Since ancient times, dwarves have lived mainly in mining areas.
Their staple food in the mountains was barley, which is resistant to cold.
And barley is the main ingredient of beer.
Dwarves whose staple food was barley were bound to develop beer.
The dwarves had historic breweries passed down from generation to generation in each tribe, and beer cellars were everywhere.
As a result, the dwarves take great pride in their beer, and other races' brews are often ignored.
But even the dwarves had a problem: the shelf life of their beer.
The dwarves' beer would spoil within five weeks of leaving the brewery.
When they lived in the mountains in tribal groups, this short shelf life was not a problem.
However, as the dwarves expanded their territory and spread across the continent, this became a major problem.
It would spoil in transit, and the dwarves would often resent it.
However, the 'venerable' dwarven breweries were stubborn and stuck to the traditional methods of their ancestors.
As a result, the shelf life of beer has always been a major problem for the dwarves.
That's why Dorian, a proud dwarf, asked Yuri, a human, if he knew how to brew beer.
If he was good at it, he might know how to make beer last longer.
Dorian didn't expect Yuri to know how good beer tasted but he did.
"...Hmph, hmph?!"
The bittersweet caramel flavor was creamy and smooth.
A refreshing flavor that lingers in the mouth like an aftertaste long after it's gone....
Dorian's eyes widened at this unexpected feast of flavors.
Dorian was a beer connoisseur, but even he had never experienced an aroma that lingered in his mouth for so long.
Then Dorian realized something and muttered in surprise.
"This...you didn't use 'grunt'."
"Yes, it's 'hop'."
"...Hop, this is Hop?"
Dorian asked, staring wide-eyed down at the pitch-black beer.
"What's the name of this beer?"
"It's called Guinness."
*
Guinness, the pride of Irish beer.
The beer I showed Dorian was "Foreign Extra Stout," a dark beer in the Guinness tradition.
It's stronger than regular Guinness and has a heavier flavor.
I figured the alcohol-loving dwarves would like it.....
"Yum!"
I was right.
Dorian drained the giant mug in one swift gulp.
"I thought all human beer was bland and tasteless, but I never thought I'd get to taste this!"
Dorian, who had stolen a mouthful with his forearm, looked at me with admiration.
"Do you like it?"
"Would you like to meet my daughter?"
"Thanks for the offer, but no."
If she was Dorian's daughter, she had to be at least a hundred years old, and above all, she was a dwarf.
She would be Dorian with a different gender.
There may be people in this world with dwarven tastes, but at least I wasn't one of them.
At my polite refusal, Dorian looked very disappointed.
"You are a cruel man," he said, "to make me taste such a wonderful brew and then give it up?"
"You weren't going to pay me for it, were you?"
"I was, but what about the preservation?"
Dorian looked skeptical even as he spoke.
He was right to be skeptical. Beer in the Otherworld had a shelf life of five weeks at most.
So beer was something you had to go to the source to drink.
Guinness, of course, was different.
It was a modern beer that had been improved and refined with a focus on distribution...Hence its shelf life.
"One year."
"...What?"
"The shelf life."
Dorian blinked dazedly.
*
If there was one thing I had noticed about drinking beer after being reincarnated in the Otherworld, it was that it was different from the beer I drank in my previous life.
Beer in this world spoiled easily and changed flavors easily, and even the same beer had ups and downs in flavor.
Most importantly, the flavor was different.
I later learned that this was because otherworldly beers don't use hops.
Hops are the spices that give beer its taste and flavor.
It was an essential ingredient in beer in its previous life as it was a natural preservative that sterilized the beer and extended its shelf life.
In this world, hop was replaced by "grunt," which are ground herbs.
This world is a revolution of 'hops' where hops push out grunt and take the throne of beer.
In other words, this was the world before the declaration of the Pure Beer Decree.
The reason why beer in this world was easily spoiled was because it used grunt, not hops.
Not only is grunt inferior to hops in flavor and aroma, but it also has a much shorter shelf life.
Of course, this doesn't mean that 'hops' don't exist in the otherworld.
The existence of hops was known in the other world, but it was not popularized.
This is because 'grunt' was the preserve of the upper class.
The monasteries and local lords of the church had a monopoly on grunt.
In order to brew beer in the other world, you had to buy grunt from them.
Grunt was both a 'power' and a 'state tax' that brought enormous wealth to the upper classes.
The dwarves, on the other hand, had a different story.
The dwarven brewers, who had been running breweries for hundreds, even thousands of years, were stubborn, adhering to recipes that had been passed down from generation to generation.
Having been tamed by the grunt over millennia, they paid no attention to 'hops'.
Furthermore, dwarven-brewed grunt sold for a staggeringly high price to humans, so dwarven brewers saw no reason to throw it away.
Thus, the alignment of interests between dwarven brewers and nobles was born: the Grunt Power.
The Grunt Cartel was the reason why hops were never popularized.
However, this was only possible because the common dwarves were unaware of the potential of hops.
"What! You can distribute beer!"
"What, a year! Did you just say a year?"
When the dwarves heard that dark beer had a one-year shelf life, they had a seizure.
"Hmph!"
"Ho, hops can make such an amazing beer!"
The dwarves were thrilled to taste Guinness.
In this world, hops had not yet been discovered, and the dwarves believed that grunt was the only truth but it was only a matter of time before that truth was shattered.
"Research hops!"
"Brew Guinness now!"
"Hey, Bout, open the door!"
"Open it or I'll break it down!"
Bang-bang-bang!
The dwarves rushed to the brewery and pounded on the closed door, ready to riot.
The brewery's authority in dwarven society was strong, but the dwarves were even more ignorant.
"So this is how it's going to be, huh? All right, you win or I win, let's see what you got!"
"We're on strike from today until you make hop beer!"
Dwarves are a race of craftsmen in every field.
The "power" of the brewery doesn't work for them.
When the dwarves went on strike as a group, the outside contractors who relied on them for orders went ballistic.
"Okay, you guys, you'll make it, you'll make it, you'll make it!"
The Dwarf brewers didn't even last a month before they were forced to throw up their hands but even once the brewery was open, there was still a problem.
The most important thing about a beer is the water that goes with it, and the best water for Guinness existed in the Elven Forest.
The Elven Forest was also the only place that had a wide variety of hops.
"Hmph, you're asking me to collaborate with the elves, that's impossible-"
"Join hands now!"
"I don't need a brewer who can't make beer!"
Of course, the collaboration with the elves went smoothly, with the snowy dwarves forcing their way in, but there was a catch.
The challenge of getting the beer from the Elven forests to the Red Anvil villages remained.
The distances made overland travel impossible, so the only way was by sea, with ships loaded with alcohol.
"The sea? Did you say sea?"
"What do you think of us? We're a race of the earth!"
"Nonsense!"
Dwarves, as a race, never ventured out to sea.
Their feet were planted on the earth, and the sea was a world outside their realm.
The dwarven elders each criticized the brewer for his proposal.
'Tsk, tsk, this young fellow, not yet 200 years old, is so stubborn.'
Watching the scene unfold, Chief Red Anvil sternly rebuked the young brewer.
"How dare you try to buy me, Bazet Khan, with beer!"
"According to the statistics, we can procure 3600 barrels of beer per month."
"Build a ship at once!"
"We go to sea!"
The elders argued and rose to their feet.