How to make Ale in Manor Lords

Want to know how to make Ale in Manor Lords? Keeping your citizens happy is key to upgrading your settlement in Manor Lords, and in true medieval fashion, your population will only be truly satisfied once there is steady access to Ale.

Building a Tavern and supplying your town with Ale is one of the requirements that must be met if you want to upgrade your Burgage Plots to Level 3. This is the maximum upgrade level for Burgage Plots in Manor Lords - and it’s an investment worth making. Each Level 3 plot will earn you two Regional Wealth per month, along with additional living space for a new family. The more, the merrier!

But this isn’t a matter of heading straight to the pub: you’ll need to get your hands dirty in the fields before you can start the brewing process. There are a fair few steps involved when it comes to making Ale, and unless you want to import Ale or its ingredients at a fairly steep price by learning how to trade, you’ll need to learn how to farm. To help keep your costs down, read on for our walkthrough on how to make Ale in Manor Lords.

On this page:

• Step 1: Check your region's soil fertility
• Step 2: Grow and farm Barley
• Step 3: Build a Malthouse
• Step 4: Convert a Burgage Plot into a Brewery
• Step 5: Build a Tavern

How to make Ale in Manor Lords

There are multiple steps involved when it comes making Ale in Manor Lords - and it's not simply a case of building a Tavern and assigning a family to run it. You'll need to grow barley in the fields, turn it into Malt, brew it, and finally transport it to your ready-and-waiting pub. So follow our step-by-step guide on how to make Ale and get your Tavern up and running.

Step 1: Check your region's soil fertility

The first step in Ale production is growing Barley, a type of crop that can be grown using the Farmhouse building and fields.

Before you build your Farmhouse, however, you’ll need to check the soil fertility of your region. This determines how well crops will grow, and the size of your yields.

To check your region’s potential for growing Barley, click on the Construction menu, then click on the ‘Barley Fertility’ overlay option on the right-hand side of your screen. Low fertility areas will be shown in orange and red, while high fertility areas will be in shades of green. The absolute best areas have clusters of three ‘+’ signs: this is where you want to build your Barley fields.

It’s worth noting that not every region is suitable for growing Barley. If you’ve been left with an infertile region and need a supply of Ale, you have two main options. The first option is to sell surplus resources to earn Regional Wealth, then use these funds to import Barley, Malt or Ale via the Trading Post. The second option is to start a second save file, and see whether your new region has better Barley fertility.

Step 2: Grow and farm Barley

Once you’ve identified a fertile area for your Barley farm, the next stage is building a Farmhouse and fields in which to grow crops. At the start, it’s best to keep your fields small (normally less than 1 Morgen in size). Remember to assign enough farm workers to manage your fields: a good rule is one family per Morgen-sized field.

We also recommend building a couple of small fields rather than a single large one. This will make ploughing and sowing more manageable for your farm workers, and allow you to rotate your crops. It’s best to keep a couple of your fields fallow, and rotate the field in which Barley is grown. This will allow your fields to recover their fertility, resulting in higher yields.

By clicking on a field, you can set which crop will automatically be grown there by the workers. This will be harvested during September, which is the Harvest Season. You can also schedule which crops will be grown in that field over the next three years.

Step 3: Build a Malthouse

When your Barley has been harvested in September, the next step is processing this resource into Malt. To do this, you will need to construct a Malthouse - ideally in a place that’s close to your fields, or your planned spot for a Brewery. This will reduce the commute for your workers, leading to faster production times.

Remember to assign a worker to the Malthouse, then watch as they automatically process all your hard-earned Barley into Malt.

Step 4: Convert a Burgage Plot into a Brewery

The next stage requires converting one of your Burgage Plots into a Brewery. For this you will need a Level 2 Burgage Plot, along with five Regional Wealth and five Planks to pay for the cost of constructing a Brewery Extension.

This will turn all the residents in the Burgage Plot into permanent brewers, ready to transform your Malt into tasty Ale. If a supply of Malt is available, the residents will automatically start converting this into Ale.

Step 5: Build a Tavern

The final stage in the Ale process is, of course, giving it to the people - and for this you will need a Tavern.

To maximise the number of Burgage Plots this will serve, it’s best to place your Tavern in a fairly central location in the middle of town. Once Ale has been made in the Brewery and a worker has been assigned to the Tavern, it will automatically be served to civilians.

Getting to grips with farming is the difficult part here, but once you have your Barley farm set up, the rest of the Ale production process is relatively simple. Don’t be dispirited if your first Barley harvest isn’t a good one: it can take time to establish farms, and fields that are created mid-way through the year may not produce yields if the workers don’t have time to prepare the fields before harvest season.

Once you have a steady supply of Ale in your town, you should be set to upgrade your Burgage Plots to Level 3 - providing you have the rest of the Burgage Plot requirements sorted, of course. With everyone merry on Ale, you’ll have walls of stone constructed in no time!

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For more help getting started in Manor Lords, find out what to do first in our beginner's tips and tricks guide, as well as the best development points to unlock first, how to trade goods and animals to bolster your town further, and how to get food and farm different types of crops.