Fallout 76: How To Make Vintage Alcohol
The "Wastelanders" update — informally known as the update that finally made "Fallout 76" worth playing — added the Brewing Station and Fermenter, which offer a full stock of craftable drinks. Players can obtain the blueprints for these stations — as well as the recipe for Nukashine, one of the basic drinks you can create — by completing the quest "Wasted on Nukashine" (per FastTipsGaming). To start the quest, complete the miscellaneous objective obtained from the "Wild Eviction Party" posters found in and around train stations. Alternatively, you can pick up the posters from the Atom Shop at no cost and put them in a camp or workshop (per BADCompanySarge).
The craftable drinks have various beneficial and detrimental effects alongside some rather unappealing names. Only in the bizarre world of "Fallout" would you ever want to consume something called Lead Champagne or Tick Blood Tequila, especially when those names are very descriptive of their ingredient lists. But surviving in the wastelands means you need all the help you can get, and some of the buffs are nothing to laugh at — especially considering that certain variants can turn into Vintage versions with even stronger effects. Here's a rundown on making Vintage alcohol, from how to ferment them from scratch to which drinks actually have Vintage varieties.
Put your drinks through two stages of fermentation
To craft alcohol in "Fallout 76," you need to create the Fermentable versions of the drinks, ferment them into their basic variants, and then age them again into Vintage forms. While you can technically age alcohol by letting it sit in your inventory, the Fermenter helps by halving the required waiting period and opening up some inventory space. Without the Fermenter, drinks take an hour to ferment into fresh drinks and then two hours to age from fresh to Vintage — that's either three hours or an hour and a half total with a Fermenter.
You can check on the aging progress of a drink via its condition (CND) bar, where it'll be destroyed and replaced with its Fermented variant upon reaching zero. Not all drinks can even age into Vintage drinks, however, no matter how long you leave them in the Fermenter. Currently, there are only four drinks that have a Vintage variety:
- Lead Champagne
- Nukashine
- Tick Blood Tequila
- Firecracker Whiskey
Unfortunately, Bethesda never actually implemented Firecracker Whiskey and thus it cannot be obtained in-game — but players are free to knock themselves out with any of the other three Vintage alcohols. Just make sure you have a Disease Cure or some antibiotics on hand if you're trying out the Tick Blood Tequila, and maybe avoid the non-fermented version entirely.