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[Solmyr]

Somehow I managed to oversaturate my fortress with plump helmets and other food, which takes up every available barrel. As soon as my carpenter makes a new one, it is immediately hauled off to serve as food storage. This unfortunately means that my brewer has no available barrels for alcohol, leading to severe sobriety problem in my fortress. Help! Is there any way to designate or free up barrels quickly to use for alcohol only?

[Mondark]

Try setting a maximum number of barrels on your food stockpile, use [q] then press [e] a few times, you should see the 'Max Barrel' number go down.  By default, the number is set to however many tile the stockpile takes up, so if it's a big pile, it will try to fill the whole thing with all your barrels.

[Psiclops]

On the stockpiles screen "p", there is a "Reserved Barrels" item. Pump that up to about 10, and then stockpiles wont take one unless there are 11 or more free. This will let your brewing and other barrel consuming tasks have one handy. Of course, if your brewer uses up all 10, you still have the same problem. Make lots of barrels!

[Reasonableman]

This thread made me suddenly realize that DF has more little tweaks, tricks, intricacies, and variables, than about half of all videogames ever made. Put together.

[Moron]

Even with Reserved Barrels on, I still often find myself running out of barrels for drink. The barrels are reserved and don't initially get used for food, but then sooner or later after they have been filled with drink then emptied they, all seem to end up in the food stockpile regardless of how many are supposed to be reserved.

I wish there was a way a barrel could be designated 'For Alcohol Only' forever, then it would never be used for anything else and once the contents were drunk would immediately be available for more brewing.

I also wish you could order your still to 'Brew drink if there are empty barrels' so the order would be restarted once barrels became available rather than just getting cancelled once there are no more empty barrels.

[JujuBubu]

start cooking lavish meals this should empty your barrels pretty fast

they take four ingridients, which stack into one meal ( kitten meat (5) + cat meat ( 5 ) + kitten tallow (5) + cat tallow (5) ) results in cat roast(20), and since barrels can only hold stacks of ten ..
the result is lots and lots of empty barrels

[Cryten]

Just a note, If your really desperate for barrels to be used only for  drink make a food stockpile and then using q set the setting for the stockpile as drink only and remove that setting for your general food stockpile. Then set the general food stockpile to allow no barrels by setting max barrels to zero.

There you have it all barrels are now for alchol (although have fun with rotten food miasma if you dont cook/brew fast)

[d3c0y2]

I had the same problem at one point, but I solved it a different way, I got four peasents (and a soap maker) activated carpenter on them, gave them all a nice carenter workshop and set them to make barrels. Got all my fisher dwarves (about 4 or 5) and set them to collect wood.

I ended up having to make a second kitchen and a second still, as well as 2 farmers workshops(constantly making dwarven syrup) just to stop barrels going everywere.
EDIT: accidently typed 45 instead of 4-5 XD

[LegacyCWAL]

Would putting in some Work Orders for booze help?  It won't exactly free up barrels, but it might grab a few the instant they became available.

[Relee]

Yeah I had that problem with my last fort. It's not easy. You have to keep an eye on your stocks. Use the Z key to bring up your stats and it should have the amounts of food items. If you see your food or drinks go over a certain point you might want to shut down production for a while.

In my case I couldn't get enough wood to make barrels and my dwarves went thirsty for a long time. Even when I shut down crop production, the dwarves were taking forever to use the food I had stockpiled.