T1 Alcohols
So I crunched the numbers and this is the profitability per Tier 1 unique alcohols in a single batch.
(Best to worst from top to bottom) Just look at the Total Profits column.
1. Brick Wine
2. Hard Cider
3. Moonshine
4. Homemade Beer
BUT because each batch takes different number of turns, the order is different. Now in terms of profit over TIME:
1. Moonshine
2. Brick Wine
3. Hard Cider
4. Homemade Beer
What does this tell me? Brick Wine is nearly always a safe choice. Now although Moonshine is better over time, you still need to supply 50 crocks for 2 batches of Moonshine (8 turns) compared to 45 crocks for 1 batch of Brick Wine (7 turns). In the early game, I always found crocks to be the limiting factor so that's an important consideration. The longer production time for Brick Wine allows the stores more turns to regenerate crocks. Also fewer clicks to return to your operation every time a production cycle finishes.
Comment below if you want to know how I got the numbers but it's pretty much factual (you can confirm from the in game wiki).
HOWEVER, take it with a pinch of salt because there's also demand and supply. What do I mean?
First of all, demand is decided by how many actual vendors want to buy your alcohol. If you have 10 vendors for homemade beer BUT NONE for brick wine, then yes, you should still make homemade beer and vice versa for the other alcohol.
Secondly, if you only make brick wine, you might oversupply your area and be forced to find more buyers which could be extremely rare.
Thirdly, you are also constrained by the suppliers of your ingredients. If you can't find a supplier of Grape Concentrate, you are screwed. Either you find a repeatable mission to convert Small Barrels into Grape Concentrate or learn Grape Presses (a skill to make your own Grape Concentrate from Grapes but this then transfer the new problem to finding Grapes). However, if you can't, you are forced to make other alcohol.
Fourthly, the quantity of output per alcohol is also important. For instance, you can only make 25 Moonshine versus 45 Brick Wine. What this means is that you can easily sell your entire production of Moonshine in a few action points even if you have only 1 or 2 shops.
Lastly, the production time for each alcohol is also different. Moonshine takes only 4 turns as compared to 7 turns for brick wine. This means you can probably earn more MONEY (not profit) in the same amount of time it takes to make brick wine. Actually scratch that, you can make Moonshine (2 batches of 50) in 8 turns to for $500 profit but Brick Wine can make $513 in a single batch of 45 in 7 turns. But this is assuming you sell all at once of course (refer back to the fourth point).
In my playthrough, I quickly made Counterfeit wine which used bottles instead of crocks because I foresaw a bottleneck in crocks.
Backroom Brick Wine (first op)
Backroom Brick Wine (second op, the only reason why I could sustain this is because I have 10 brick wine buyers within a small radius and my first legal store made 20 crocks every 2 turns)
Backroom Winery (third op, a good move because my legal store made bottles and grapes for free)
Homemade Beer (fourth op)
Grape Press (fifth op because my first op upgraded into an Improved Backroom Brick Wine and Grape Concentration became too rare)
Starting Tips
1. Quickly sell all your starting booze to get quick cash. Make sure you check if you can ask for premiums (20% more cash) if you have good relations. Use favour from mutual friends to bump initial relations above 10 to get the option to do so.
2. Explore the immediate vicinity
3. Check overlays for best T1 booze to sell and make (many buyers and suppliers of a specific booze)
4. Build your first operation to make that T1 booze (nevermind if it's even homemade beer unless it comes really close between it and another booze)
5. Ensure that you have enough supplies for 2-3 production cycles. This should usually net you around 600-800 each time a production cycle finishes.
6. Start looking into making a good front (it expands N, S, E and W and each direction has many corners for protection rackets). Protection rackets are an excellent way of earning cash.
7. What to do with remaining favours? Use them on vendors that supplies ingredients. The other good way is to use them to get to know even more people. Why? Because this helps you discover a corner where the guy is without wasting 5 MP and also gives a starting bonus to relations.
8. Do not overbuild operations that produce T1 Booze because Stoneware Crocks will likely be your limiting factor since that's the common ingredient for all T1 Booze.
T2 Alcohols
Profitability per Tier 2 unique alcohols over time (over time this time because there's a clear winner anyway)
Take note that there are two ways to make T2 alcohols; first one uses your T1 alcohols while the second uses a farm crop instead.
(Best to worst from top to bottom) T1 Alcohols as an ingredient
1. Counterfeit Wine
2. Sparkling Cider
3. Backroom Beer
4. Bathtub Gin
(Best to worst from top to bottom) Farm crop as an ingredient substitute for T1 Alcohols
1. Counterfeit Wine
2. Bathtub Gin
3. Sparkling Cider
4. Backroom Beer
Fun fact: You actually lose money with making Bathtub Gin through the Backroom Bathtub Gin Operation
T3 Alcohols
As per the previous sections, here is the list.
Bottled Vodka is the best. (mind you this is the Makeshift Vodka Still and not the Small Vodka Still).
Bottled Brandy is also via Makeshift Brandy Still. Don't get confused with the Small Vodka Still and Small Brandy Still.
And for some reason, Gin is drastically the worst even below T1 Alcohol. Not sure why.
The rest of the guide is still in development because there are way more tiers of booze to get into!
Random thoughts:
I would very much like to know how much demand and supply is generated per turn in each vendor. Like how much Brick Wine would they want after a few turns and how long does it take to reset.
I would love a graph overlay that tells me how much I have been making over the turns (just for fun).
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2571238833
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