And for the next trick I'll be counting to four, it ain't much but it's honest work. 

Solving this puzzle in finite area & rate meant most TI degeneracy is strictly forbidden. For the same reason it was harder to extrapolate tricks from existing TI solves in the leaderboards. I think a couple of instructions can be saved from this approach, but steeper drops require a complete overhaul. 28 instructions is a good benchmark given that it is only 16 more than synthesis via alcohol, which is trivial in comparison. I attempted using track because it made counting to 4 easier, but it ended up being worse on T+I.

The solution does 2 things, first it turns the input into a single atom stream which is grabbed once it reaches length 4. Then quint is produced in a similar manner to sythesis via alcohol. Since berlo doesn't count to four unless it uses track, one atom from each group is always water and the others are duplicated at a random order but guaranteing no repeated cardinals.

I think min is in the mid twenties but I did not have time for more. I am eager to see what other TI wizards come up with.