Brewing

The RuneScape Wiki also has an article on: rsw:Brewing

Brewing is a method of training the Cooking skill and allows players to create ales and other beverages, many of which provide temporary bonuses for certain stats. Brewing is objectively more complicated and time consuming than other parts of the Cooking skill, but the results can be more rewarding. Mature ales, especially if collected in calquat kegs, are very valuable.

Brewing Process

Ales

Brewing ales consists of a combination of the following ingredients:

• Buckets of water
• Barley malt, made through cooking barley grown through farming on a range.
• Ale yeast, available from a nearby NPC who will fill an empty pot for 25 coins in Keldagrim, or 5 Ecto-tokens in Port Phasmatys.
• A unique ingredient determining the ale's type.
• (Optionally) 1 bag of The stuff, obtained from the Trouble Brewing activity on Mos Le'Harmless; can be added to the fermenting vat, adding a significant increase in the chance of your ale maturing.

To brew ales, you have to use the fermenting vats located in either of the breweries in either Keldagrim or Port Phasmatys. Each place has only one vat, and they must come to completion or be drained before another ale can be attempted. These are the steps to follow in order to brewing ale:

1. Add 2 buckets of water to the fermenting vat.
2. Add 2 barley malt to fermenting vat.
3. (Optional) Add 1 bag of The stuff to fermenting vat.
4. Add the distinguishing ingredients that determine which ale you are making.
5. Add 1 pot of ale yeast to the fermenting vat as the last ingredient, beginning the brewing process.

Cider

To make cider, 16 Cooking apples, a pot of ale yeast, and 4 empty buckets are required.

1. Put four apples into the nearby apple press, the player's character will mush the apples, making a bucket of apple mush.
2. Repeat this process to get four buckets of apple mush.
3. Add the apple mush to the fermenting vat.
4. Add a pot of ale yeast to the fermenting vat.

Note: Remember, you do NOT need to put in water or barley to make cider. The stuff also cannot be added to cider.

Collection

Once the ale yeast is added, the ale will usually take three to five days to brew. If the brew is not ready, the examine text will say, "[whatever ale] is fermenting in this vat." If you attempt to turn the valve prematurely, you will receive the prompt, "Are you sure you want to drain the vat?" If you drain the vat prematurely, you will abort the brew you were making, allowing you to brew something else.

Once it is done brewing, the examine text will say "This vat is filled with [name of ale]", signalling that it is ready to collect.

1. Make sure the barrel is empty
2. Turn the valve between the vat and the attached barrel to move the brew.
3. Use 8 beer glasses on the barrel or 2 Calquat kegs to collect your brew.

Note: The contents of the vat will change colour as the fermenting progresses, becoming very noticeably different when the ale is ready.

Mature brews

With normal brewing, a player can randomly make a full vat of matured ale, shown by a (m) next to the drink or an (m1-4) for a calquat keg, noting how many pints are left in the keg. The chances of ale maturing depend of the type of ale being brewed rather than the player's Cooking level.

Matured ale is stronger than normal ale, providing an additional +1 to the ales original boost. (example: Dwarven Stout +1 mining/smithing, Dwarven Stout (m) +2 mining/smithing)

Note: "The Stuff" is NOT required to make a mature ale, it simply increases the chances.

"The stuff" is available from Honest Jimmy for 50 Pieces of eight, which are awarded at the Trouble Brewing activity. It is highly recommended that a player attempting this activity read the guide on how to play it beforehand. The odds of the player brewing a mature ale increases from 5% to 64% if the stuff is added to the fermenting vat.

"The stuff" must be added right after the barley malt is added. If the player tries to add it after the distinguishing ingredient or after the yeast, it is too late, and will be told they can't add that to this vat.

Failure

Occasionally ale will become bad. Even at high Cooking levels this happens around 20% of the time. The bad ale will be a semi-transparent lime-green colour in the fermenting vat and have the examine text "This vat is filled with bad ale." Turning the valve will drain the bad ale from the vat into the barrel. The bad ale cannot be collected, only drained from the barrel. The bad ale in the barrel will have the examine text "The barrel is now full of bad ale."

Types of brews

All player made brews can be collected in either beer glasses or calquat kegs, both of which can be made by the player or purchased from others. If the player decides to use beer glasses, one vat will produce eight glasses of the chosen brew. If the player uses calquat kegs, one vat will produce two kegs each with 4 doses. Calquat kegs do not need to grown by the player using them.

