Epic Of The Demonic Sage

Chapter 157 - Precautions

Lucius watched the faces of the workers that were filled with hope and joy. He turned his head to look at Alessa and John in the distance finding there to be smiles on their faces as well.

"Guess this can be considered to be a success…" Lucius muttered to himself.

A few seconds later Alessa waked onto the dais as well and looked at Lucius.

"I thank young Lord Asher for taking time out of his busy schedule and coming here to officiate the ceremony. We can now end it here and finally get to work!" Alessa said with a smile.

"YESSSS!" The workers all said out loud.

It was evident that they were quite excited to work. After all, they were getting paid far more than they would usually get paid for this kind of a job. Currently, the workers would get around three to five silvers a week if they worked in a place like this.

But Alessa was paying them Ten silvers each for every week and they were even promised bonuses if their production targets were met beforehand. The workers did not doubt her words as they had seen the constructions workers get their share of the bonus before.

This was the little scheme that wasn't truly a scheme made by Lucius. It would ensure that the workers would diligently work and stay loyal to the brewery. Lucius had even suggested that they increase the wages of the workers to about twenty to twenty five silver coins a week later on.

This would ensure long term benefits to the brewery as well, beast once the profits start to roll in, the workers were bound to find out and if they thought that they were being paid unfairly, they might not be as loyal as before.

"It was my honor, to officiate such an establishment. May it prosper forever and ever." Lucius said with a smile to Alessa before getting down from the dais.

John, who had been watching from afar, approached him along with Kiana.

"That was excellently done, I almost thought it was the Count himself that was conducting the ceremony." Kiana praised.

"You flatter me. I'm sure father will have an altogether different effect on people." Lucius replied.

"It truly was impressing, Young Lord Asher." John chimed in as well.

Lucius gave a little nod and looked at the brewery.

"Shall we take a look inside?" John asked.

"Oh yes, I've been meaning to do so." Lucius replied.

The three of them entered the brewery while Alessa and the steward gave some final directions to the workers. Alessa had been preparing for this day for a long time and did not want anything to go wrong. If anything, she wanted this to be one of the best days of her life. Asher coming to officiate it was barely the start of it for her.

Lucius looked around at the different equipment that was set up in the brewery. The building had four floors in total, one was in the basement and the rest above ground. The first and second floors were merged as the second floor was more like an access area for the large vats.

The vats themselves were kept on the ground, but their opening was at the top and thus the workers needed to go to the second floor to access it. That is from where they would be adding the ingredients to the vats.

Then there were the pipes that had been set up for the transfer of water to these vats. These pipes were actually one of the more expensive things to get custom made as they were made of a custom alloy of steel that Lucius had asked to be made.

This would ensure that there would be no contamination of the batches as well as the easy and quick transfer of water. In addition to this, there was a separate area where the fresh water that was brought by water carriages would be filtered and boiled.

The filter was a multilayer filter that had ground charcoal, coarse sand, gravel, small stones, and finally a muslin cloth at the end. When Lucius had suggested this to the others, they were confused why this needed to be done.

The other breweries simply filtered the river water or well water with a fine cloth before boiling it. But Lucius went a few steps ahead to ensure an even better quality. He didn't simply want to make a wine that tasted good, he wants a quality wine that could simply not be replicated by the masses.

It was these small steps that would ensure the taste and quality of wine. That way, even if the recipe of the wine was leaked, the others who tried to copy it would be unable to do so. 

After all, those who tried to copy it would steal the recipe and maybe the design of the equipment used. The recipe was already hard to get and only Alessa and a few trusted workers truly knew it at this point.

The other workers would not know anything other than the part that they performed and even if they got together to figure it out, they would still make some smaller fine tuning that was needed to make the wine.

Of course, the other expert wine makers would be able to figure it out with their experience and skill, but then they would lack the equipment. There was literally no merchant selling wine making equipment such as this, and it was all custom made.

Even if the wine makers want to commission the blacksmiths to make something like this, they would need the exact ratio of metals that were needed to make the alloy steel. And if they tried to steal the vats, they would only be spelling their own doom. As moving this kind of equipment was simply not possible on their own. At least not before getting found out.

And then finally there were the raw materials, the Carom Fruits themselves. No sane wine maker or even a commoner would think that wine could be made from that and would instead laugh if this was told to them.