The loop, and the four things to track
You run a drinks company. You start with a brewery, sell the first batches by tapping, and reinvest into the next line: whisky, vodka, tequila and on through a whole drinks industry. A crew runs the lines (Mike keeps the checklist, Ashley and Nick brew, Maria and Luis handle tequila, Stout the dog supervises) and a corrupt mayor wants you shut down. The story plays out in comic strips between seasons.
Everything in the early game is one of four things: buy customers for a line, push a line to its next customer milestone, automate a line so it earns without you, and finish the season when you are ready to move to the next town.
Four resources matter. Cash buys customers and is what your lines produce. Bottle caps upgrade characters and renovate businesses. Cards are specific to one character or business and are spent with bottle caps. Ice Diamonds are the premium currency, sold in the store and earned from some rewards.
Buy customers, and watch the milestone meter
Cash buys customers for a line, and more customers means more cash per cycle. Income does not climb in a straight line, though. At set customer counts (25, 50, 100 and so on) a line hits a customer milestone: a speed or profit bonus for that line, plus a few bottle caps and cards. The green meter behind a line’s customer total shows how close the next milestone is; when it is completely green, that line has reached its maximum bonus for the season.
Pushing one line to its next milestone is usually worth more than spreading the same cash across several, so the question each session is which line is closest to a round number that pays.
Follow the goals and open the crates
Goals tell you what to do next and pay a reward when you do it. Crates hold rewards, including a chance at new characters. Both matter more than they look in the first season, because everything they pay out carries into the next one.
A useful habit: before spending on an upgrade, check whether a purchase that also completes a goal would pay you back. And take your time on the early seasons. Hitting more goals and opening more crates now makes later seasons quicker to rebuild.
Cash, bottle caps, cards and Ice Diamonds
Cash is the working currency. Spend it freely: it buys customers, your lines make more of it, and it resets at the end of the season anyway.
Bottle caps are the durable currency. They upgrade characters and renovate businesses, and they come from customer milestones, goals, crates, event rewards and rewarded ads. The store also sells them for Ice Diamonds.
Cards are specific to one character or one business. An upgrade takes that card plus bottle caps, and each level costs more of both than the last. Having enough of one does not mean you have enough of the other.
Ice Diamonds buy special crates (Legendary and Epic crates give better odds of unlocking characters), time skips and bottle caps in the store, and they can stand in for cards you are short of when you want to upgrade now. Time skips do not speed up timer crates.
Automate a line
This is the step that turns the game from tapping into idling. Automation opens from the second season. Each line shows what it needs: a named character at a set level, plus cash. The character and level change from season to season, and the green circular arrows on a line mean it can be automated now.
Meet the requirement and the line earns at the same rate as when you are playing, including while the app is closed. If you cannot automate a line yet, read the requirement on it before assuming something is wrong: you may need more of that character’s cards and bottle caps to reach the level. Automating early in each season is what lets the company grow between check-ins rather than only during them.
The K.E.G. sequence: what resets, what you keep
A season ends with the K.E.G. sequence. Fill the bar at the top as many times as you can during it; each fill adds to the rewards you leave with. Then the crew loses its money and starts again in a new town, and the story moves on.
What resets: cash and customers. What carries over: bottle caps, Ice Diamonds, cards, business renovations and character upgrades. So a line you reopen is at the renovation level you left it, and a character you levelled stays levelled, which is why automation requirements get easier to meet as the seasons go on.
It surprises new players the first time, so it is worth knowing before you get there.
Events and the Brew Pass
Events run regularly. Each has its own short economy, goals, milestone rewards and a leaderboard. Milestone rewards come from your own progress through the event, not from your leaderboard finish, so an event pays bottle caps and cards even if you never place near the top.
The Brew Pass is the seasonal pass, with a Free track and a Premium track. Daily tasks and milestones earn stars; enough stars unlock the next level of the pass and its rewards, which have included Ice Diamonds, bottle caps, Ad Tickets and a Special Card character unique to that pass season. Open it from its icon on the main map to see the current tracks and price before deciding whether the Premium track is worth it to you.
If something goes wrong
Link your save through Settings before you change phones; an unlinked save lives only on the device that made it. If a rewarded ad did not pay out, close and reopen the game first, then contact support with your player ID and roughly when you watched it. For crashes, update the game and your OS, restart the phone and close other apps before writing in.
The FAQ covers devices, offline earnings and saves. For account, purchase and technical problems, use the Idle Distiller help centre or Settings → Support in the game, and include your player ID, device and the season you are on.
How this guide was put together
Written from the Idle Distiller help centre and checked with the Kano Games team in September 2026. Button labels, costs and exact requirements can differ between seasons and releases. If something here no longer matches the game on your phone, tell us through support and we will correct it.
