Brewing Tradeskills

Preparations for brewing:

As I began my brewing skill, I placed one, and only one skill point into brewing. Debate still rages regarding the need for this, but hey, what's one skill point. You will notice that a majority of recipes contain similar components, hence the recommendation to use Freeport as your "base of operations". As with all skills, when combining items be sure to only move one component at a time into the brew barrel!! Do not try to quicken the pace by trying to move stacks of components to the brew barrel and combining. Just move one of each component called for in the recipe to the brew barrel and combine. Make sure you include the container (cask, or bottle) as required into the brew barrel before combining. If you stack the items, the combine will treat the stack as one item and the remaining items will be lost!!!

Beginning Brewing (1-68):

As you start out brewing, you will be doing a lot of shuffling between zones in Freeport. The best location for components is Krystin Charcoal (between West Gate and zone to North Freeport). Also, a trip to the Freeport docks will allow you to purchase the needed fish component from a vendor, unless you want to work on your fishing skill and catch your own. The water mentioned as a component is nothing special, just the kind you would normally buy from a vendor. The following are the recipes I used while progressing:

• Short Beer (Trivial at 31): Barley, Hops, Malt, and Cask
• Mead (Trivial at 40): Yeast, Hops, Malt, and Cask
• Heady Kiola (Trivial at 46): 2 Kiola Saps, Water, and Bottle
• Fish Wine (Trivial at 62): Water, Grapes, Fish, Bottle
• Ale (Trivial at 68): Barley, Malt, Water, and Cask

Intermediate Brewing (69-95):

This part of your brewing career calls for items that need to be foraged. If you are fortunate enough to have the foraging skill, just head outside the gates of Freeport and collect the needed foraged fruits and berries. If not, send out a few /ooc requests for foraged fruits and berries. You are also able to pick up many of these items for a few platinum (mostly in the Bazaar). That will cover the cost of the time needed by the forager to collect the needed items. The following recipes can be used during this time:

• White Wine (Trivial at 82): Grapes, Wine Yeast, Foraged fruit, Bottle
• Red Wine (Trivial at 95): Grapes, Wine Yeast, Foraged berries, Bottle

Mastering Brewing (95 and beyond):

Now the hard part from the standpoint of recipes. Staying in Freeport area you can finish your brewing mastery by using these two recipes that are a bit higher in trivial level than usual. This may increase your failure rate, but then again, the overall component cost is minimal. The two recipes are a bit different. The Vodka recipe calls for you to make short beer first, which then becomes a component when it's time to make the Vodka. This calls for a bit of extra time creating the intermediate component. Whereas with the Ol'Tumjim's recipe, there is no intermediate step.

• Vodka (Trivial at 135): 2 short beers, water, foraged vegetables,
• Ol'Tumjim's Fierce Brew (Trivial at 135): Barley, Hops, Yeast, Malt, and Cask

NOTE: Actually the easiest and cheapest way to get to 122 is by brewing fetid essence, 1 fishing grub and 1 flask of water in a brewing barrel. low cost and what you sell back to NPC covers cost of materials to lvl, takes about an hour or two.