Passion is a terrifying thing.
I started making alcohol at age eight, and now that I'm nine—just a year later—I've already worked out a plan to start selling it.
"It needs to age. We really should extend the aging period to pursue a smoother flavor profile."
"No, if we're ultimately going to blend it anyway, a settling period should be sufficient."
"Wouldn't it have been better to make the underground storage cellar at the factory deeper?"
"It won't work if it's too cold. Besides, if ventilation is essential, the current depth is adequate."
Molly and the triplet bear cubs are exchanging heated opinions.
At first, they knew nothing, but after I explained the principles and various other things, they ended up teaching me the common sense of alcohol-making instead.
And now, nearly a year since we met, each of them has become capable of voicing their own opinions.
It had been a busy year: searching for ways to make equipment, selecting locations, building stills, streamlining distillation operations, processing residue and impurities, creating and ordering containers.
"…………Passion is a terrifying thing."
"Your choice of people for the Drinking Circle worked out well, didn't it?"
Helkov smiled at me after I accidentally spoke my thoughts aloud.
We are currently at a distillery located at the edge of the Imperial Capital's commercial district.
Originally a warehouse, it was a spacious, empty place.
There, we arranged stationary furnaces, kettles, and barrels at fixed intervals, connecting them with coolers to create distillation apparatuses.
Transferring to the distillation units is done manually, but this setup allows us to produce far more than I could manage by tinkering alone in the Emerald Chamber.
"I wanted to make it more efficient, but I lost to their passion, didn't I?"
Distillation requires multiple passes, but our current apparatus can only manage a single distillation.
So I had intended to create a system where one unit could perform the necessary number of distillations.
In my previous world, such things had been invented, so theoretically it should have been possible.
But pushed by the chemistry between Molly and the three bear cubs, we've settled for now on a form that can produce stable quantities.
Renato the woodworker made dedicated barrels, and Terenti the blacksmith created specialized metal fittings to connect the various parts.
Erasto the glassworker is in charge of bottles for aging and storage, as well as flasks and glass tubes.
"We need at least two months for aging, so if we're launching next year, we're cutting it close with this setup."
"I was prepared for it to take several years."
"So was I, but……well, I kept fanning the flames by flashing new liquor recipes at them every chance I got, so I suppose Dinker bears some of the blame too."
I taught each of the four how to make the alchemical items they would need.
Molly, once she stumbled, would take a long time to recover, while the three bear cubs weren't good at deep thinking to begin with, relying on intuition and thus failing often.
To get those four to sit at desks, I dangled recipes before them and whispered that if we could mass-produce these, they would appear on their own dinner tables.
As a result, the focus shifted to mass production at the kitchen level.
"And we're already operational even though we don't have all the materials yet."
"Apart from the aging period, the ingredients for blending are to be high-grade items from the start, so Molly seems to be working backwards from the timeline."
We're already having dedicated workers produce the alcohol by following instructions.
To keep the production method secret, currently only Molly and the three bear cubs handle the alchemical items.
This is a separate building erected next to the distillery in the former warehouse, a dedicated room containing alchemical equipment.
There's also a room downstairs for finishing the products as cocktails, so it's called the Blending Annex.
There are also storage rooms, aging cellars, and apparently they separate rooms based on the number of distillations for quality control.
"Yeah, this is……definitely something I can't tell Father."
"They may already know the name, though. 'Dink Liquor' from Moriyam Winery."
"I wish they'd used a different name. Like Liqueur, or Aquavit."
"Liqueur has an unclear etymology, and Aquavit is already the name of a foul medicinal liquor."
Liqueur doesn't exist here, and though I'm pretty sure the etymology is Latin, I couldn't explain it, so it remained unclear.
And Aquavit was already taken by an existing product, so it was rejected due to negative associations.
Because of that, my name got attached to it.
Well, it's a pseudonym, though.
Moreover, when I mentioned that being called Dinker here would cause problems, they changed it slightly.
