Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Modding => Topic started by: Aqizzar on July 06, 2008, 05:16:13 am
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I was sitting around thinking of Dwarf Fortress and idle watching TV, and got into a conversation about all the different types of alcohol in the world. I though I'd try putting together a list of every source there is, and seeing how many I could add in. No real point or plan to this, just more alcohol. And I thought it'd be an interesting way to discuss booze, since I know this forum has a very international crowd. It helps that I'm a little drunk right now.
A few hours with Google and Wikipedia taught me a lot, but I wanted to see if anybody else has some ideas. This will be kind of long. I'm no chemist or botanist, but I've understood the basic principle for a while. Technically, anything that will ferment (basically a controlled rot) will produce alcohol, but there seem to be a lot of candidates with no corresponding liquor, at least to my knowledge.
Pretty much every cereal in the world is brewed into something - Wheat-Ale; Barley-Beer; Rice-Sake; Corn-Whiskey; Oats-English Beer; Rye-another Whiskey; then an endless variety non-European grains that produce boozes with local names I can't pronounce. And potatoes of course make vodka.
Any source of molasses ergo natural sugar can be fermented - sugarcane is the most well known, making rum. Then there's tree sap, hence things like Maple rum. Sugar beets also fall in here - beet vodka is not actually a vodka at all (though vile enough that you'd never know it). I assume animal produced sugars could be fermented as well, but I wouldn't know where to start with something like that, and you'd need a lot of it. Drinkable cheese, maybe?
Any liquor made of fruit is a wine, and theoretically any fruit (or vegetable) can be brewed into booze. Since grapes are the only one anyone's heard of, I imagine most fruits, if they can be fermented without turning to rotten mush, produce something not worth drinking. I swear I've heard of wines made from apples or cherries or something. According to Wikipedia, real German schnapps is made of any rotting fruit handy - everything else is just flavored whiskey.
Legumes are definately frementable - Kahlua is fermented coffee beans (and you thought it was a brand name). But I've been looking for years and I've never heard of any other drink made of beans. Given that the flavor of an alcohol comes from the other chemicals in the source, I'd guess that, in all seriousness, bean liquor would taste quite literally like ass.
Then there's some oddballs out there. Tequila, real tequila, is made of cacti meat, or cacti fruit, or some part of a particular species of cactus. Gin is made from the improperly named juniper berries, with are actually radically adapted pine cones. Perhaps other cones could be brewed? Amaretto is made of things like fruit pits and almonds - why no other nuts?
For completeness, it's worth mentioning that wood is fermentable. It produces methanol, which only a desperate drinker with nothing to live for would gamble his life with. Though since the dwarven metabolism depends on it, I wouldn't be surprised if chugging a keg of furniture varnish was a famous test of dwarfliness. Brewable logs, anyone?
It should also be noted that it's possible, if only just, to brew fungi into alcohol, producing octylene or some such gobledygook. Since the only reference to it I can find lists it as an ingredient in perfume, I imagine it's something no creature that enjoys living would want to ingest, though I'm aware Russia has several brands of big-bottle perfumes designed to be drank. Of course, plump helmet wine is such a staple of the dwarven diet and DF that I'd never remove it. Maybe I'll track down a bottle of octenol, stick an approriately dwarven label on it, and send it to Toady as a tribute.
Again, no real point to this. Just hoping for some comments and ideas.
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I think you may want to concentrate on making current unbrewable plants brewable. Some suggestions...
Mountain herbs could brew into akvavit, a Scandinavian drink made from various herbs. You could call it "Water of life" if you wish to be less foreign sounding, since that's precisely what akvavit means.
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since that's precisely what akvavit means.
Also what whiskey means (uisge betha), among others. Kinda funny how many distillations translate to that actually.
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Would the dwarves actually brew this stuff? Mostly, liquor is nasty unless you've drank a lot of it and have gotten used to the flavor...why would the dwarves change their diet for a fancy apple wine?
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Mead is another fun alcohol to look up, and I suggest reading a bit about the fermented yak milk that was so popular among the Mongols. There's your drinkable cheese, and proof that there is always someone who will drink it, no matter how vile.
There's a bottle of orange liqueur lying around here somewhere, so other fruits are certainly used in the making of alcoholic beverages. There are also a few rums made from various tropical fruits.
Tequila, to my knowledge, is made from the "heart" of the blue agave, which isn't really a cactus.
Something I've never heard of is alcohol made from the yarrow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarrow) plant... I was doing some research on yarrow a long time ago, and that plant seems to be some sort of superpower. Since just about anything plant-related can be turned into alcohol, I have to wonder what yarrow booze would be like, and what properties it would have...
Also, blossom liquor isn't unheard of. Apple and cherry blossom wine are both produced and consumed in some places, not to mention the festive dandelion wine.
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If you've ever read the James Herriot books, you'll find he reminisces about a farmer who liked making home brews;
Blackberries, Turnips, Apples, Carrots, Tomatoes, Potatoes;
Anything, you name it, and he made wines out of it.
And most of them were actually nice, inlcuding the Turnip one.
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"I assume animal produced sugars could be fermented as well, but I wouldn't know where to start with something like that, and you'd need a lot of it. Drinkable cheese, maybe?"
Honey is what you're looking for. It's made into Mead- invented by the most Dwarfish Humans to walk the earth, the Vikings.
Someone put together a Mead Mod, so you may be able to integrate that.
Something else- Coconuts have sugary milk that may be brewable. I don't know what you'd call it.
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Cocognac. :)
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You've got the general idea, but the thing is that fermentation requires sugar. Preferably simple sugars (such as glucose), but there are ways to break down complex sugars before fermentation.
Which basically means most plants can be brewed (even grass!), but it takes an extra step during the brewing process, and you end up with a weak wine that tastes like plant stems.
Animal milk could be brewed, if you were really that desperate for any kind of alcohol, but the result would probably not be fit for human consumption (mmm... mouldy liquor...)
Fungi can't technically be brewed into anything particularly drinkable, let alone palatable, but we'll assume that plump helmets are a special kind that also contain simple sugars, therefore allowing the dwarves to make a palatable wine from it.
Not sure about octylene; it's definitely not an alcohol. Doubt it would taste nice.
Hehe, cocognac...
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Wait, i thought there was a kind of alcoholic apple cider...
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Yeah, you forgot apple cider, Aqizzar! Not to mention applejack (immensely potent apple cider - basically gets left out for the winter, then the water in it freezes and you're left with only sweet, sweet alcohol).
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I was just reading some on Wikipedia, and apparently it would be possible to brew fungus. The cell walls of fungus is made of chitin. (So is the exoskeletons of crustaceans and insects.) Chitin is a carbohydrate, and there are enzymes that can break it down into simple sugars and ammonia. The ammonia might be troublesome, but the remaining simple sugars could then be fed to more fungus to get alcohols. I have no idea if the resulting brew would be drinkable. I don't know if anyone's tried this before, but at least now we can say that someone's though of it.