Running Out Of Drink

[budfudder]

Every time I play, I run out of drink at about 80 dwarves. What am I doing wrong?

I have a single 3x3 farm producing only Helmets and a brewer continually producing drink from them. Is that not enough? Should I double it? What sort of setup do you guys have for drink?

[Fletch]

Brew more drinks, or disable drinks from Cooking (Labor --> Kitchen).

[Fel]

Make sure your farm is not in "poor soil", have a specific dwarf as a planter (to get more plants per seed/tile).

[Helios]

I grow outside berry bushes under a roof too and have fruit trees outside to harvest.

[HKXCIV]

Had the same issue. In my case it was because i was making meals out of plump helmets and therefore destroying the seeds which stopped my farms from being seeded and growing. Led to drink shortage since i had fishing going on as well. Turned off usage of plump helmets in cooking under "labor->kitchen" i believe it was. Making drinks or dwarfs eating them raw saves the seeds for planting while cooking ruins the seeds.

[Morrocco Mole]

I have a rule that if you can brew it, don't cook it. Drinks? Don't cook them. Seeds? Don't cook them (unless its like cashews or something.) Then set up a work order to brew drink from plant if drinks go below X, scaling with the size of the fort. You could also set a work order at either the carpenter/ craftsdwarf/ blacksmith to make barrels/ rock pots if there are less than Y available.

[El Jabon]

I'd say if you have a 3x3 and that's not enough at 80 dwarves, maybe try a 4x4 or 5x5 next then. As to should I double it?, I don't see why not. You could triple, quadruple, quintuple it if you wanted and can also keep seeds managed. Then if one brewer dies there's still at least another capable one around.

[AlP]

80 dwarves drink 400 drinks per season. You need to grow 80 plump helmets every season to produce that.

For plump helmets, you should be able to get 3 harvests per season. So even with unskilled farmers or poor soil, you only need a 5x5 farm plot, maybe a bit bigger. With skilled famers on normal soil even less.

But you should have some variety, so instead of that make smaller farm plots and grow multiple brewable plants.

[Fantastic Fwoosh]

Originally posted by budfudder:

Every time I play, I run out of drink at about 80 dwarves. What am I doing wrong?

I have a single 3x3 farm producing only Helmets and a brewer continually producing drink from them. Is that not enough? Should I double it? What sort of setup do you guys have for drink?

Just make sure you're taking your seeds back for your farmers to use, instead of letting them rot inside the still workshop, as they won't be removed automatically once you set up specific non-generic stockpile links. A working system is almost self-autonomous using manager orders etc, and basically runs itself on a monthly basis.

[Tanagram]

well if every single time this 3x3 thing eventually fails...

then yes, you should probably try something other than the exact same thing which is clearly not producing enough XD

[Fel]

Well, 3x3 with "anyone does this" for planting and on poor soil is very different from a 3x3 on muddied rough stone floor and planted by a high level planter.
The former produces 9 plants per harvest (which means 45 drinks), the later can easily produce 4 times that (which means 180 drinks).

But yes, having variety in the plants you brew is also a good thing anyway.