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[Sjiveru]

Try as I might, I can't seem to keep enough empty barrels in my fort to be able to brew consistently. I have MASSIVELY full food stockpiles that only keep getting more full - should I try cutting back on food production to free up some barrels?

[SpacemanSpiff]

Try as I might, I can't seem to keep enough empty barrels in my fort to be able to brew consistently. I have MASSIVELY full food stockpiles that only keep getting more full - should I try cutting back on food production to free up some barrels?

q-s on the food stockpiles and limit the number of barrels they can hold.  iirc the keys are "erER", with e and r doing -/+1, and E/R setting to 0/max.  This will gradually release more barrels for your all-important booze.

[Porpoisepower]

The trick is to have atleast 2+ food stock piles. One for stuff that needs barrels, one for stuff that doesn't.

I usually use the following stockpiles

1 Just booze(and the occational extract) normal/Max barrel settings
1 Prepared food stock piles Max Barrel usage set to 0
1 Milling stock pile 0 Max barrels and the closest stockpile to your quern/mill(s) I don't like to mill flour so this lets me put all my dye producing plants, etc near the implements of grinding.
1 "raw Foods" stock pile for everything else. I don't bother with barrels here but you may want to as this stockpile will be the most susceptable to rot. I've never seen any rot issues.

[Absentia]

If wood shortage is a problem, don't forget that you can use the ludicrous amount of ore available in DF2010 to make metal barrels. I find it's a good use for the otherwise worthless metals like lead (yum yum).

As a matter of personal preference I usually scale back food production once I find I'm producing more than I can keep in barrels. If you want to keep using that farm space, grow pig tails and dimple cups and start up a cloth industry.

[Particleman]

Metal barrels are a solution, as Absentia mentioned. And if you haven't done so yet, raising the number of reserved barrels is a good idea- I tend to keep mine at 5, but I only have the one brewer, but that's ALL he does. I don't let my numbers get much above 50ish, though, so if you have more dwarves you'll probably want to add a second brewer.

If you haven't already, setting up a tree farm in your soil levels is an easy way to get more trees to grow- all you have to do is breach the caverns. You don't even need to muddy soil tiles to get trees and bushes to grow on them. If you have a stone layer you're not going to do anthing with, you can dig it out and muddy it and trees and bushes will grow on the mud there, as well.

Honestly, with underground plants being guarenteed in this version, I'm never really short on wood, while it was a fairly frequent problem before.

[Psieye]

Try as I might, I can't seem to keep enough empty barrels in my fort to be able to brew consistently. I have MASSIVELY full food stockpiles that only keep getting more full - should I try cutting back on food production to free up some barrels?

Let me guess, you've got acres and acres of farming land all producing too many plants for you to know what to do with? Unless you plan to export food (which isn't lucrative unless it's with cooking), don't produce too much surplus of food yeah. Reserving barrels is important, but so too is not having a needlessly large reserve of food, for the sake of FPS.

[Kidiri]

Honestly, with underground plants being guarenteed in this version, I'm never really short on wood, while it was a fairly frequent problem before.

Mostly guaranteed. If you have genned a world with no water in the caverns, there will be no underground flora/fungi.

[coinich]

Honestly, with underground plants being guarenteed in this version, I'm never really short on wood, while it was a fairly frequent problem before.

Mostly guaranteed. If you have genned a world with no water in the caverns, there will be no underground flora/fungi.

What if you flood the caverns?

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I have to say excess food is annoying. I found the best solution was to change to slow growing crops. This does mean you'll be doing more famring above ground but growing sun berries and whip vine not only helps to solve the problem of over production they can easily be made into roasts that train up your cook and can be a great trade item. You can also plan ahead using the information on the wiki to get a very rough idea of how much food you need to feed your dwarves, though for this I find it best to have population control on in the init. Also if your playing 40D try to resist the call of cooking booze, it can really flood your stocks with excess food.

[Sjiveru]

Thanks a lot for the info ^_^

I've been using iron barrels, to the detriment of my ironworking - I ended up with so little iron I made a batch of barrels out of gold. It was bad.

I do have a minor wood shortage, but I've got so many crafts that I just buy more off the traders. I've breached the caverns and have trees here and there, but not really enough to sustain anything major yet. I'll cut out a big area for that soon.

[Shrike]

Cooking is very helpful in condensing your foodstuffs. Just make sure to turn off booze cooking.

[Beeskee]

To manage food better, you can build a small stockpile for each type of plant that you grow, and then disable those plants from being stored in your main food stockpiles.

If you are overproducing food, you can disable farming on your more skilled farmers, and reduce the size of your fields.

[Porpoisepower]

Copper, lead, and zinc, make great barrels too, I regularly make barrels out of gold, I just make sure to leave enought for the occational demand or mood.

[Flaede]

Copper, lead, and zinc, make great barrels too, I regularly make barrels out of gold, I just make sure to leave enought for the occational demand or mood.

I use gold for trade-bins.