Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Starver]

Iced tea was proposed as an example as to why everyone drinking cold tea isn't a problem.  That is why we don't need to wait until hot meals are served in order to have tea.

We don't talk of chilled roasts, so why resort to iced tea?

If the cooked meat platter is eaten cold (but no longer raw), having been stockpiled for several seasons, and is still a roast/whatever then tea is tea is tea once steeped and no need to invoke additional ice to the process.

[Batgirl1]

Ice tea would give nethercaps and ice/snow more purpose though, which is always something to encourage.

[GoblinCookie]

We don't talk of chilled roasts, so why resort to iced tea?

If the cooked meat platter is eaten cold (but no longer raw), having been stockpiled for several seasons, and is still a roast/whatever then tea is tea is tea once steeped and no need to invoke additional ice to the process.

Nobody was resorting to anything, it was just a refutation of the argument that tea required us to have previously worked out the mechanics for eating food hot. 

Basically iced tea basically requires us to use ice as an economic resource.  Funny this is like icecream, icecream was actually invented I think in Italy precisely as the ultimate luxury item, because it needed ice it had to be shipped across the whole of Europe to get to Italy, so they were eating icecream precisely because it wasso impractical in their location that it showed off how rich they were are like nothing else. 

It does complicate what I was saying earlier about alcohol.  Sometimes consumption is *not* rational and this is a deliberate thing. 

Ice tea would give nethercaps and ice/snow more purpose though, which is always something to encourage.

Ice will be more economic once we develop the whole gathering water side of things, since it will be the main source of water in artic biomes most the year.

[SixOfSpades]

Ice has always been harder to create, and more luxurious a process to use in comestibles, than fire. . . .
Dorftech, of course, could employ something like nethercap barrels (at least to store crushed ice, if not to generate it).

Low-tech, in-period refrigerator technology!

Basically, it works by having a very tall, well-insulated room, that has a small chimney at the very top. The height of the room allows thermal separation--the warmer air rises to the top, where it gets sucked out through the chimney by the wind. A steady breeze means that heat is constantly being removed from the room, and never added, so the temperature inside is always almost equal to the previous night's low temperature.

More relevant to food preservation than to tea, of course, but it's more realistic than nether-caps.

[Bumber]

Nobody was resorting to anything, it was just a refutation of the argument that tea required us to have previously worked out the mechanics for eating food hot. 

You still need to heat the tea before you cool it. Wikipedia states that "sun tea" is made by leaving it in the sun for an hour. That's doable, but it's not something dwarves are likely to consider.

[scourge728]

*something something magma*

[Bumber]

*something something magma*

That includes the mechanics of eating food hot.

[anewaname]

Basically iced tea basically requires us to use ice as an economic resource.  Funny this is like icecream, icecream was actually invented I think in Italy precisely as the ultimate luxury item, because it needed ice it had to be shipped across the whole of Europe to get to Italy, so they were eating icecream precisely because it wasso impractical in their location that it showed off how rich they were are like nothing else. 

All the cultures that developed icy treats obtained their ice from nearby mountains, not from across long distances.

It didn't matter what system of nobility the culture had... If the nobleman's wife was saying, "it is too hot", that nobleman would look at his men and say, "I see snow on that mountain. Bring it for her."

Romans were not the first, because Rome was founded much later than other cultures that could see the ice-caps of mountains from their domain. Those cultures were the first.

If that nobleman was not the top dog in the system, he would ensure those above him were well supplied or risk having them take control of the operation.

Like all things of value, ice would have been treated as a resource to be cultivated for harvest. People would be sent to do the work of creating or improving pools, so ice would be available in larger quantities and higher quality, and the methods of transport and storage would be developed by trial and error and improved within a few years. Any locals would be drafted into the operation or evicted. The supply would remain limited for the nobleman and his immediate court and guests, poachers and spies would be killed, competition would be attacked, and so on.

[scourge728]

*something something frozen joke*

[GoblinCookie]

All the cultures that developed icy treats obtained their ice from nearby mountains, not from across long distances.

It didn't matter what system of nobility the culture had... If the nobleman's wife was saying, "it is too hot", that nobleman would look at his men and say, "I see snow on that mountain. Bring it for her."

Romans were not the first, because Rome was founded much later than other cultures that could see the ice-caps of mountains from their domain. Those cultures were the first.

If that nobleman was not the top dog in the system, he would ensure those above him were well supplied or risk having them take control of the operation.

