Short Form: Would you consider changing the "hops" to "barley"?
The new brewing system posted in the change log contains this familiar mistake I've seen in many games. I imagine it drives the other brewers nuts too, so I've nominated myself as advocate.
Beer is made from barley, not hops. Most games get the bread=wheat right, but then somehow make beer=hops instead of barley. Specifically malted barley (barley that has been made to sprout to an exact point and then dried).
Hops are used as a preservative, which might be useful to your game mechanics in establishing the spoilage. For bittering purposes, the sweet wort produced from 1 pound of malted barley requires less than two grams of hops to act as a preservative, something like 300:1 barley to hops ratio. Doesn't take much!
Might I make a further suggestion that liquor does not require hops as a preservative. The production of liquor is simple: First brew and ferment a strong beer/wine (called the mash in distilling jargon) from most any grain or fruit. Second, using a still you distill the alcohol from the beer/wine. That might be a better/other product for the game? Specifically "Vodka" does not require a barrel to age in and can be made from any number of fermentables, usually wheat or corn though potatoes are traditional...
Seem like a match for your system?
Use this concise information to whatever end you see fit. Thank you for reading my plea.
well realistic modeling of processes seem to be a theme of Tynans so if he sees this im sure he'll take note. Take this as an agreement of the above also, would be awesome for this to be modelled on real life as much as possible.
/signed but I'm wondering now if the Tynan's gonna add a new job or the cooks job is gonna be expanded. It would be cool if the higher skill your cook was the finer quality of alcohol they made and it would be less addicted than lets say a cook with lvl 3 skill. I'm hoping tynan includes the other types of liquid courage though and not just beer.
Agreed. I'm not a brewer, but I at least know that hops is secondary to the grain which is the primary ingredient is most brews. If we're going to add beer, why not other drinks as well? Wheat, berries, rice, barley, corn, and other fruits all make some form of alcoholic drink. Some of which are WAY easier to make than beer.
DRUNK status for colonists.
They can do random stuff while drunk.
im guessing potato vodka would be added at somepoint, infact i would have thought its be the first drink given potatoes status within rimworld.
Quote from: skullywag on January 23, 2015, 07:26:13 AM
im guessing potato vodka would be added at somepoint, infact i would have thought its be the first drink given potatoes status within rimworld.
+1 to this!
I've just realized that "Beer" should be changed to either "Brew" for a generic beverage or to "Ale" for a specific barley based beverage so that's my newest suggestion.
Also, I wrote this: The real world process is too involved for the game mechanics so I've been thinking how to simplify it.
1. Brewing is cooking, just boiling some fermentables. (Use the existing stove or make brew station with greater capacity, 3x I'm thinking)
2. Fermentation takes time of sitting in a container, 3 days minimum. (needs kegs or barrels)
3. After fermentation is complete, the brew is chilled, then ready to drink (cask rack+tapper(wood)? kegerator(metal, power)?)
Brew recipe ideas
Barley = Ale (yummy and fast)
corn = chicha (palatable and fast)
potato = vodka mash (is that even drinkable? I have no idea)
fruit = wine (yummy but takes longer to ferment, months)
honey = mead (good but takes forever to ferment, up to 1 year)
Distillation:
1. Have a "Still" (this is where i'd add a new piece of equipment)
2. Run X barrels of brew into it
3. Get 1 barrel of booze out
Thoughts on distillation recipes:
barley brew + wood barrel + time = scotch
corn brew (chicha) + wood barrel + time = bourbon
wheat, barley, corn, or potato brew + non wood barrel = vodka
agave brew + barrel + time = tequila
fruit brew (wine) + wood barrel + time = brandy
There are other concerns, like the yeast, the fermentation temp, and sanitation. Ohhhhh the sanitation. But I left all that muck out :-) I mean, we want to have fun right?
oooh making it depend on the temperature would be cool, get better quality drink if you keep the temperature within certain parameters.
and tynnan should add drinking traits too and after effects "merry head by night, hale body by day." along with effects for different alcohol and level of quality
Quote from: skullywag on January 23, 2015, 02:32:47 PM
oooh making it depend on the temperature would be cool, get better quality drink if you keep the temperature within certain parameters.
