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[tsen]

Booze aging and flavoring would be *awesome*. The only problem with the kegs as a separate from barrels would be that imported plants come as a stack with no barrel and imported drinks are my main source of barrels on treeless maps, since wood is so hard to get in large quantities. (And what I get tends to be made into bins for trade goods)

[Folly]

I'd actually really like to see constructible specialty containers for a variety of different materials, in the interest of conserving space and improving organization. Make wood piles for storage of logs, pantries for storing food, a bank for coins, and some sort of treasure heap for various finished goods.
Maybe give wood piles a toggle, "convert to bonfire" which can then be ignited just to piss off the elves...

[SirHoneyBadger]

Booze aging and flavoring would be *awesome*. The only problem with the kegs as a separate from barrels would be that imported plants come as a stack with no barrel and imported drinks are my main source of barrels on treeless maps, since wood is so hard to get in large quantities. (And what I get tends to be made into bins for trade goods)

The fact that wood can be so hard to get, to me, anyway, gives even more reason that it ought to be interesting and varied, in both type and application.

As far as using it for firewood, I'd think storing spirits in it for a couple of years would help that along. 

[G-Flex]

I'm not sure soaking wood for years really helps it combust much. At all.

(booze is mostly water and alcohol will dry out from it quickly anyway)

[Footkerchief]

(booze is mostly water

This is a) often not true and b) misleading.  Often not true because lots of liquors go above 50% alcohol, and misleading because even booze with less than 50% will burn nicely -- you only need about 40% alcohol for flambe, which is pretty typical for real-world liquors.  The concept of alcoholic proof actually has its roots as a measure of combustibility.

and alcohol will dry out from it quickly anyway)

That is probably true.

[alfie275]

I think that a 3 * 3 keg should be atleast 2 Z-levels; aslo a new item, a trough that dwarves can drink from, you connect a pipe straight to it and attach a lever to it so it doesnt over flow or maybe an option to set the depth before it shuts off.

[Random832]

I think that a 3 * 3 keg should be atleast 2 Z-levels; aslo a new item, a trough that dwarves can drink from, you connect a pipe straight to it and attach a lever to it so it doesnt over flow or maybe an option to set the depth before it shuts off.

I believe I've already suggested float valves as something that could be both reasonable tech* and much more manageable (and reliable - if you use pressure plates and floodgates to manage water in lower levels, you _will_ flood your fortress) than a pressure plate / floodgate combo

*ancient greeks had float valve

[G-Flex]

(booze is mostly water

This is a) often not true and b) misleading.  Often not true because lots of liquors go above 50% alcohol, and misleading because even booze with less than 50% will burn nicely -- you only need about 40% alcohol for flambe, which is pretty typical for real-world liquors.  The concept of alcoholic proof actually has its roots as a measure of combustibility.

Sure, you only need 40% alcohol to burn, but wood also burns on its own. The question is whether or not 85-proof alcohol, even, would help wood burn enough for it to have any substantial effect at all, considering how much of that energy would be absorbed by the moisture from the booze itself, and the temperature alcohol burns at anyway... plus, like I said and you mentioned, the alcohol doesn't stick around as long. Alcohol evaporates pretty fast.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Alchohol doesn't evaporate very fast in a keg, and they use the remains of Jack Daniels kegs for barbequeing, so they must burn.

Plus, alchohol-despite it's water content-dries things out. That's the primary reason people get hangovers, from the dessication effect.

[Footkerchief]

Alchohol doesn't evaporate very fast in a keg, and they use the remains of Jack Daniels kegs for barbequeing, so they must burn.

Well no, it can't evaporate from a sealed keg.  It probably would evaporate pretty fast from the pieces of a keg drained and broken up for firewood, though.  It will assuredly burn whether or not there's a benefit.

Plus, alchohol-despite it's water content-dries things out. That's the primary reason people get hangovers, from the dessication effect.

I always read the dehydration aspect of hangover was due to alcohol being a diuretic.  Highly concentrated alcohol apparently does dessicate wood, but in a way that would kill a human long before showing a significant effect:

The phenomenon of miscibility is key to drying wood by alcohol soaking. Miscible liquids will reach a uniform concentration when combined in a container. An example is a bottle of wine which maintains a uniform consistency of alcohol and water no matter how long it sets undisturbed.

When a piece of wood is placed in an alcohol solution the phenomenon of miscibility will cause the water in the wood and the alcohol in the solution to migrate until they reach equilibrium. The final alcohol concentration in the wood will always be less than the starting alcohol concentration of the soaking solution.

Replacing water in wood with alcohol is the key mechanism for drying wood faster. Alcohol readily moves through cell walls and has a lower vapor pressure than water. As the concentration of alcohol in the wood goes down the drying time increases.

[...]

Experience has shown that higher concentrations of alcohol in the soaking solution will produce the best results of faster drying times with less degradation of the piece. Therefore it is recommended that the starting alcohol concentration be greater than 60%.

Wood can be successfully dried with lower concentrations but the advantages of soaking in alcohol are diminished.

Anyway, from an implementation standpoint there is no current support for a contaminant that augments properties (i.e. combustibility) of the base material, or for a contaminant that soaks through a porous base material.  That might make a worthwhile Suggestions thread if I can think of some more interesting uses for it.

[G-Flex]

While on the subject of booze, it's been brought up before, but alcohol actually having psychological/physical effects in general would be nice.

It also shouldn't be as good for hydration, although obviously this depends on the kind of booze involved: medieval (and earlier, and probably sometimes later) people drank weak alcoholic drinks instead of water because it was a lot more sanitary, I think.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Here's a link on the subject, to hopefully aid (or dismiss) further speculation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_barrel

Doesn't have anything on the burnability of the barrels, themselves, but it does describe the loss of alchohol known as the "angel's share".

[Footkerchief]

While on the subject of booze, it's been brought up before, but alcohol actually having psychological/physical effects in general would be nice.

It also shouldn't be as good for hydration, although obviously this depends on the kind of booze involved: medieval (and earlier, and probably sometimes later) people drank weak alcoholic drinks instead of water because it was a lot more sanitary, I think.

In case you hadn't seen it:

TL;DR: Alcohol and drugs should be weak poisons, poison effects should be created for them should be usable by creatures, poisons should be turned into general substances and allow positive effects as well as negative.

Yeah, I alluded to this in my dev notes on the 2nd -- poison effects are already just "creature interaction syndromes" on the material.  That I don't have ingestion yet is the main barrier to doing alcohol, and as I add in positive effects, everything else would work out (of course there'd need to be AI and jobs and so on to use things for whatever purpose).  The framework is in place, it just needs to be used for more things.  It can also be extended to things that have nothing to do with materials, though for that change a bit more would have to be done to syndrome indices.  I think I mentioned "gaze" attacks there, though at some point you have to worry about a proper extension to the full "magic" framework, which is something to be more careful about.

[profit]

LOL I just want giant kegs... 

And a plumbing system so I can make beer taps everywhere...

[SirHoneyBadger]

LOL I just want giant kegs... 

And a plumbing system so I can make beer taps everywhere...

Giant kegs would be fun. Maybe they'll come along with multi-Z-trees?