In Dwarf Fortress, how do I create a drink-only stockpile and food-only stockpile?

Question

Originally I had a stockpile for food, and it contained a mixture of food and drink items in barrels. I changed it to stop drink being stored there. It looks like this:

Then I created a new stockpile for drink only, which looks like this:

However, none of my drink items are being moved or stored in the new stockpile. Could I have done something wrong?

Answer 1

Make sure that your drink stockpile is setup to accept barrels. Query the stockpile and make sure that the max barrel parameter is not 0. You can adjust it with the E and R keys.

On an unrelated note, you may also want to disable prepared foods from your drink stockpile (press U).

Answer 2

Do you have a bunch of idle dwarves sitting around? Transferring items between stockpiles will be a fairly low-priority task, so you might not see it done right away or at all if your dwarves are mostly busy. However, if you see a dwarf actively put the wrong item into a stockpile (as opposed to simply not transferring an item out) that would prove that your stockpile settings aren't working.

In that case, you could try deleting both stockpiles and creating new ones. As with most unexpected behaviors in Dwarf Fortress, this could be a bug!

Answer 3

How are you setting the stockpile settings? I once had trouble trying to figure out how to alter existing stockpiles.

If you're trying to alter a stockpile that already exists: Use Q as if you were adding items to a workshop queue, and then choose the appropriate option.

If you're adding a new stockpile with custom settings: Go to the new stockpile screen, set the custom settings with t, (I think) use c to choose the 'Custom' stockpile, and then place the new stockpile.