Ale Abbey
Hammer & Ravens, Available via Steam on PC, $14.99
store.steampowered.com
There was a moment while I was playing Ale Abbey when my 16-year-old son walked in and said, “Cool. So, it’s a tycoon game.”
What, man? Tycoon game? Nah, I’m an abbot, see? This is a monastery—a place of peace. We are very chill, my Fermentines and I, just brewing and researching and… Hang on a sec—damn, fresh beer order in from Malzdorf. Eh, they want brown malt in their blonde ale? Whatever. Oh, great—Brother Hector is drunk again, and that batch he was brewing for the Hopfendorf funeral is infected… And we need to pay those bandits off, so they can “protect” our ale shipments. Meanwhile, the floors are filthy, the barrels in the cellar are empty, and we’re low on florins. All right, Malzdorf, we’re going to need half that fee up front.
Well, Ale Abbey starts peacefully. Log in, name your abbey whatever you want, and it begins. Before you know it, you’re building a desk for your nuns and monks—yeah, it’s co-ed, and they all drink heavily and sleep in the same dorm, it’s fine—so they can research a light-ale recipe. Pressures build slowly, as you add rooms and furniture, and the first beer orders start to trickle in.
Maybe, as head of your order, you’ll have the luxury of choosing a priority and playing accordingly. Are you doing this for fame? For coin? Are you playing to keep your adorable little Fermentines happy? They have some basic needs, after all: places to sit, sleep, eat, and the chance to brew a range of great beers. And that’s another goal you can have: to push further into the research to find out what ingredients and styles you can unlock. Naturally, the gamification is such that you must earn those like measly breadcrumbs. That assumes you don’t go broke. By the time I’d unlocked a few styles and added a second brewhouse, I was finding it hard to stay afloat—I had to grow to make money, and I needed money to grow. (Sound familiar?)
In case it’s not clear, the game is fun and seriously addictive, and great value at the price—just what you want for killing time while sipping from a goblet and trying not to get ale-ripened cheese on the keyboard. The controls are mostly intuitive, though it took me a little while to figure out the buttons. Tip: Hit pause when you need things to just stop so you can figure something out. You can also speed things up, but I never wanted that—I didn’t mind those peaceful moments when the Fermentines crash for the night, so I could think for a minute about my next move. Ah, blissful peace, sweet escapism…
Damn, look at that! The brewery’s filthy again. Time to get the mop.
Photo: Jamie Bogner
Epiphany Specialty Malts, via Bouncer
Four types, $17.95 for 12 oz
amazon.com
The catalogs of malts available to pro brewers today are vast, but that’s not the case for homebrewers and nano brewers looking for smaller quantities. Meanwhile, our local homebrew shops have been closing at a sad and steady pace across the country for several years now. For better or worse, most of us these days are finding what we need online. So, we think it’s good news when something worth using becomes available on the world’s largest online retailer.
In this case, it comes through an arrangement between two North Carolina companies: Bouncer—which mainly produces filters and infusers for small-batch brewers and distillers—and Epiphany Malt. Through Bouncer’s Amazon store, there are now four of Epiphany’s specialty barley malts available:
- Pecan Smoked, a pale (3 SRM) and nutty smoked malt
- Percolator, a coffee malt of 280–330 SRM
- Bittersweet, a chocolate malt of 350–420 SRM
- Icarus, a roasted malt of 470–510 SRM
We also dig the coffee-style ziplock bags for the malts. The bags keep the malts fresh after you use small amounts—though we think we’d want larger quantities of that Pecan Smoked.
