Book 2: Chapter 19: A Stout Porter

Book 2: Chapter 19: A Stout Porter

The Thirsty Goat was closed. It wasn’t an emergency, and we weren’t out of food. No, it was just far past closing time and all the patrons had left for the day.

The tables were cleaned, most of the help had retired, and a warm fire flickered in the hearth of the pub. The clink of dishes in the kitchen mixed with the crackle of the fire to create a symphony of satisfaction. In the warm orange glow a single dwarf sat at a paper strewn table, contemplating the future of the world. Little did he know how instrumental he would be in the events that would soon transpire.

I mean, I did know, but it felt a little like hubris. Not that a little hubris wasn’t good for the soul! Sometimes all you need to keep your energy high is a little voice in the back of your head saying ‘Yes, that’s right Pete, YOU are the main character in your own life!”

I thumbed through another page of notes and hummed a little Johnny Cash. My favorite Cash was Ring of FIre but I currently had Hey Porter on my mind. I considered the words to the song; I wonder if they have trains on Erd? That struck me as a simple technology to introduce, especially given what I’d seen so far of gnomish engineering. Depending on how things went with Copperpot I could do a slow drip of tech on the side. Or not, I was busy enough.

“How’s it going, Pete?”

I looked up - and up, to see the enormous form of Kirk Manly peering down at me. He was carrying a tankard and was sweaty and disheveled from a long night of waitering. His white button up shirt was opened slightly at the neck and a small tuft of hair peeked out like some kind of sad human chest-beard. Annie and I had worried that our clientele would be uncomfortable with a giant serving food, but Kirk was already well-loved by most of our patrons. I’d thought it would be his dashing good looks (for a Human) or his great singing voice, but it turned out to be something waaaaay dumber. They loved him because he got great distance on the toss.

Every night in pubs around the city, fights broke out amongst the drunkest and most belligerent dwarves. Inevitably this resulted in some dwarf getting tossed out a window and onto his head. There was a fairly large population of tosswatchers who liked to go to pubs to watch their fellows get the yeet to the street. Kirk’s height and strength meant he got some good distance. The brewpub had a singular window to the outside expressly for that purpose. I’d been wondering why Bran had been so insistent on the silly thing when we'd designed the pub, but it all made sense now.

I patted the table. “It’s goin’. Want to join me?”

Kirk nodded and took a seat on the picnic bench across from me. He watched in silence for a while as I completed a few notes, taking the occasional sip of his drink. He looked a bit uncomfortable on the too-small seat, and I made a mental note to have Balin make him a personal chair. Maybe a lounge for kicking his feet up after a long night running around the pub.

“Are you enjoying the work?” I asked, pushing my notes to the side.

Kirk gave a wide satisfied smile. “It's great. It’s everything I love about portering, but it comes with great food and good friends.”

“I’ve been meanin' to ask, what food and drink do they have up in the Human lands?” I asked, pointing up to the ceiling.

Kirk looked up as well and frowned. “It’s a bit similar, and a lot different in other respects.”

I sat up and stretched a bit. “Do tell?”

“For one thing, there's a lot more sweets and meats down here.” Kirk patted his stomach. “My stomach loves it, but my waistline’s starting to complain!”

I scratched my head. “Humans don’t eat meat?”

Kirk frowned. “Most of the hunting and farming is controlled by the nobility. It’s just too expensive for your average person to eat more than the occasional chicken or pork. Fish is more common.”

“So meat’s a... controlled substance!?”

Kirk nodded.

“By Aaron’s Arse, how can they justify that??” I spluttered.

“There’s a lot of them - first sons, fourth sons, fifth daughters, seventh sons. Humans have more children in a shorter timeline than dwarves, especially the nobility. They’re everywhere and they own everything.” His gaze grew a bit cloudy at that, and I once again considered what had driven a man of his ability and stature down here. I didn’t fully buy his action adventurer story, but every man, er and dwarf had his secrets.

“What about tha sweets? I refuse to believe that dwarves have a bigger sweet-tooth than teenage girls - er, I mean humans.” I thought back on some of Sammy’s sweets demands, and this time it didn’t hurt, it was simply bittersweet. Like chocolate after a breakup.

“I think that it's the gnomes’ fault, actually. A lot of the big family businesses push sweets hard down here, and sugar is readily available from Greentree. There’s a whole culture around drinking coffee and eating vanilla cream rolls that we just don’t have, though Gnomish tea is common enough.”

“Sugar’s still expensive.” I pointed out.

Kirk nodded. “But nothing like the human lands. Most of our desserts use honey, or imported sweeteners, and that gets expensive. There are beekeepers here and there, but Hive Dungeon is the main distributor of honey in the human kingdoms, and it’s dangerous. Nothing like Greentree.”

