Can't brew drinks because "Requires Empty Food Storage Itens"

[MHplays]

I'm out of drinks and trying to craft some booze at the still, but the unmet requirement [Requires Empty Food Storage Itens] wont allow me to craft anything. The survival tutorial says that you need an extra barrel in order to craft drinks, but i already crafted a lot of barrels and I still cant make the drinks. Do you have to do anything specific for the still to recognize the barrel or something?

[Empath demon]

The barrels may already be filled with other things like seeds and tallow. Try making a few more. You can also set up a custom furniture stockpile near your still that only accepts barrels if you like.

[Xenai]

What Empath Demon said, plus if you have appointed a Manager, you could set up a work order to automatically make barrels whenever you run low on empty ones.

[Dangle]

I've had similar problems. Sometimes your dwarfs start making so much crap that it fills up your barrels. Make more barrels and try to reduce production of things you don't need.

[ian.whitchurch]

Also, a Craftsdwarf workshop can make pots out of stone, and some other materials.

Generally, you'll want a lot of barrels, pots and so on.

[MHplays]

Originally posted by Xenai:

What Empath Demon said, plus if you have appointed a Manager, you could set up a work order to automatically make barrels whenever you run low on empty ones.

It Worked, Thank you so much.

[Specter]

You seem to have found a fix for your issue but I wanted to post this for others that may find this discussion. I ran into this issue as well trying to set up stockpile links and whatnot. In my situation as best I could tell the workshop would actually only take empty barrels from the general food stockpile I had set up which didn't have any empty barrels (I had plenty of empty barrels overall). I deleted the stockpile links at the workshop and the issue seems to have resolved. Once I get a bit for space dug out on the kitchen level I'll probably set up a dedicated empty barrel stockpile and link that to the still.

The other issue I noticed is I had a ton of barrels with only 5 or less drink in each. Seems like the still may need to be linked to my drink stockpile to receive partially filled barrels but the same stockpile can't be linked in both directions.

[Empath demon]

Originally posted by Specter:

You seem to have found a fix for your issue but I wanted to post this for others that may find this discussion. I ran into this issue as well trying to set up stockpile links and whatnot. In my situation as best I could tell the workshop would actually only take empty barrels from the general food stockpile I had set up which didn't have any empty barrels. I deleted the stockpile links at the workshop and the issue seems to have resolved. Once I get a bit for space dug out on the kitchen level I'll probably set up a dedicated empty barrel stockpile and link that to the still.

The other issue I noticed is I had a ton of barrels with only 5 or less drink in each. Seems like the still may need to be linked to my drink stockpile to receive partially filled barrels but the same stockpile can't be linked in both directions.

When you link a stockpile to a workshop, that workshop will never take ingredients from anywhere but a linked stockpile. If the workshop isn't the target of a stockpile it will source ingredients based on how close they are to the crafter...more or less, and any accessible item can be used.

Stills produce alcohol in batch sizes based on the stack size of ingredients. If you want more wine in a barrel, use better farmers for larger crop stacks! Also barrels don't "stack" different wines like food barrels do, it's one batch to a barrel, big or small.

[Snake Bit]

Are there hard resource limits too? Like the limit is set too low and production will auto adjust to not go over the production cap.

[Empath demon]

no

[Elegnaim]

I'm getting the same issue. I set up a stockpile and set it so that only the still could take stuff out of it, and made sure it has an empty barrel in it. I'm still not able to brew anything.

I've also got plenty of empty barrels in other stockpiles too, and tried to see if the workshop would pick it up by unlinking it from the specific empty barrel stockpile. Confirmed they're empty by clicking on them, and they have a different tile anyway.

I did start with tutorial if that's somehow causing issues.

--

Okay, so I limited the workshop to using the barrel stockpile, and then unlimited it, and I was able to brew drinks.

Maybe the message is wrong and it doesn't let you brew drinks if you don't have access to barrels *and* plants, even though the message is just saying you need barrels?

[X-C0brA-X]

Here is a tip I learned watching some tutorial videos that might help some new players like myself.

When you start a colony put down a carpenter then choose the make wooden barrels job and the make wooden bins job. Make sure you assign a manager so you can use work orders instead of single jobs.

On each job choose the first option that says if empty barrels or empty bins is less than 10 then make more. It is under the far right green button with the < > symbols.

By doing that you always keep 10 empty barrels and 10 empty bins in storage. They will use the barrels for food / drink and the bins for all the other stuff. Using bins allows them to store multiple objects / resources in one spot so you do not have to create huge stockpile zones.

When a trader comes you can just transport 1 entire bin or barrel to the trading post and sell items from it to the trader so it makes trading quicker instead of having your dwarves carry multiple items to trade.

[Elegnaim]

Originally posted by X-C0brA-X:

- snip -

Definitely a useful tip but it doesn't have much to do with this particular issue unfortunately -- the problem is the "No empty barrels" message is showing up even when there *are* empty barrels.