Chương 72: Chapter 69 – Summer Beer

"Berrin! What brings you here?" Alric asked. He had just left his office to greet a surprise guest, currently standing at his doors, looking a little awkward while watching the comings and goings of the brewery. A cart rolled past outside, its wheels rattling briefly before the sound faded back into the steady thrum of work, which suggested that even if nothing else was certain, momentum very much was.

"Good to see you, Alric. Well, I don't need to brew anymore, so I had some time," he said with a smile.

"I wanted to see how you do it. You toured mine, after all." Alric grinned. This was true. Not long after Alric had arrived, Berrin had shown him how he brewed beer, a lesson that had come with opinions, habits, and a careful guarding of secrets.

"Well then, let's follow the grain, shall we." Alric gestured to the germination section.

"It's all so… big," Berrin concluded at the end of the tour. Both of them were watching Hal guide a barrel of water through the hole in the roof. The rope creaked softly as the weight shifted, droplets splashing dark marks across the stone floor, which would be scrubbed later by someone who had not caused them.

"Well, we make a lot of beer, so…" Alric said, to which Berrin nodded.

"Yes, but… this is all your staff? There are, what, eight of you?" Berrin asked.

"Well, nine when you include me," Alric added. Technically Battery made it ten, but he didn't feel like an employee so much as someone who had arrived, become indispensable, and stubbornly stayed that way.

"Do you lose casks sometimes?" Berrin asked.

"We do, but it doesn't matter if we're doing over ninety a day."

"Ninety a day?" Berrin asked, wide-eyed. Alric just shrugged, the gesture of someone who had stopped being surprised by numbers some time ago.

"We run a tight ship, is all," Alric said with a smile.

"You know, I'm surprised you haven't had the taverns and inns from across the river come to get beer," Berrin asked, watching Hal finish the process with the stones. One of the crystals dimmed slightly as it was swapped out, its heat lingering in the air as if reluctant to admit it was done.

"Oh, I had one come. They dressed up, kept telling us how they were doing us a favour. Trouble is, the guards won't let the carters cross the bridge, so I can't be bothered to fight for a few silver. That's the other thing, they wanted big discounts," Alric explained. He noticed Berrin's eyes growing wider and wider as he spoke, like shutters being opened one careful inch at a time.

"Alric, I don't know how you do it. The guilds, well, the guilds came for you and you just ignored them, fought back even. But you'd do it to nobles across the river too?" Berrin asked, alarmed. Alric shrugged.

"The carters work hard enough. I'm not going to push them further. Speaking of guilds, you heard anything?" Berrin shook his head.

"Not since I left, no." An awkward silence settled between the pair. Somewhere deeper in the building, a cask was rolled into place with a dull thud, the sort of sound that suggested something heavy had found where it belonged. Berrin watched as Hal retrieved a premeasured bag of grain, went back to the boiler pot, and added it to the hook built inside. He moved off to prepare for the next one.

Alric decided to change the subject, partly out of kindness and partly because silence had a way of inviting unhelpful thoughts.

"How are things going on at the White Dove?" Alric asked.

"Well, beer doesn't draw customers anymore. We all have the same beer now," Berrin said, pointing to the recently set boiler. Steam curled lazily upward, clinging to the rafters before thinning out, as if it too had decided it had nowhere urgent to be. Alric could hear a hint of something in his voice and waited for him to continue.

"Your carters and such just make it too easy. As reliable as the river, they say. Always on time, no haggling, sometimes they even rack the beer for you."

"Is it a problem?" Alric asked, raising a brow.

"Not sure. Beer was always everyone's point of pride. Now it just isn't."

"Hmm. Well, the thing that comes to mind is to focus on food. Better food draws people." Berrin shook his head.

"Other inns like the Three Barrels have that down. They have a magic or something I just can't get to."

"Well, the thing I liked most about your inn was feeling like I was part of the family," Alric added.

"That's about it, though. Still, I'll come up with something," Berrin said, watching Hal begin the boiling. The surface of the water trembled as heat built beneath it, the way liquids tended to do right before they appeared really angry. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"What about music? Get Ruth to play a tune, sing a song?" Alric asked, grinning as he imagined it.

"I get enough trouble with people thinking she's that type of inn girl. Gives me too many headaches already." Berrin said with a frown, the tone of someone who had already resolved this argument several times. A way to draw them in that wasn't just a name on a delivery slate, Alric thought, and realised how rarely anyone asked him who brewed the beer anymore, as if beer had quietly decided it preferred anonymity.

"Food doesn't have to be perfect if you present it well. Doing something like a whole roast suckling pig slowly over a low flame often does better than—" Alric began.

"Ahem. Mister Alric, some of the casks are… being strange," Seren interrupted. Alric frowned and gestured for her to show him. She walked him around a corner. A few casks had been moved aside, their placement breaking the usual neat rows in a way that suggested quiet concern rather than panic. Henry stood next to them, frowning. Each of the casks was foaming around their bungs.