If desired for quality and spoilage I'd suggest that:
- low to mid 60's F is ideal for ferm. further:
--- lower temp stalls the ferment; beer low alcohol but drinkable (the residual sugars often make people gassy if you find that fun to add).
--- higher temps create more undesired compounds, fusals - the hangover esters; they also don't taste the best. But, some people like the esters a lot. so maybe you might allow people preference for estery ales (like belgians) over "high quality" ale if you like going crazy for detail.
- quality of stored unopened ale increases for maybe a week, stable for about three months before slowly losing quality, as long as stored below~ 40 and above 32F.
--- If it freezes it fucks it up, a bit. but if, while frozen, the ice crystals are removed leaving a concentrated beer with higher alcohol, you've now made an "ice beer". put that shit in a forty, dog.
- higher alcohol content, around 10%, makes beers that cellar well for over a year.
--- The overall range is generally 3-7%, up to 10-11. The absolute max (for instance when making a "mash" specifically to distill it) is usually ~20%. distillers use turbo yeast to get there, with grain mashes. Wine makers using champagne yeast can also get high teens.
Well, that was longer than I intended. heh
Bumping and + 1 to all these ideas
Beer is made from barley, not hops.
Alpha 9, subtitled "Tales 'o' Drinking", has now published with this ironic misunderstanding uncorrected. May I beg for a little exposure to draw attention to this error?
Haven't paid close attention, but does it literally just brew from hops? If so, that is incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hops
Used in beer and medicines.
Maybe it was quickly implemented and later you use hops WITH other plants (already have rice). It would make more sense to use some of your food. Apples (if ever implemented for wood/fruit) for hard cider or just cider, rice wine/beer, barley-based beer, etc.
Quote from: tommytom on February 19, 2015, 03:25:32 PM
Haven't paid close attention, but does it literally just brew from hops? If so, that is incorrect.
...
Maybe it was quickly implemented and later you use hops WITH other plants (already have rice). It would make more sense to use some of your food. Apples (if ever implemented for wood/fruit) for hard cider or just cider, rice wine/beer, barley-based beer, etc.
Thank you for your response. Yes, the system currently uses only hops for brewing. If the word Hops was simply changed to Barley then it would become a lot more correct.
Hops as an ingredient was traditionally used as a preservative but in modern practice it is primarily just a flavoring. (Our modern day preservation relies on sanitation and air-tight storage) Hops are not used in any other alcohol type, only beer, primarily ales. So
hops are only useful to the game for a much finer level of detail of brewing ale.
If you'll allow me, I'd love to assist in designing realistic but simplified brewing/distillation mechanics in an accurate way. I've thrown out a handful of ideas in previous posts above, and can throw out more.
I truly didn't know beer wasn't made entirely from hops. Good lesson, thanks! Why do beer companies focus so much on the hops then? I think I've seen too many Budweiser commercials or something to have that skewed perception on it. I did wonder why Tynan chose beer over the much simpler wine or liquor options from potatoes or berries already in the game. My Dad always made alcoholic apple cider in the basement. I remember us kids sneaking into it and getting sicker than dogs. He said that's what we got for messing with something that wasn't even drinkable. :P
in my limited knowledge of brewing(I have home brewed several batches), the hops are ONLY for bittering the flavour of the beer, the malted grain is the sweet flavour supplier and both the malted grain and sugar are for the alcohol with the yeast doing the actual conversion of the sugars/malts to alcohol
Quote from: harpo99999 on February 19, 2015, 05:11:05 PM
in my limited knowledge of brewing(I have home brewed several batches), the hops are ONLY for bittering the flavour of the beer, the malted grain is the sweet flavour supplier and both the malted grain and sugar are for the alcohol with the yeast doing the actual conversion of the sugars/malts to alcohol
Exactly.
Brewing is just making sterile sugar-water for yeast (a colony of single celled fungi) to colonize and ultimately convert into sugary-ethanol-water.