"The promotional finished products ended up being made by me in my room, and yet after going through various hands, the promotional items are being presented to His Majesty."
This is the result of Molly putting effort into promotion ever since we started building the stills.
"From supervising the distillery to screening personnel, securing materials, arranging transport, and on top of all that, tirelessly working on pre-launch publicity—she's an amazing person."
"That one's turned her hobby into her work. But it's thanks to the promotional items Dinker made, too, right?"
What I made for promotion was a pseudo-Martini.
The method: First, distill ale and find a local liquor scented with conifer berries.
Amazingly, we discovered genuine gin made by an old monastery that treated it as medicine.
Next, prepare vermouth, which is white wine infused with herbs and spices.
Though sweet varieties are mainstream, there were dry versions depending on the region, so we adopted that recipe.
The so-called Dry Vermouth.
"All I did besides aging was mix them."
Mix the two, and you easily create the king of cocktails: the Martini.
After that, just bottle it and add a note saying "Please enjoy promptly."
Incidentally, I also made it with Sweet Vermouth, but the adults preferred the dry taste.
Though olives are hard to come by inland, Molly is planning to push for them and bundle them as an add-on sale if they import them.
"Would you say selling the idea was a success?"
"A great success, wouldn't you say? Tagging it with 'The King of Alcohols' was good marketing copy."
"Gin alone is easy to make if you know the process, high proof, and conversely harmful if over-consumed. So I thought making it slightly harder to approach would help. It's the king, after all—people might hesitate."
"That backfired, didn't it? Status-hungry nobles would flock to it, and if something touted that highly actually tastes good, well, scheming to present fine goods to gain the Emperor's favor is what nobles do."
"Why is Uncle the one lecturing about young noble lords?"
Terenti approached, his yellow ears twitching.
"I'm a bit……weak on noble interactions."
"Hey, I heard Dinker has a complicated background. He's making alcohol in a place like this. He doesn't get treated as a noble."
Erasto is being considerate, but the reality is actually even more hopeless.
If I said I actually hold succession rights to the Empire, they probably wouldn't treat me as normally as they do now.
"Also, easy to forget, but your uncle currently serves at the palace, right?"
Renato pointed out something significant as if it were an afterthought.
"Now that you mention it."
"Why are you talking like it's someone else's business, Dinker?"
Helkov ruffled my head.
Physical contact is more intense outside the palace.
"It's spilling, it's spilling."
"Oops, sorry."
"Oh my, and here I said I'd make drinks to celebrate the distillery's launch. What a waste."
Molly joined in, and Helkov apologized again.
Actually, I'm making cocktails right now.
While waiting, Molly and the three bear cubs were battling over opinions.
"The scent is orange and lemon."
"Dinker likes citrus, doesn't he?"
"This is that gin medicinal liquor from the monastery, right?"
The triplet bear cubs peered at my hands with great interest.
"If you want to sell this too, I'll teach you the recipe later. It's gin, white curaçao, and lemon juice."
Curaçao is an orange liqueur, but what I have here is my knock-off version.
It's just distilled spirits with orange peel added for scent.
I had Terenti the blacksmith make a shaker, and Molly prepared the ice.
Then I added appropriate amounts and shook.
I poured it into a glass vessel made by Renato so the color would be visible, and it was complete.
"Here you go, White Lady. Sweet, bitter, and a little sour. Enjoy the flavor of the gin and drink it slowly."
I deliberately made it sound precious because if I didn't, they'd gulp it down.
Of course, I chose this cocktail with white-haired Molly in mind.
Immediately, Molly stopped her hand that had been about to drink and gazed at it intently, her cheeks flushing.
"Whoa, so you used moves like this when you proposed on the very day you met?"
Helkov seemed to be making some wild assumptions, but since it was well-received, I'll call it good.
Regular updates
Next time: Attempted Assassination of the Prince 1