Saloon Simulator Moonshine Recipe Walkthrough

Act 3 of this Wild West management sim hides a second business under the doctor’s office. Saloon Simulator moonshine is that side hustle: bottles, a mailbox, and a cart that has to roll before you lock the front door. Once the still is running, Saloon Simulator moonshine is a same-day delivery job, not a decoration you click between customers. Miss the window and client satisfaction drops even if the bar upstairs had a great night.

That split is why the update matters. Plates, wages, and Mr. Lock’s weekly fee still come out of the saloon safe. The still is a second shift that can fund those bills, or wreck a client relationship if you accept work you cannot finish. This walkthrough covers placement, the opening cider recipe, respect unlocks, and quest bugs players have already described on Steam. If you are patching an older save, confirm you are on a current build from the official Saloon Simulator store page on Steam before you trust a half-finished basement.

What Act 3 Changes for Your Saloon

Talk to the bookkeeper before you hunt for a still. The contract does not force you to work alone, and the hiring board is the practical answer. Each hire fills one role: cook, waiter, bartender, or cleaner. Stats differ. Promising or ambitious workers gain them faster. You pay a hiring fee plus a daily wage, and you can roll the candidate list only twice a week.

Official screenshot · Source: Steam store

Training burns a full shift. Pay the wage, pick a stat, and that employee is gone until the next day, still on the payroll. Autopay pulls from the safe at closing. If the safe is short, satisfaction falls, and at zero they walk. A break keeps someone on payroll without a shift. Firing is cheaper only until you want them back, because rehiring includes unpaid wages.

Use that staff so you are not plating every dish while a barrel ferments. In player experience from an Act 3 session, five-star cooking unlocks alongside the still. Those plates are not moonshine recipes. They are how you keep the dining room expensive enough to buy jars, wood, and glass.

The general store in that same session added pumpkin, hare, chicken, mixed spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, and bar extras such as bitters and lemon. Stock the shelves before you promise a five-star menu. A hired cook can be queued onto a specific plate, but a weak cook may land lower-star results. Check the pass before you blame the bartender for a missing garnish. One clip showed a “missing ingredient” warning that was simply ice.

Lock’s fee is separate from stew prices. The end-of-day card shows this week’s cut. Leave that cash in the safe. A shortfall rolls forward with interest. Community dialogue in the update is blunt: keep missing payments and the consequences get harsher. Reputation for running a decent saloon also levels up, with a morning crate outside your room, sometimes cash and sometimes permission to renovate more space. Do not confuse that crate with a moonshine payout.

Saloon Simulator Moonshine Still Setup

The basement comes after a short errand, not a menu toggle. Story beats point you behind the doctor’s office, into a cluttered cellar the crew wants kept quiet. In the fiction, Lock is not in on the expansion. You clear junk, then place gear that is already in inventory.

Open the furniture tab with the default O key. Under stations and warehouse, hover an item, take it out, and set it with the left mouse button. To slide a piece later, stand at it and hold the left mouse button. Player experience: once a prop is down, picking it back up is fiddly, so plan aisles before you click. Leave room to walk with a barrel in hand. You will do that constantly.

Otto is the supplier, not a decorator. Buy bottles, jars, wood, and barrels from him before you accept mail. The cheapest barrel holds a single batch. Sturdier barrels are a later purchase and let you prep more than one batch at a time. The recipe book also lists a distiller and a mix station. Those are respect gates. You cannot buy them from Otto until the underworld track is high enough, and the first cider order does not use them.

A clean layout beats a pretty one. Put the rack next to the pot, the shelf next to the masher, and both crates on the path upstairs. The first morning you forget wood, you will feel every extra step.

Moonshine Cider Recipe, Step by Step

Pete’s ledger is your recipe book and your starter client list. You begin small, under his old name, with cider. In the game it is three moves: mash, ferment, bottle. Nothing in this section is a real-world distillation guide. Times, yeast types, and yields are video-game timers.

The first mailbox order in player footage was five bottles of moonshine cider, plus an optional watch. A later order was three bottles plus a fenced ring. Read the card. Mandatory bottles and optional loot are different lines. Ship the wrong count and the game can pay you nothing.

Cider’s ingredient line is short: crushed apples, water, and yeast. The in-game explanation is the usual joke that yeast eats sugar and leaves alcohol. You do not measure gravity or proof. You watch a timer. In player experience a basic barrel finished in about a minute, including a run where turbo yeast still showed that same short timer. Do not plan your evening around a long age. Plan around clicks: pulp, heat, cork, walk.

Bottling has its own order of operations. Purchase enough bottles from Otto. Set the finished barrel on the station. Take a bottle from the right-hand rack, seat it under the tap, turn the tap, then move the filled bottle to the corker and pull the lever. Park each sealed bottle in the storage crate. Repeat until the barrel is empty. Only then move the required count from the left crate into the right-hand order crate. If that transfer is wrong, you can lose the payout even though the cellar smells like a success.

