Ice cream (such as it was; it wasn't really the same as modern ice cream) wasn't necessarily always reserved for the wealthy (it was in certain places, like England, but not everywhere). In the ancient Middle East it was actually fairly common; ice and snow would be imported and stored in these large underground chambers that were cooled via tall hollow towers to capture cool winds, while keeping the heat out. It was just flavoured with fruit juices and cheap spices usually (I recall one recipe recorded my first an Arab author and later repeated by an Italian monk, where it was essentially plums or figs and peppercorns ground into ice to make for a cold spicy plum-flavored slushy-like dessert).
In some places chilled foods were eaten by common labourers because it kept them cool while they worked. Though to make such a thing affordable required being able to keep and store large quantities of ice and snow with what were in effect huge old school iceboxes, which was doable for very wealthy cities (who mimicked the iron age Persian techniques of large ice-containing caverns), it was more of a trick for smaller places where it'd need to be imported. It was popular for the Romans to just import huge amounts of ice from mountains and pour wine, fruit juices, and mix in nuts and sliced pieces of fruit; naturally that was more expensive, and the Romans didn't often use large storage areas for such things (some existed in the empire's territories in the east but they were probably pre-existing and were just co-opted), leaving them more the purvue of wealthy men, though that itself had kind of a point. It was pretty impressive to show your friends you're so damn rich you can cart in snow in the middle of summer just to eat it while having bizarre orgies and mocking the poor, or whatever it is the idle rich did in those days.
However, point is, that wasn't necessarily true everywhere, even places where acquiring such large amounts of ice and snow was difficult, but that was more an issue of storage.
Edit: Also; not all alcohol should require water. There are some very cheap, disgusting forms of alcohol that are not made with any water, just fermenting juices and a yeast of some sort usually. Such things should probably have a high chance to cause ill effects in whoever drinks them (nausea, unconsciousness, etc.), but they should be an option for producing booze for your dwarves when you're lacking other options.
Also, very poor quality brewing should potentially cause severely bad effects, like blindness. That occurs when producing liquor without disposing of the waste of it. While highly alcoholic, the first stuff that comes out of a still is also insanely poisonous and has to be tossed away once it's done coming out (what comes next is the actual drinkable liquor that's less likely to kill you unless you drink way, way too much). Stills should maybe also produce fumes (and too close to a major heat source, like a forge, said fumes could ignite, if one wants to be real mean about it; though even the heat of the still can itself cause a very large explosion if the fumes are too thick; proper ventilation is extremely important).
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Topic: Cooking and Brewing Diversity: the Food and Drink Megathread (Read 33760 times)