How to read an entry
The working
Every entry ends in its working: the steps, in order, numbered from one.
1. COOK 8m cook for 8 minutes over a lit cauldron
Wheat/3 3 wheat go in
2. CASK 5y, oak 5 years in an oak caskFour kinds of step exist, and each prints one line:
| Line | Meaning |
|---|---|
COOK 8m | Cook for eight minutes, over a lit cauldron |
MIX 6m | Stir cold for six minutes. The pot is never lit |
STILL x5 | Five passes through the still |
CASK 5y, oak | Five years in an oak cask |
The ingredient lines belong to the step above them. A step with no ingredient lines takes nothing new: a still runs on what is already in it, and so does a cask.
One aging year is five real minutes while the server runs at its normal speed. A five-year cask therefore takes twenty-five minutes. Brewing minutes are real minutes too. Slower server running lengthens these waits; time while the server is stopped does not count. Casks keep aging while their brewer is away. Aging years are a measure of cask time, separate from the seasonal calendar.
The blanks
A blank is written one of two ways, and never both on one line.
| Printed | Meaning |
|---|---|
Apple/___ | The apple is named. How many is not written |
___/6 | Six of something. What it is is not written |
STILL x___ | The still is run. The count is not written |
CASK ___y, oak | An oak cask. The term is not written |
CASK 14y, ___ | Fourteen years. The wood is not written |
One unknown per ingredient line. The master brews may hide different lines in the same pot, so a single result may depend on more than one guess. Keep notes and refine one thing at a time.
What is never hidden
The shape of the working is always printed. How many steps there are, what kind each one is, in what order, and how many things go into each step. Only what sits inside a step is ever withheld.
The one exception is the last chapter. Those four are not solved. They are released.
Two things about the names
The name at the head of an entry is the drink's middle grade. A good or excellent discovery carries the drink's name. Poor attempts remain unnamed, including attempts at common workings; a failed attempt does not confirm which recipe you approached.
Bottles do not print your batch's ingredients, measures, times or numerical score. Keep your own notes. Drinking an unnamed attempt does not reveal the recipe through its message. What a brewer chooses to teach, trade or tell is their own affair.
A bottle marked Tier IV holds its beneficial effects longer. A proof that holds is still only a promise: the working must be finished before the bottle earns that mark.
A drink used as an ingredient in another working is printed under its finest name. The book is naming the drink, not the grade you must supply.
What this book does not tell you
It does not say what a drink does when you run the still past the count written here. That is learned at a still, and it is worth learning.
It does not say which drinks reward a hard push with anything other than strength and a rough edge.
Nothing in this book states that something cannot be done, or that a search is finished.