Secret :
SPRING 4, 510AV
A sticky, sweet smell hung in the air longingly, but few were awake to enjoy it. It was late, or maybe it was early now, but Cokanee still had lots of work to do.
He had finally made it, even if it was just a temporary gig. The owner of the Rearing Stallion, Kevith Aargon, had agreed to hire him temporarily for the spring and summer seasons -when the Reaing Stallion was at it's busiest.
The brewmaster was an imposing person, even missing an arm as he was. More than that though, Kevith was a skilled brewer; based on the beer the tavern served, Cokanee hadn't expected the kind of grilling he received when he answered the 'brewery help wanted' sign in the window of The Rearing Stallion.
Still, the young man had made an impression on Kevith during the interview, who claimed that Cokanee knew 'a lot more about the bells and whistles' of beer than he, but less about 'the meat and potatoes', whatever that meant. Nevertheless, Kevith had offered him a job, and here he was doing just that.
Cokanee opened the barrel to his mash tun and glanced at the contents. A rainbow of the best grains in the valley: several stone of caramal and crystal malts made the bulk of the soup, pale malts, a few handfuls of white rice and a healthy dose of wheat along with a few malt extracts for extra gravity. Better yet, the brewery's mercury filled temperature keeping device gave the exact reading he was looking for.
Shutting the lid, Cokanee cranked the spigot to the mash tun and hot, dark water flowed from the barrel down a spiralling copper tube and into an enormous boiling pot set over a roaring fire. Out of habbit, Cokanee put a tiny cup under the stream of dark liquid and brought it to his lips. It was pleasantly sweet, the water had leached all the starches from the grains in the mash tun, and the natural enzymes in the wheat had converted all the starchy plant products into fermentable sugars. This would be one of the best ales he had ever made.
Cokanee waited patiently as the boiling pot filled with wort, then waited even longer while it came to a boil. There was a saying about a watched pot never boiling, so Cokanee bussied himself with a book about local flora. The Bronze Woods near Syliras had a number of wild fruit bearing plants that would make for incredible additions to lighter, fruitier ales. The wild Brakish Berries in the region, well, he couldn't wait to go out hunting for them. Their berries were perfect for ale and the roots were perfect for his other hobby... Poison making.
Finally the pot began to bubble, and Cokanee set to work, adding various hops. He was trying to make a Syliran style Pale Ale, which took a bit of thinking on his part. Pale Ales relied on a strong hop character to give it a bitter taste, but Syliran hops were among the most mild in the world. That wasn't a bad thing, but it made for a more complex equation. The brewer decided to add a healthy dose of hops, and let the wort boil for an hour.
When the boil was completed, he added another handful of the Syliran hops. The short boiling time for this final addition would give the ale a crisp and aromatic hoppy taste; this was especially useful concidering the meekness of Syliran hops. In fact, with that in mind, he added another fistful.
Cokanee let the hops boil for a single minute, then hit another spigot on the boil pot. The wort drained away down another copper tube leading into the basement, where Cokanee had meticulously cleaned a barrel for it to drain into and ferment. The cleaning was crucial, any impurity or bacterial infection could make the beer sour and unpalatable, not to mention cost him his job. It had been hard enough for Cokanee to convicne the owner to spend as much as he had on the brewing ingredients.
“Piss water!” The owner had said with a laugh. “That's what my patrons wanna drink.” Then he smiled. “But I guess it couldn't hurt to let you make a few experimental batches, so long as you can keep the piss pouring as well.”
Climbing down into the basement where the temperature would be pretty consistant throughout the season (another important aspect of proper brewing) Cokanee approached the barrel of wort ready to ferment. The boil pot above had drained entirely, and now that it had cooled, it was time to pitch the yeast.
Cokanee smiled, picking up a large vial full of sugary water and nearly a pound of living organisms. His pride and joy -a perfectly crafted strain of yeast, resistant to temperature, shock, high sugar concentrations, low sugar concentrations and high alcohol content. The culmination of his father's and his own knowledge.
Dumping the yeast in, he sealed the barrel and fed another gas run off tube into a bowl of water so air could escape as the barrel built pressure, but could not enter. Fermentation could only occur in the absence of breathable air... Oxygen, wasn't it? In only a few moments, air bubbles were chirping happily to the surface of the bowl.
That was his third and final craft beer: a Syliran Pale Ale, a Chocolate Stout and a Red Amber. A smile came to Cokanee's face, but faded almost immediately. There was a whole lot of clean up to do, and the night was wearing thin.
