Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Sim Preview – Let’s Brew Beer!

In Brewmaster we take on the role of a home brewer growing from craft beer novice to ultimate beer guru. The Auroch Digital team behind the simulation promises an authentic representation of the brewing process and draws on the actual science behind the rich heritage. The demo we’re playing is just the beginning of the game, where we’ll take our first steps toward professional brewing. In a trade magazine we find two requests for individually brewed beer: The organizers of a nearby, annual food festival have made “Sensational Citrus” the theme of the current edition of the festival and would like to serve a beer with a citrus note to go with it.

A local band also wants to celebrate the release of their first album with a special beer. As their debut is a space rock concept album, the brew is said to be as dark “as the depths of the universe”. It’s good that we already have two recipes in our recipe book that meet these requirements.

If you like it dark and malty, you can start your brewing career with a chocolaty stout, while we serve citrus lovers an American Pale Ale with the right aroma hops. For starters, we opt for the Pale Ale. Fortunately, the ingredients are already in our kitchen.

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Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator Preview: Let’s Brew Beer! (3)

Source: PC games

In order to turn these into delicious beer, we also need the necessary equipment. In the demo, this consists largely of normal kitchen utensils. After all, we are still at the beginning of our career. However, as the game progresses, we can expand our brewing corner with more professional devices.

First of all, a pot has to be filled with water and heated. Sounds simple and it actually is, but unlike other video games where this step would be done with a mouse click, in Brewmaster we have to control the entire process.

We grab a 25 liter pot from the kitchen, manually place it in the sink, press the V button to open the lid, turn on the faucet, and then wait a few minutes for the 21 liters required for our recipe to pour in. We can display how full the container is and other useful data such as the temperature or weight of an object at the push of a button.

Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator Preview: Let’s Brew Beer! (1)

Source: PC Games

Each step requires precision and a lot of patience. By default, the time runs out in real time and therefore at an absolute snail’s pace. It takes at least 15 minutes in front of the PC to fill the pot and heat it up to 65 degrees, as the recipe says.

Therefore, we should use our pocket watch for longer processes, with which we can let waiting times pass more quickly. But we should be careful not to overdo it, after all, brewing beer is also about the right timing.

When our warm water is at the required temperature, we add malt extract. Our beginner’s beer is then upgraded with special malt, which ends up in a sack in our pot and infuses there. Again, we have to keep turning time faster if we don’t want to wait a real hour for the flavors to spread.

When it comes to ingredients, we have to be careful not to accidentally use too much or too little. We should at least halfway comply with the gram specifications in the recipe, as long as we don’t know 100% what we’re doing. Otherwise we’ll end up with inedible filth for which we can’t find any buyers.

Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator Preview: Let’s Brew Beer! (4)

Source: PC Games

After that we boil the brew and add our hops. For the selected ale we need two kinds of it. We add one at the beginning of cooking, the other just before the end for taste. This is where the citrus notes come into our beer. So we should be careful not to take the hops out of the brew too early or mix up our quantities.

Once we have done everything, our beer first has to cool down for a day and then ferment. We have a special container in the closet for this, into which we pour our brew and yeast. After that we again wait several days before transferring the liquid to another container for conditioning.

Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator Preview: Let’s Brew Beer! (5)

Source: PC Games

Testing is above studying

This is the last step before we can finally have a drink. Once the beer has matured and thrived, we bring our keg to the in-house beer tap to try it extensively.

A data sheet tells us not only whether we have met the specifications of the order, but also all the other properties of our creation. Does it taste bitter, malty, fruity, what color is our beer, how cloudy is it – we can see all of this from the evaluation.

With all the descriptions, one would like to get into the game and tap one for oneself, but unfortunately we are still denied these bliss because of the state of the art. Maybe in the distant future there will be some kind of 3D printer for beer with which we can actually taste our mixture, right now the only thirst we can quench is the thirst for knowledge.