“Huh. That... kind of sucks. How about alcohol? You mentioned whiskey? I’m guessing there’s no beer?”

Kirk smiled widely. “Oh, we have whiskey for sure! And gin.”

“Well, that’s true and untrue. Obviously there’s been more made, just none that got popular.”

Kirk chuckled. “That makes sense. It did feel odd to me. Really, ten thousand years and nobody ever tried something new? It feels a bit unrealistic.”

I coughed. “Sure.”

“Why that name, though? Was it invented by a Titled [Porter]?”

I adjusted my tone to 'storyteller' and began my carefully crafted lie. “Let me tell you the tale! The legends say that once upon a time me kinsfolk - they live very far away from here, you wouldn’t know them - mixed the two different kinds of beer in a tankard with a few other ingredients to create a special brew called two-threads. They served it to the hard-working, uh, [Porters] of the city docks. The problem was, if you were missin' any one of the beers, you couldn’t make two-threads. A [Brewer] by tha name of Ralph Harwood decided to solve the problem, and created a new beer that tasted just like two-threads. He named it after the men he’d invented it for - the stout porters. It never really took off, but I know how to make it!” I passed my ingredients list over to Kirk and he began to read it over.

This was of course, not entirely true. First of all, it was actually three different types of beer, and it was called three-threads. Also, beer scholars in the modern era have mostly debunked the “Ralph Harwood” story, which actually originated from a guidebook written in 1802. A man by the name of John Feltham wrote the story, which he called The Porter Brewery, and published in The Picture of London. Ralph Harwood was a brewer in 1720, and three-threads did exist, but he probably didn’t invent stout porters. They were just another product of hypercompetitive 1700s London.

Either way, we can thank London for giving us what would one day be Guinness, but tell that to an Irishman and they’d stuff a potato so far up your arse you’d be tasting French fries for weeks.

As for the difference between the two.... The only thing all brewers could agree on is that stouts were usually darker and thicker, with stronger overtones and a burnt aftertaste. Porters were just a bit smoother and could be more easily given subtle flavours and sweet adjuncts. Technique wise, porters usually used dark malts, while stouts used pale malts with some roasted malts mixed in. But only usually; there was no consensus.”

Kirk shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t make heads or tails of these ingredients, Pete. I’m not a brewer..”

“That’s fine. All ya really need to know is that I can make it with our regular ingredients, I just need an oven and some chemistry equipment. Calcium carbonate, mostly, though I’m keeping an eye out for different erdroots.”

Bran stuck his head out the transom and shouted, “I’ll not be givin' you my oven for beer experimenting! Get yer own! Not after - ”

“We don’t talk about pruno! I just need the kiln and some chemistry equipment.” I self-corrected. “That and some coffee. See, stouts are one of the beers best suited for coffee as an adjunct. I’m going to blow the gnomes of Minnova away with a coffee stout!”

“I can’t wait to try it!” Kirk beamed. “I love both of those things!”

Bran walked out of the kitchen, still grumbling about ovens and explosions and experiments and the noodle incident. He deposited a small plate in front of each of us and crossed his arms.

“What’s this?” I asked, poking at it. It looked like... a cream puff?

“It’s somethin’ new I made.” Bran huffed, “Try it.”

Well, I wasn’t going to turn down anything new from Bran. I sniffed it first. It had a vaguely... woodey? smell to it, mixed with the delicious scents of chantilly whipped cream and vanilla. The puff-pastry itself was a standard creampuff style, though it was more akin to a longjohn in length. It looked like a cream-hoagie.

I took a bite, and almost moaned with pleasure. The sweet tang of the cream had an earthy flavour that grounded the vanilla, while the puff-pastry was just spongy enough to not detract from the cream.

“It’s delicious!” I proclaimed, not bothering to wipe the cream from my beard before taking another bite.

“I agree!” Kirk said. “Mmmmm! How’d you get that weird flavour?”

“It’s that stick Balin brought in. I tried some of the stuff you didn’t want, Pete, after I checked them fer poison of course. I boiled the inner and outer bark to make a decoction and tried ‘em both. This is the inner bark, how is it?”

“It’s great! It was... an elm, right? I never knew it tasted this good! Honestly, I think this is the most unique dessert you’ve made yet!”

Bran’s smile grew to encompass his entire face. “I’m glad to hear it, since I’ll be entering it in the Octamillenial baking contest tomorrow!”

Kirk nodded. “I think you can win it with this!”

I stared between him and Bran, mouth open and cream spilling out.

Bran snorted at my expression. “Psh, you didn’t know, did you. You’re so caught up in this beer business that you forget the rest of us have lives outside of tha Goat. It looks like the first champion in the Thirsty Goat family isn’t going to be you, Pete.”

He grinned and jerked a thumb up at his face. “It’s goin' to be me, Bran Hurler.”