThePharaohArmsPublicHouse

Old T3 BeerCalc spreadsheet (Note this version has a broken cell calculation under Herbal Label (P2). I found a spreadsheet called 1.4.1 from http://wiki.atitd.net/tale3/Guides/Beer/Spreadsheet which seems to have more yeast values (probably outdated) but no broken cells) - Cegaiel

Tale 4 Beer Spreadsheet - Above link no longer works. Correct link.

ATITD Timer - very useful for hearing when your beer kettle wants attention.

Warning
This information provided courtesy of the Tale 3/4 wiki, Some information might have changed.