Like all things of value, ice would have been treated as a resource to be cultivated for harvest. People would be sent to do the work of creating or improving pools, so ice would be available in larger quantities and higher quality, and the methods of transport and storage would be developed by trial and error and improved within a few years. Any locals would be drafted into the operation or evicted. The supply would remain limited for the nobleman and his immediate court and guests, poachers and spies would be killed, competition would be attacked, and so on.

I was wrong about having to ship it all the way across Europe, but it is still expensive to obtain in hot environments like Italy because you have to go a long way up and down a rather high mountain to get the ice in such an environment, especially in the summer.  There is also the issue of having to stop it melting en-route, so it is not quite as simple as I'm hot get me some ice.  You originally need someone scientifically clever who can figure out how to keep the ice melting en-route. 

[mightymushroom]

From what I know of more recent history – ice cutting being one of the businesses on the local lake prior to electrical refrigeration – the usual way to transport ice was to pack it in straw for insulation and keep it well shaded. If you harvest and store enough during winter then the sheer bulk in the ice house keeps itself chilled in the summer. Bonus points if your storage is underground, which should be naturally cool even where surface temperatures soar. There would be some loss around the edges, but you just work that into the business model for how much supply you'll want to meet the demand.

[SixOfSpades]

There is also the issue of having to stop it melting en-route, so it is not quite as simple as I'm hot get me some ice.  You originally need someone scientifically clever who can figure out how to keep the ice melting en-route.

The Romans used wooden crates lined with sawdust, hauled in chariots. They got their ice & snow from the Swiss/Italian Alps.

Correction: Mainly from the Appenines, not the Alps. Obviously the Appenines are closer, but I wasn't sure how much snow they had . . . turns out, they've even got a small glacier. (Some Romans still got their snow/ice from the Alps, but not the ones actually in Rome.)

[callisto8413]

+! Yes Please.  Having a cuppa tea with milk and sugar might help future Dwarfs deal with stress or even socialize!

[GoblinCookie]

From what I know of more recent history – ice cutting being one of the businesses on the local lake prior to electrical refrigeration – the usual way to transport ice was to pack it in straw for insulation and keep it well shaded. If you harvest and store enough during winter then the sheer bulk in the ice house keeps itself chilled in the summer. Bonus points if your storage is underground, which should be naturally cool even where surface temperatures soar. There would be some loss around the edges, but you just work that into the business model for how much supply you'll want to meet the demand.

I don't think most people would want lake ice in their tea, wouldn't it be full of dead bugs and silt?  Gathering snow and compacting it sounds like it would produce a product people would want to consume.

The Romans used wooden crates lined with sawdust, hauled in chariots. They got their ice & snow from the Swiss/Italian Alps.

I did not know the Romans had icecream.  I thought that was invented in Renaissance Italy.   It seems we need a dwarven icecream thread now.   

[anewaname]

...
You originally need someone scientifically clever who can figure out how to keep the ice melting en-route. 

We are not better at science today than the people of the past. We have better tools for observation and for data capture. We have better communication tools, to distribute information and to educate. We leverage these tools. That leverage is a large multiplier. The base cleverness of the people is the same.

Those men who were involved in the movement of goods over a distance, they knew methods to manage the temperature of the goods, just as they had to manage the temperature of their bodies over those distances. They were interested in efficiency, profit, and their own leisure time, the same as people of today. They transported ice and foods without refrigeration machines and the phrase "scientifically clever" describes some of them well.

+1 regarding what SixOfSpades and mightymushroom posted about the methods.

I don't think most people would want lake ice in their tea, wouldn't it be full of dead bugs and silt?  Gathering snow and compacting it sounds like it would produce a product people would want to consume.

I posted this earlier, "People would be sent to do the work of creating or improving pools, so ice would be available in larger quantities and higher quality...". You should be able to imagine the type of masonry activities involved in this. Those masonry activities are the same ones used to create water reservoirs today and have been used for thousands of years.

The product being delivered over a distance is the "potential thermal energy", Snow and ice are both frozen water, but ice holds more of this "potential thermal energy" per cubic meter. This means it is easier to transport the same weight of frozen water to the destination.

If you put a metal bowl in the freezer with 2 liters of water in it, give it a few days to freeze completely, bring it into a cool room (subterranean rooms would be used in the past), apply heat to the bowl so the ice can fall out of the bowl, then use a metal tool to chip at and shave the ice. Once your technique improves, you will have ice shavings that you can use to create a cold drink that would make any over-heated person happy. If that person did not have refrigeration, it would be a marvel to them. A noble would use this luxury for their court and guests, to impress them, just as a merchant would sell this luxury to those who wanted to impress others.