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[Nicolai]

I have a big problem with barrels.
I have 4 carpenters, constantly making them, and still I can't keep up.
My dwarves seem to fill the barrels with irrelevant food and plants, leaving none for precious alcohol.

Can I change their priorities somehow? Make sure alcohol gets into my barrels, before I run out.

[EmperorJon]

When placing a stockpile, you can reserve barrels or bins. Make a booze only stockpile and reserve its full size of barrels.

[Psieye]

If you are on the latest version, make rock pots too. They can store food/booze too. But how are you running out of barrels despite 4 carpenters working on it? Are the workshops cluttered? Is the wood stockpile far away? Do the carpenters have any other labour switched on? Are they completely unskilled? Do you have way too many farm tiles producing plants all the time? Do you have an oversized butchery industry?

[Nicolai]

It is probably all of the above.
The carpenters have nothing else enabled.

I have cut my farming industry in half. I am quite sure this is my main problem. I have also stopped meal production, for now.

I will try the booze stockpile, thanks guys.

[Girlinhat]

How many carpentry shops?  Four carpenters and one Workshop doesn't work very well

I never really find myself needing above about 100 barrels, although I make a lot more.  With all butchering enabled and playing with Fortress Defense, I get a Dark Strangler siege that leaves me with 30 dead stranglers and a lot of food appearing very suddenly.  Granted, my forts are usually ~50 dwarves living off a 3x3 farm plot and war butchery.  Very large 200+ forts can require massive amounts of barrels.

[Psieye]

The booze-only stockpile isn't what he meant - when painting stockpiles there's a setting right there to declare a given number of barrels/bins to be reserved for jobs. This is different to the "customise stockpile filters" view.

[caknuck]

If you really want to go into barrel/pot overdrive, set your potters to make large clay pots, your woodcrafters to make large wood pots, your metalcrafters and blacksmiths to make pots and barrels out of whatever abundant non-weapony metal you have (lead, zinc, nickel, etc.) and your stonecrafters to make large rock pots. You should never want for booze containers again.

[Number4]

And if you want a lot of barrels at the start, embark with 1 meat of every different animal, and add brain for the animals which haven't any meat, bees for example. Fair maximixing or borderline cheating? Your call.

[Psieye]

Don't forget to glaze the clay pots. They can't be used otherwise unless you had fire clay or kaolinite to start with.

[zephyr_hound]

This is my (somewhat OCD) system

-Furniture stockpile set to accept barrels and large pots only
-Booze stockpile, unlimited barrels/pots (Allowed: drinks only)
-Raw materials stockpile, unlimited barrels/pots ( Disallowed: drinks, seeds, prepared food. Contains: raw plants, meat/fish, cheese, flour)
-Prepared food stockpile, no barrels/pots (Allowed: cooked meals only)
-Seed stockpile, small, near farms (9 tiles max) (Allowed: seeds only)

Cook/brew everything you get as soon as you get it. If you run out of barrels, cook the rest of your plants (assuming you have seeds stored). That will get the excess plants out and free up barrels. When you see empty barrels and pots showing up in the furniture stockpile, start brewing again. Basically don't have much of anything in your raw materials stockpile ever. Oh and if you use plant gathering you've probably got unseen dimple cups and/or hide root clogging barrels; dump those from the stocks menu unless you're going to run a clothing industry.

[Dorf3000]

I have a big problem with barrels.
I have 4 carpenters, constantly making them, and still I can't keep up.
My dwarves seem to fill the barrels with irrelevant food and plants, leaving none for precious alcohol.

Can I change their priorities somehow? Make sure alcohol gets into my barrels, before I run out.

You can stop the barrel filling by decreasing the number of barrels allowed on the food stockpiles.  'q' on them and I think 'C' to reduce barrel allowance to zero.  It won't free the barrels you already used, unless you get rid of the stockpile and have all the food moved to another one, but it'll stop new barrels being taken for food.  Booze won't be stored on a pile where barrels aren't allowed, so create some booze-only stockpiles in safe places (boozepiles are like unofficial dining halls.. lots of dwarves hang out there )

Making roasts is also a good way to free up barrels.  If the size of the roast comes out above 10 (I think) then it won't be put in a barrel at all, and potentially 4 barrels of raw food are freed.

[crossmr]

are you overproducing food? What's your population and how much food do you have in reserve?
I've got 270 dwarves, a fairly good sized farm, I dunno, maybe 40 tiles worth producing various things, maybe bigger
and my brewer on full go.
He's legendary.
I've never "run out" of barrels, I notice if I'm getting low, but I've got like 600 meals, and 600 plants, and around 100 food in reserve, I've got about 1000 alcohol in reserve right now.
When I hit around 1000, I take the brewer off for a bit.

I don't even make barrels constantly. No idea how many I have, I'll have to check the stocks.
but it sounds like you've got a production issue or something.