In seems in my relative absence from the forums (university will do that) a thread on the alcohol industry has passed my notice. D:
Here are previous threads with ideas for the alcohol industry:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=42660.0http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=31231.0Brewing shouldn't require fuel, or at least brewing beer and wine shouldn't. Having personally done both I can safely say that that you don't have to use fire. Sprirts should though, for the still.
Beer certainly does require heat. I would say any alcohol that requires water in Dwarf Fortress should require fuel.
Forgive me if it's already been mentioned in this thread, but a long time ago I suggested two separate reactions for alcoholic drinks:
1) Brewing- should be do-able in a kitchen if you have a barrel (and ingredients, water, etc.)
2) Distilled spirits- done in a still; you turn a brewed mash into high-alcohol spirits in a process that might require fuel. To make things simpler, instead of having mash as a middle-product (this is not unthinkable when you realize how complicated soap making is...) you could simply have them turn brewed drinks into spirits at a ratio of say 3 barrels of the former to one barrel of the latter. For instance, dwarven wine is brewed into dwarvish brandy, dwarven beer or ale brewed into whiskey, sunshine brewed into elvish cordial, etc. etc.
Just thought I would put that suggestion back in here...
Yes, I realize I could easily mod this in with custom reactions or something. If nothing else, I hope there will at least be a distinction between spirits and brewed drinks. Spirits could even be used in medicine!!
Having brewing take place in the kitchen is an interesting idea. The kitchen is where I make wine and mead, after all. But I would expect Dwarves to build workshops dedicated to brewing, what with their passion for booze. As I suggested in one of the previous threads, there should be separate Brewery and Still workshops. Also, I think I may have commented on this in a previous thread, but "sunshine" always struck me as being related to "moonshine" and therefore a distilled beverage. Sunberry brandy, basically.
How about booze coming in flavored variants? In the real world almost all beers are flavored with hops, and before hops were used there were a variety of herbs and berries which were used. Dwarven beer made with only cave wheat could be "sweet dwarven beer", cave wheat + cave hops = "dwarven beer", and so on. Allowable flavors, their names and prices would (probably) have to be specified in the raws, rather than being randomly generated like food recipes.
Plus, dwarves could have a preference for for a type of booze and a particular flavor of that booze. "Urist McDrunkard like dwarven wine and especially likes bush quarry flavored dwarven wine".
The mixture of herbs (which actually sometimes contained hops) is called "gruit". The purpose of gruit was to add/balance flavour, preserve the beer, and clarify the beer. Hops were found to be the most effective at preserving beer. If nothing is added, the beer tends to have a cloying flavour and a very short shelf life before it turns sour/funky.
My thoughts on this are to expand liquor varieties. Adding lager and making ale a type of beer. Also hard liquor and fuel for all booze-making.
The lager/ale dichotomy is a modern concept (and lager is a modern beer). The definition of "ale" and its distinction from "beer" is a bit complicated, since it has changed throughout history. Old Norse "öl" and Anglo-Saxon "ealu" (cognates of ale) were the catch-all terms for fermented malt drinks (in other words, used the same as we use "beer") while Old Norse "bjorr" and Anglo-Saxon "beór" (probably cognates of beer) referred to a stronger drink, most likely cider, possibly sweetened with honey. In 15th century England, ale was unhopped and beer was hopped. It didn't take long for brewers to start using hops in ale as well, however. I'm not sure what I would suggest for the use of "ale" and "beer" in Dwarf Fortress.
I would certainly like to see liquor varieties expanded though, particularly with different combinations of ingredients. I might put together a list of drinks, the ingredients they require, their properties (shelf-life and aging potential) and what the distilled spirit would be called.
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).
Trace quantities of methanol (which causes blindness) are normal in most alcohol production. Moonshine that caused blindness was not the result of being poorly made, but rather of being adultered with methanol. The fusel oils that come out at the beginning of distillation are unpleasant and popularly believed to cause bad hangovers, but they won't kill you any more than ethanol.
Also, wine is not cheap and disgusting.