The Crafter's Darkness: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 4) by Jonathan Brooks (e book reading free txt) 📕

as opening up one of the access panels near the top that led off to one side, and a third Air trap activation was used to push the spent mash outside of the container.  Unless there was something to catch it the results could be quite messy, but Sandra could absorb the waste product easily if she needed to.  She was told that it was usually used as feed or even reused for baking, but there was really no need for that at that point.

The next step was to boil the wort via the warmth enchantments and to add in Hops at some point during the boiling process.  This was, again, a point of contention between brewers, as when you added it depended upon who you asked.

“Those fools back home add it at the beginning, which tends to make the Ale really bitter – and they tend to like it really bitter for some reason,” Teving noted, before continuing.  “However, if you add the Hops later, it has a much better flavor and aroma, without all of the bitterness.  There’s still some, but at a certain point I think it becomes too much.”

Sandra couldn’t really comment, as she had never tried it before.  Glencha was one of those that liked a more-bitter Ale, but as she wasn’t going to be in charge, she didn’t have a say.

* Well, you know, I aim to make multiple brewing vessels, so perhaps you can convince Teving to make some for you. *

“Sure, I can make some of that…swill…for you, if that’s what someone of unrefined taste wants to drink,” he said in an effort to disparage Glencha’s preference.

Unfortunately for him, the female Dwarf didn’t care what he thought; she only smiled at his words and said, “Thank you.”

Next was another straining stage, where all of the solid Hops and any solid particles that hadn’t been removed earlier were taken out via the Air traps again.  The last real stage – and the lengthiest – was the fermentation step, where yeast (which was acquired from the bakers) was added and allowed to ferment, which converted the wort into ale over the period of at least a week, but could take up to 6 weeks.  When Sandra asked if that could be sped up somehow, she was told that trying to speed it up would be a mistake – and possibly deadly.

“You want to make sure to leave an outlet at the top of the container where poison gas produced by the fermentation can escape.  If you don’t have that there, it’s quite possible that the entire vessel will…explode,” Glencha informed her.

That was definitely problematic; luckily for everyone living there, the natural Mana infused into her dungeon automatically filtered the air, so she didn’t have to worry about them all succumbing to this “poison gas” they were talking about.  This was also the reason she was advised not to speed it up artificially, because they were worried that might result in another explosion, and it would be hard to regulate exactly how much it was being fermented and they might end up with a spoiled batch.

Sandra was used to being able to get things done quickly, so the stall in the process was a bit of a setback, but she was inclined to believe what the Dwarves were talking about.  The fermentation process was the main reason she was forced to use enchantments for heating and cooling of the container because the vessel needed to be kept relatively cool, and the alcohol-making process produced a lot of heat.  The way it was set up now allowed them to keep a constant temperature no matter what was going on inside of the container.

That was about it.  She was told that when the fermentation was complete, the remaining yeast inside could be removed and reused on the next batch.  Then, the Ale could be extracted through a small hole with a little pipe attached to allow the alcoholic liquid to flow out in measured amounts.  A little ingenuity and suggestion from Glencha caused Sandra to figure out a way to have the pipe move one way to allow liquid to flow out from it, while moving it back would stop the flow – which Teving was happy about, since it allowed him to easily taste test the Ale while it was at each stage of the process.

Now all that needed to be done was for Teving to start that entire process – and for Sandra to work with Glencha and her distillery.

The initial process was amazingly similar to brewing at least in the first stages, so all Sandra had to do was duplicate what she had made for Teving.  The biggest difference was that instead of removing the malted mixture after the wort was produced, it was kept inside the main container of the still even through the fermentation process.  Once the fermentation process was complete, however, the main difference in the extraction of the alcohol could be seen; this was where the liquid that would be Whiskey was produced that was a whole lot stronger than Ale.

Similar to her still she had created for extracting Cedar Oil, a small copper tube ran from the top of the container, had a cooling system set up via frigid water (which was tied to the Water trap that already existed) that converted vapor into liquid again, and ended up in a smaller vessel nearby.  Once the fermentation was complete, the mixture was heated up to the point where the alcohol became vapor, which flowed through the tube, was cooled down, and collected as pure Whiskey in the smaller container.

Glencha had her own opinions on the best way to make her spirit of choice, and she was as into it as Teving was into Ale.  “There are different recipes for making whiskey as well, that depends on the types of grains used – I prefer