Leaving Honningbrew Meadery dry (Stealing literally all of the mead)

[fushigi friend]

I'm sure most of you have done the Honningbrew Meadery quest for the theives guild, where you poison a skeever nest and a vat of mead. But have any of you ever robbed the place of all of its mead? If not, this should help you do that.

The mead behind the counter should be left last. Doing it later is benificial for 2 reasons. 1: Sabjorn will not be hovering around the bar and staring at you. 2: You'll do less walking around with pouds of mead.
The first thing you want to do is to go through the caves normally, taking any mead you find as well. Then, whe nyou get to the boiler room, you take ever bottle of it. Then you return to Sabjorn and tell hi mthe job is done.
After this, immediatly go to the other room and take as much mead from the barrels as possible. Everyone in the bulding will be occupied by the mead tasting, letting you taste as much mead as you want. Make sure you check every single barrel. Jump on top of barrels and look behind piles of them to get access to barrels you previously couldn't see. Then, talk to new man in charge. He should then move to the barrel room and sit down. He may not do this, but that's ok. If he remains in the room, find a bucket and put it on top of his head. Buckets are the bane of NPCs, as everyone knows.
Next, take all the counter mead and take the mead in Sabjorn's room. Don't forget the sneaky mead that's hidden on the right side of his bed.
Now this last part is optional, but if you pick the lock in sajorn's room, you can get the Honningbrew Decandter. You can then give this to Delvin for 200 gold.
After stealing all the mead the place has to offer, you may find yourself overweight. This is fine. Walk to the nearest horse. Weather you own one, possess the spell that allows you to summon a horse from the Soul Carin, or have decent enough stealth so that you can just steal a horse, a horse makes this much easier. If you have the Whirlwind Sprint shout, ues that to speed up your slow trek to the nearest horse.

Once you get the horse or somehow get your weight under control, fast travel to the theives guild and find Tonilia. You should have at least 378 bottles of Honningbrew Mead to sell. Make sure you have on your theives guild hood to increase the price of the mead. Tonilia may run out of money. If this happens, simply wait 48 hours and talk to her again. Her gold should be restocked. The amount of gold you sell it for may vary based off of speach, but I sold mine for 2464 gold. I had 22 points in speech and forgot to put on my hood, so you could even sell it for more.

The morale of this story is, stealing large amounts of intoxicating beverages is very profitable and should be done by anyone attending the theives guild.

[MysticMalevolence]

Well, yes, but I normally just sell it back to Mallus at the counter there. He's a fence, y'know. He doesn't even mind when I come back and rob all the black-briar mead just to sell it back.

[casualsailor]

Major Slack did this as a part of his Pure Thief build. I think he only got ~270 but then he was only looting bottles marked as "steal."

Other than the money these are also helpful for builds which utilize power attack spamming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU4krIfA7xQ