Chapter 8

Hop Variety

I engaged my Brewer’s Harvest skills when we hit the most eastern part of my base. Afterwards, Abigail and I headed south. The terrain was still rocky, and the forest was so thick that it broke the wind. A shared waterskin of warm-warm beer warded the chill.

Abigail was pleasant company. I got to learn of her upbringing in Salindune. She’d spent her childhood under the sun. The surf of the sea had washed her feet and her hair. She often smiled when she reminisced aloud of those times. Yes. Those were simple times.

My childhood had been different and I told her that. Lunstad was a city of stone that overlooked the sea. There was no easy access to water so it wasn’t often I experienced the water. The city architecture was severe. Brutal.

“Were there flowers in Lunstad?” Abigail said. “Gardens?”

“Mansion gardens. I don’t honestly remember what else. My grandfather gave me a knife when I was eight years old. I learned to use it by whittling. Then the knife later became a forester axe. The wood became trees.”

“While you were whittling, I was making crowns out of flowers. My neighbor had a garden. I used to play with the ladybugs in her garden.”

“Sounds like we were both made for the outdoors,” I said.

Abigail smiled. After descending a short slope, we laughed back and forth about our times growing up. Her presence was sweet to me. Sweet to the world too because the cloud cover was heavy and her laughter touched the wilderness like sun rays.

When the sun was at its zenith, though still hidden, we stopped for a cold lunch. We passed a bowl of walnuts, chestnuts, and blackberries back and forth. It was simple, and we insisted that the other finish the last morsels.

“Ale?” Abigail said.

“That would be delightful.”

We each brewed beer. I focused on brewing a nut brown ale. Most of my attention was spent on the Fire and Roast skill to darken the grain and bring some nutty aromas to the beer. The last of my focus was spent on the Foam Cascade skill at the very end of the brewing process. I earned another level in Foam Cascade.

When I was done, I came to find out that Abigail had already brewed her beer. She’d been patiently waiting for me to finish mine. We traded our beers.

“This feels wrong,” I said. “Trading a silver rank ale for a gold rank ale.”

“Recommend me glassware for your beer,” she said.

“What about straight from the bottle?”

“Ok. Straight from the bottle then. I’ll serve mine in an aves glass. It’s a wheat double goat ale.”

She poured her beer into a vase that held a slight balloon shape at the top. We smashed ales, gave a nod, and drank.

The foam was crunchy. As though wafers had been reinvented to hold their crunch, but then melt apart like cream. The foam was also copper. Almost ruby-copper. There was a hint of cloves. Beautifully fresh cloves and some sort of nectarine. Some fruit that felt autumnal in a way.

The beer was a dark mahogany—almost purple. It was dark and held the softest glow. The malt was sweet and chocolatey. The clove persisted in the ale and blended with the sweetness of custard and overripe bananas. There was an unknown spice in there that tickled my tongue.

“Good god damn,” I said. “What spices did you put in this?”

“None,” Abigail said. “Just barley, wheat, hops, water, and yeast. The spice you’re probably tasting comes from the wheat. One of the most contributing factors to those ester profiles is the wheat. Then the roast of the malts. Then the hops.”

“Phenomenal,” I said. “I’m afraid to ask how mine is.”

“First off, some beers are better enjoyed straight from the bottle. This nut brown ale isn’t one of those. It’s better served in a simple pint glass. Secondly, I’m starting to notice that you’re not varying your hop choice. You’re consistently using the same citrus hops. I recommend varying your hops for the beers that you brew. I used larch hops in the wheat double goat, both for bittering and flavoring. It’s earthy, foral, and spicy. For something like your nut brown ale, I would use something along the lines of a Geannut hop which will lend your ale more nutty, earthy, and classic ale aromas.”

Digesting this information took a few moments. It’s true that I did not vary my hop quite often. Her lesson lit a flame in me to start exploring the variety of hops available to me. After a quick search of my inventory, I found out that I didn’t have a wide selection of hops to choose from. All I had were the citrus hops, white hops, purple hops, and a small coil of jungle-green hops. I didn’t have the names of any of them. I showed them to Abigail.

“Do you have any idea what these are?” I said.

“Those are purple opal hops,” she said. “The white ones are howling hops. Used to make anti-gravity ales—which are a ton of fun by the way. The jungle-green ones… …I’m not sure. I’d have to brew with them a couple of times to figure them out.”

“I’ll have Thrush eat one. His Composition will tell us exactly what they are.”

“I don’t know if Thrush would enjoy hop cones. They’re extremely unpleasant to eat.”

“Thrush will eat anything,” I said.

“Even your forged ethereal ingredients?” Abigail said.

“I assume so. Worth a try to see if he likes them.”

Talking of ethereal ingredients made me want to spend some time meditating and forging before we continued on. So while Abigail went on a walk by herself, I made myself comfortable and began forging. I spent an hour forging ethereal grains, and another hour forging ethereal yeast. Each grain was a delightful holy color and I was slowly amassing a pile of them. The yeast was perhaps the easiest to forge. Tiny ant sized shapes began to amass and I stored them in a dry gourd. They each glowed an unearthly color, as opposed to the glowing holy color of the grain, and the glowing mystic color of the water.

When meditation was over, I stood to find that I was tispy. It has snuck up on me

Forgot to drink some Drunk Defiant ales.

Since Abigail wasn’t back yet, I decided to brew a couple of beers and work on leveling up my Foam Cascade skill. By the time she returned, I brought the skill to level 22. The quality of my beers had risen to level 44/100 Respectable.

Just before we packed up to continue hiking, I received another quest.

[New Quest: Ten Vines. Collect 10 different coils of hop vines.]

[Reward: 1 gold rank Brewer’s loot chest. 10 silver rank Brewer’s loot chests.]

[Accept quest objective: Y/N?]

Yes, I thought.