Make extra pulp jars when apples are cheap. You cannot start a second barrel without a free barrel, and the starter barrel is one batch only. Leftover sealed bottles are useful. In one session the player bottled more than the order, shipped three, and kept the rest for the next card. The client did not instantly offer another job just because stock existed. Orders come from the mailbox, not from your crate.

After dispatch, underworld notoriety moves. Player experience described newcomer ranks, larger and more frequent orders, and later recipes plus better equipment. Exact thresholds are not published in the footage, so treat rank-ups as something you confirm on your own end-of-day card.

Supplies to buy before you accept mail

Check the recipe book on every new card. If the line calls for the distiller or the mix station and you have not unlocked the purchase, decline. A failed or ignored order cuts satisfaction. Pride is expensive.

Orders, Respect, and the Same-Day Loop

Start upstairs at the mailbox. The board lists what the client wants. Accept only what you can mash, ferment, bottle, and load before the day ends. A steady relationship with one buyer is how the game says you negotiate better pay, grow distillery reputation, and meet new clients. Declining is safer than accepting and ghosting them.

The reliable loop, condensed from the in-game tutorial and player footage:

• Read the mailbox and accept or decline on purpose.
• Buy apples, jars, yeast, wood, barrels, and bottles from Otto.
• Unpack ingredients onto the shelf and seat a barrel on the rack.
• Mash, heat, ferment, and confirm whether the book also wants a distiller or mixer.
• Bottle, pack the order crate, and add optional stolen goods only if the card allows and you actually have them.
• Haul the crate to the cart outside and dispatch.
• Then run the saloon, or the other way around if staff can cover service. The shipment still has to leave today.

Two reputation tracks sit on the same clock. Mixing them up is how players think the still is “broken” when the saloon card looks fine.

Optional contraband is a separate choice. Some orders in player footage included a watch, and a later handoff added a ring the client would fence. That is a story mechanic inside the shipment crate. It is not required to learn the cider recipe. If you are here for bottles, ship bottles and skip the pickpocket drills until the still pays for itself.

Money from one playthrough is a sample, not a rate card. An early saloon day showed 93 reputation from the player, none from staff, 137 earned, 190 spent, and 350 still waiting to hit the safe. A later card after shine work showed 146 saloon reputation, 109 earned, 67 spent, 62 deposited, and nothing left to deposit, plus a large still-reputation jump the player read as 800. Your wages, failed orders, and shop tabs will not match those figures. Use them only as a reminder that revenue and deposited cash are different lines.

A practical day looks like this. Pay staff, or turn on autopay with a cushion in the safe. Buy Otto out for one or two batches. Accept a single cider order if you own one barrel. Ferment while the cook works a queued five-star plate. Bottle as soon as the timer ends. Dispatch, then close. Tomorrow’s mailbox is how you learn whether the client counted the crate.

Bugs Players Report After the Quest

Community reports on the Steam discussion for moonshine describe a quest line that breaks in more than one place. Those posts are player experience, not a patch note. Check your build before you assume the same failure.

One player who could finish the intro still gained no reputation from the first customer. Another could not move cider bottles into storage after accepting the fill order, and said the rest of the mode stopped making sense. The original poster planned to wait rather than keep sending crates that never counted.

If your report says zero sent, more batches will not repair the relationship. Decline new mail, keep the saloon legal income flowing, and finish staff training and five-star menus until bottles register as dispatched. Screenshot the order card and the summary. When a patch lands, a stuck transfer or a Monday-only order that never arrives is the first thing to retest.

Also separate a real bug from a missed click. The storage crate and the order crate are different objects. Filling glass and forgetting the right-hand crate looks, on a bad day, exactly like the bug. So does closing up before the cart is loaded. Try one clean order: five or fewer bottles, both crates, cart, then the summary. If that card still shows zero, you are in the same crowd as those Steam posts.

FAQ

Where does Saloon Simulator moonshine start?

After the Act 3 hiring intro and the dismantling lead-in, the still is in the basement behind the doctor’s office. Place stations from the furniture tab, then read Pete’s ledger and the mailbox. The opening recipe players actually brew is moonshine cider, not a whiskey lineup.

How many bottles does the first cider order need?

Player experience shows a first card for five moonshine cider, with a watch listed as optional. Later cards can ask for fewer bottles. Always match the mandatory count into the order crate and dispatch that same day.

Why did I get paid but gain no respect?

Community reports describe orders that pay while the summary still says nothing was sent, so reputation does not move and the buyer’s satisfaction drops. Confirm you moved bottles into the order crate and loaded the cart. If you did, treat it as the reported quest bug and pause new accepts until it is fixed.

Do I need the distiller for cider?

No. Cider is apples, water, and yeast, then a ferment and a cork. The distiller and mix station show up in the recipe book for later drinks and have to be purchased from Otto after your respect is high enough. A basic barrel is enough for the first single batch.