The soft hiss of escaping gas was almost lost beneath the general noise of the brewery, like a secret being told by someone who did not realise how loud they were. Contamination? No. These are different batches. This is a pattern. Alric gathered a little of the foam onto his finger and sniffed it. Using his other hand, he did the same on a different cask. The wood beneath his palm felt warmer than it should have, as if the cask were mildly embarrassed about the whole thing.

The scents weren't quite the same, but very similar. It smelled sharp and warm, almost breath-like, with a prickling edge that made him think of fruit skins split open in the sun. Not bad, not yet, but wrong in a way that suggested hurry. The second cask smelled much the same, the difference only in strength, as if the same mistake had been made twice at different moments.

"Were these clustered somewhere?" Alric asked. Seren shook her head.

"Well, they are too hot, is the issue," Alric said with a sigh, rubbing the foam off his fingers on his pants, which had long since accepted their role as emergency towels. The yeast were being too aggressive and it was fermenting too fast, but he couldn't explain that without giving a lot of other complicated explanations for how he knew that.

"We aren't in summer proper yet, so this will get worse unless we can cool this place down," Alric said, his expression complex as he looked at the casks.

"Do we move casks to the cellar?" Henry asked. Alric shook his head. That would just turn the cellar into a sauna.

"The heat has nowhere to go if you do. Mara can tell you how sleeping in a cellar isn't much fun." Not to mention issues like damp and mould that would also crop up, eager to introduce themselves. Alric hadn't noticed Hal's approach, but he too was frowning down at the casks. Sweat darkened the collar of his shirt despite the open roof, which was doing its best and falling short. Do we switch to night shifts? No, that's an accident waiting to happen. Rotate the shifts so we don't run during mid-day?

That could work, but it means starting earlier and ending later. Cooler boils? No, we can't control the stones that way. Some kind of water cooling, maybe? He kept reaching for systems, schedules, levers, Alric realised, as if the answer had to be clever to be his.

"I'll get some shelves built outside the back, then. We can let the casks cool when they come off the boiler," Seren said with a smile. I should have thought about that.

"And if it's raining?" Hal asked.

"If it's raining, then it's cool enough to keep them inside," Seren said with a shrug.

"I know we would be grateful for it being a little cooler inside," she added with a small smile. This got a nod from Hal and Henry, the kind that suggested agreement and immediate mental delegation. Alric recalled Seren and Mara had what he would have termed a small tiff. Both had apologised and moved on without him needing to intervene. Both were still being excessively polite to each other, but it was clear the heat was making everyone irritable, including the building itself.

"You sure know a lot about beer, Alric. You figured that out quick," Berrin said, interrupting his thoughts, crouching near the casks. Alric frowned. Maybe he did, but he certainly didn't suggest the solution so quickly. He was overcomplicating it, and Seren saw right to the solution. He didn't answer, just shrugged, which was beginning to feel like a theme. He removed a tankard from his item box, poured a small measure out of one of the casks, and moved over to the window.

Outside, sunlight reflected sharply off the river, bright enough to make him squint, as if the day itself were feeling smug. He sniffed it, tasted it, and spat. It was just slightly sour. Berrin gestured for the tankard. Alric passed it to him, turning to his staff.

"Toss it. All of it, into the vinegar barrel," he said. Seren was already moving before the sentence finished. Henry's hands found the cask hoops out of habit rather than instruction. The scrape of wood against stone echoed briefly as the cask was shifted. No one looked back at Alric for confirmation, which said something about how decisions worked here.

"What? This is normal," Berrin asked, alarmed.

"Summer beer is meant to sit a bit heavy. This is fine." He pointed to the tankard he'd just sampled. Alric shrugged.

"Not for us. Convenience has a price. Getting beer out on time is one thing. It also needs to always be good, otherwise no one will trust us. One bad batch will cost me over time. Cheaper to throw it away now." Berrin was silent for a time. Just watching, the way people did when recalibrating their understanding of someone they thought they knew.

Henry left with one of the casks, and the staff dispersed, already discussing how much space the outside shelves would need, and who would be least annoyed about building them.

"Guess you got your own problems, eh?" Berrin said.

"Always. Let me see you out."

"No, no. I need to pay first, though. Need to see your clerk." Berrin pulled his delivery slips out of his pocket for beer received. He didn't need to come in person to collect. Vale had people for that. Guess it was the excuse to get away. Alric grinned, nodded, and walked him to Vale's office. Returning to the brewery proper, he noted how Hal was occasionally replacing one stone at a time. The spent crystal was set aside to cool, faint heat still radiating from it, stubborn even in retirement.

Alric moved over to inspect one currently heating water. It seemed to be showing early signs of stress. The brewery kept moving around him, adjustments already underway without waiting for his input, as if it had learned the habit.

"Summer is going to be all kinds of problems," he mumbled to himself. Not a failure to fix, he realised, just the way things were going to be now.