Beer is Barley Pop.
Quote from: Coolrah on January 23, 2015, 04:15:52 AM
/signed but I'm wondering now if the Tynan's gonna add a new job or the cooks job is gonna be expanded. It would be cool if the higher skill your cook was the finer quality of alcohol they made and it would be less addicted than lets say a cook with lvl 3 skill. I'm hoping tynan includes the other types of liquid courage though and not just beer.
This could be a way to begin with skill specializations. Any cook could make certain forms of alcohol of certain quality, but they would have to specialize into brewing at skill level (10?15?20?). The other path maybe "Chef". So you have to decide if you want that colonist to specialize in brewing or making awesome meals?
Specializations should be brought to each skill in various ways. A researcher could possibly specialize in offensive, defensive, or utility fields. /shrug
Cheers,
Michael
Theres actually a game design reason the game uses hops.
Barley is edible and is also a cooking ingredient. This means that if it were in the game it would have to be brewable, cookable and edible.
What is the problem, you ask? Well, now we have created an entirely new kind of optimization puzzle for the AI to solve. Without special coding, colonists might cook all the barley before touching the 3 rice. This looks dumb and is annoying. Properly solving it means writing the AI to solve an even more complex multivariate problem than they already do when choosing things to cook or eat.
It is simpler to just use hops and call them non edible. The cultural association with beer is just kind of a bonus.
Is that problem not easly solved by the players themself? If we want Barley only for Beer, we can just uncheck it in the meal bill. As long as enough meals are around the colonists shouldn't touch the raw food so it wont get eaten as well.
Sorry, but I am going to have to disagree. It makes complete sense that they could eat beer ingredients. Beer is "edible", afterall. What gets silly is when you notice your fridge is 50% full of hops and you are on "low food". Maybe that is your intention (punish for making beer or lots of it instead of food).
If it were fixed properly, you wouldn't need hops to be edible (it's just a flower). You would have apples, rice, corn, which can all be made into wine/beer and you would use hops/yeast (inedible or not very edible) as a brewing ingredient.
Anyways, it's a game and beer just got put in, so I'm sure it will get tweaked.
Doesn't ask me where you would get yeast from, but I know apples have natural yeast and you can make hard cider simply with apples. We would need apples first though.
Technically to make "beer" (and I'm using the term loosely here... I'm a fan of black patent malt and copious hops in real life), you can use just about any grain. American lagers just before and after the prohibition era used something like 30% corn, and now a lot of them are somewhere above 50% rice. Hell, there are some ales (again, term used loosely) made primarily of wheat. You still need the malted barley and the hops, but both can be in very low percentages.
As for the game design reasons... I'm all for letting us as players figure out what food items to put where for the purposes of cooking versus brewing. Could make things interesting if a food shortage happens and you're forced to eat your brewing supplies. Could put all of your colony's drunks into a depression spiral.
Also, this could put a variable quality on beer. More barley=higher quality... but you can brew something that's technically beer out of 90% rice and corn.
Quote from: Tynan on February 22, 2015, 04:11:14 AM
Theres actually a game design reason the game uses hops.
Barley is edible and is also a cooking ingredient. This means that if it were in the game it would have to be brewable, cookable and edible.
What is the problem, you ask? Well, now we have created an entirely new kind of optimization puzzle for the AI to solve. Without special coding, colonists might cook all the barley before touching the 3 rice. This looks dumb and is annoying. Properly solving it means writing the AI to solve an even more complex multivariate problem than they already do when choosing things to cook or eat.
It is simpler to just use hops and call them non edible. The cultural association with beer is just kind of a bonus.
Thank you for seeing and replying to this suggestion. I wonder if you'd be willing to keep this AI matter in the back of your head for a while. I will go about assembling a few possible ways alcohol production could work in a logical way.
One thing I'd point out is that brewing really is a kind of cooking. Perhaps thinking about it that way will help you decide on how to better consolidate the ideas of a "food" with a "fermentable". A fermentable is food too, but one that takes time to ferment. The beer product is really a special kind of food that has special properties.
Thank you again for the response.