Alpha is the whole game: a beer in the garage, lager and 100-litre batches in the workshop, malt whisky and bourbon at the still, with the tutorials, saves and the rest built around them. A tick means it’s done. On the boil is what I’m building. The rest is still ahead.
- The tech tree
The tech tree and shop decide what you can buy and when. Selling what you make earns research points.
- Garage beer
Brew extract beer by hand from the pan to a capped bottle. Buyers take it by the crate and say how it tasted.
- A guided first brew
A guided first batch you can leave at any step or skip. The guided batch ferments warm on purpose, so you see what heat does.
- Choices in the garage on the boil
Better yeast and hops, cold ferments, steeping grains, and two batches compared side by side. Past a point, you rent the workshop.
- Into the workshop
Mill and mash grain, boil 100 litres, put kegs on the pub’s tap, and stop doing the first chores by hand.
- The still and casks
Run the pot still from first cut to a dated cask, with a second tutorial. A cocktail bar buys new-make meanwhile.
- Bigger vessels
Vessels of 250 litres, ones that keep their own temperature, grain that arrives milled, and a festival that scores your batches.
- Bourbon and first whisky
Cook corn and fill new oak casks for bourbon. Then pull your first malt whisky from a cask you filled yourself.
- Running the business
Standing contracts and a courier. A last order judges a keg, a bottled lager and a whisky together, then free play.
- Saves and settings
Save and load in the middle of a ferment, carry your cash and recipes into the workshop, and choose how much help you get.
- Recorded sound
Recordings replace the stand-in sounds in the garage, the workshop and at the still.
- Molasses rum maybe
Rum made from molasses. I’d like it in, but it may not fit.
When I can play from the first garage batch to the first whisky in one sitting, with nothing broken or missing, alpha is done.