All brews have a mature variant. A mature ale has increased potency compared to its counterpart. Any mature ale will increase the basic boost of that ale by approximately +1 or +2 varying with the appropriate brew and it is effects. All ales except Moonlight mead decrease Attack, and all ales except Asgarnian ale and Dragon bitter decrease Strength. Some of the brews have a variable boost amount which is relative to the player's level, boosting more as the player's level increases. Mature ales also have increased stat decreasing effects of the same general increased potency as their bonuses.

Ale				Boosts	Penalties	Distinct ingredient		Grand exchange value		Notes
		Level	Experience					8 × Glass	2 × Keg
	Cider	14	182	+1	-2		4 × Apple mush	1,792	12,944	Regular variant can be used to build an ale barrel.
	Mature cider			+2	-3			423,176	134,570
	Dwarven stout	19	215	+1	-1		4 × Hammerstone hops	608	39,888	One of the few Smithing-boosting items in the game.
	Dwarven stout(m)			+2	-2			213,528	454,194
	Asgarnian ale	24	248	+2	-4		4 × Asgarnian hops	448	21,136	Regular variant can be used to build an ale barrel.
	Asgarnian ale(m)			+3	-5			21,640	5,472
	Greenman's ale	29	281	+1	-4		4 × Harralander	4,720	40,818	Regular variant can be used to build an ale barrel. Mature variant used in a Falo the Bard master clue.
	Greenman's ale(m)			+2	-5			199,240	305,068
	Wizard's mind bomb	34	314	+2/3	-4 -3		4 × Yanillian hops	776	45,716	Players under level 50 magic gain a +2 boost, while players with over level 50 magic gain a +3 boost.
	Mature wmb			+3/4	-5 -4			64,336	42,230
	Dragon bitter	39	347	+2	-4		4 × Krandorian hops	2,760	11,466	Regular variant can be used to build an ale barrel.
	Dragon bitter(m)			+3	-6			2,664	28,728
	Moonlight mead	44	380	Heals 4	N/A		4 × Mushroom	752	263,652	Does not boost any stats.
	Moonlight mead(m)			Heals 6				33,160	398,854
	Axeman's folly	49	413	+1	-3		1 × Oak roots	13,816	55,886
	Axeman's folly(m)			+3	-4			346,808	447,818
	Chef's delight	54	413	+5%+1	-2		4 × Chocolate dust	19,128	43,026	Regular variant can be used to build an ale barrel.
	Chef's delight(m)			+5%+2	-3			347,080	362,984
	Slayer's respite	59	479	+2	-2		4 × Wildblood hops	288	70,604	One of very few items which boost Slayer.
	Slayer's respite(m)			+4	-5			265,360	625,292

Mechanics

Players seeking to brew ales for profit can expect the fermentation process to take a long amount of time, making brewing a supplementary form of making money. Brewing can vary significantly in time, from between a day to over a week.

Ale has 2 chances of performing an action, called "turning," every 24 hours. When ale reaches a turning point, one of four things can occur:

• Nothing happens, occurring ~15 in 20 times.
• The ale 'sets', occurring ~4 in 20 times advancing a stage closer to collecting.
• The ale goes bad, occurring ~1 in 20 times.
• The ale completes instantly, occurring in extremely rare cases.

Brews require two stages of setting to become ready to collect. Once finished, the brew has a random chance of becoming its matured variant. This chance is aided by cooking level and significantly increased by use of the stuff. Once ready, an ale will not have further chances to mature or go bad.

Although the results of "turning" are random overall, the player's Cooking level will have an effect on the outcome, increasing the chance of "setting", and decreasing the chances of going bad. Following the general trend in Cooking, the higher the level of the ale being made, the lower the chances of the batch completing quickly, and the higher the chances of the batch going bad. Conversely, the higher the player's Cooking level, the higher the chances of batch "setting," and the lower the chance of the batch going bad. Players with high Cooking levels (70+) can expect less than 1/20 batches to go bad, making ale brewing a very good way to make some extra cash for cheap, and with little effort. Note that a full batch of a few types of ale, in their mature forms, are worth over 100k per vat-full (see Chef's delight (m)). Players with Cooking levels are around 70-80 who use "the stuff" can expect to see around 75-80% of their vats go mature.

For players wishing to collect as soon as possible, the best strategy is to check the vat every 12 to 18 hours, until the vat is ready. Ales will not be ready in less than this time under any circumstances. Checking the vat every 20 minutes, or every 4 hours, or at some regular interval less than 12 hours will simply waste the player's time, analogous to checking on a freshly planted Fruit Tree every 10 minutes to see if it has finished growing yet. If the player is extremely lucky their ale may be ready in as little as 12 hours, but will otherwise almost always take roughly 3 to 5 days.