There wasn’t much to do in medieval times other than go to church, the market, and drink lots of beer. Manor Lords’ Tavern system allows your peasants to experience exactly what our ancestors did; curing their boredom with the drinkhouse.

The progression in Manor Lords requires you to get a Tavern for your settlement. It is a requirement if you want to progress Burgage Plots to level 3. Yet, there’s an entire chain of production before your Taverns can come online. This guide will teach you how to setup taverns, featuring creating Ale, getting Malt, and farming and trading for the crop. The other important part is that tavern supply in Manor Lords is a tough challenge to juggle. We’ve got the maths on helping you with managing tavern supply in Manor Lords too.

How to Make a Tavern¶

Taverns are a fairly complicated building in Manor Lords, with it being a building that is very cheap and simple to make. Simply create the Tavern from the Residential crafting menu, and place it wherever you like. Ideally near the businesses, markets, and residential areas so the Tavern is easily accessible by its patrons.

And with that, you’ve got your Tavern built. However, that doesn’t mean it is functional just yet. As you now need to produce Ale and hire staff for it.

How to Get Ale and Malt¶

Now comes the harder process, creating Malt and Ale in Manor Lords. To get these items, you need to do the following:

• Turn a Level 2 Burgage Plot into a Brewery, this requires one family living in it to function
• Build a Malthouse from the industry tab
• Establish Barley farms
• Trade for Ale if you have deep pockets

The process of turning crops into ale is lengthy. Players must set up a Barley farm and stockpile Barley in the granary. When you have the spare population, you want to create a Malthouse, which turns Barley into Malts. These Malts can then be used by a Burgage Plot with the Brewery Extension built on it. This will then gradually turn the Malt into Ale, usually at a 1-1 ratio for the month.

When you have a stockpile of Ale, you can then open the tavern and start trading it with your citizens. While the tavern is open and trading Ale to the people, it will count as a functioning tavern for the region. This will increase approval rating, and be a must for maintaining the happiness of level 3 Burgage plots.

If you find yourself short of resources, then you can use the Trading Post to order more Malts or Ales, depending on your supply and demand. You’ll need to juggle your farms fertility with Barley at a decent rate to ensure you can grow enough Barley to be turned into Malts, and then supplied to Brewer artisan families to produce Ale at a quick enough rate.

Tavern Supply¶

If you intend to maintain the Burgage Plots at level 3 all year round and not tank your Approval Rating, you must keep the Tavern operation all year round too. This is where the surprising amount of Barley, Malt, and Ale you need comes into play.

The demand of Ale of your citizens in a settlement is one ale, per family, per month. Count how many families you have, and multiply that by 12 to get an idea of your ale consumption each year. Meanwhile, a single brewer can create around 13 Ale a month, depending on logistical efficiency. Divide your total families that by 13 to calculate how many Brewers you need in your Settlement.

The other thing you need to factor in is your Malt production. The Malthouse converts Barley into Malt very quickly. A single Malthouse with one family working there can serve the needs of several Brewers, based on logistical efficiency. Having a second improve Malt production and supply and can make your Brewers more efficient. In our case, three Brewers are served by one family in one Malthouse. Multiplying 13 (the rough number of Ale each brewer makes a month) by the number of Brewers indicates how much Barley a Malt House needs to store a month. Multiply that number by 12, and that indicates the maximum amount Barley you need to grow to have an unbroken production chain all year.

You’ll likely need to grow around 300-500 Barley a year, which is doable with roughly three 1.0 Morgan sized Barley farms. Make sure you have enough farmers and farmhouses to cover all of the field work required. Not having enough farmers is often the biggest mistake players make with farms not effectively plowing, sowing, and taking advantage of the full growing season.

Note that importing Ale is very expensive, especially if you have a decent-sized population. It costs 18 wealth per Ale, so it is likely not worth importing Ale if you can avoid it. If you are planning on doing that, you can check out our methods of improving Regional Wealth here.

With that said, this about concludes everything you need to know about Taverns in Manor Lords.