Brewing

[Beizs 186]

So, I want beer & cider brewing added to the game.

 

Why, you ask? Not for the novelty, no.

 

Once the water is more realistic (as in, you can't just go and drink from anywhere), it'll be dangerous to drink without a purification method. You could use purification tabs, but they're a pain to find. You could boil water (which should be added), but you have to handle having a big, smoky fire (or tiny amounts at a time on a gas cooker) and you lose some due to evaporation (I'd say 10%).

 

Both of these are nice, but they're not really long term solutions. Brewing is. In the good ol' days, water was dangerous to drink... So people drank alcohol instead. The alcohol kills off the majority of bacteria and everything's safe and lovely. So, how would this work - and how would it be a good balance with the other methods?

 

+ Renewability

To begin brewing, you first go ahead and collect the starter materials. You'll need some yeast (common spawn in kitchens as it's used to make bread), a container (any size'll do, but it'd be good to have some barrels added) and a sugar source of some kind. You could use rice, grain (from fields), corn (they should add cornfields to the game), apples from orchards or just about any other fruit you can get your hands on. The list is fairly extensive. I'd use apples though, as they have the benefit of being fully renewable. Then you'll want a secondary, open container to juice the ingredients in (think something like the frying pan or cooking pot), along with something to filter the bits out (rags'll do).

 

Next, you'll need to prepare stuff. Get the juice out of your thing of choice by crushing it real good in the container. Next, use the 'filter' to remove the solid matter, transferring the liquid into your brewing container, be it a canteen, water bottle or barrel.

 

Now you add the yeast and leave it for a while to brew.

 

Once it's done, you can use it up however you see fit (empty it in to containers and get brewing again right away). You can reuse the yeast in the container as it breeds and all you need to do is to apple picking again.

 

I feel like for the sake of gameplay, the amount of juice you get from a single item should probably be exaggerated. Maybe three apples to a canteen's worth. Perhaps water it down with 'dirty' water (you'd filter it to remove any solid stuff though, along with the solid food matter) to decrease alcohol content for avoiding effects and increase volume.

 

Juice should be drinkable, but it should go off fairly quickly, hence the brewing process.

 

This system would allow you to build up a reservoir of drinks at your home with a bit of work, which is, coincidentally, the negative.

 

+Discretion & Volume

This is preferable to boiling water in some ways as it removes the need for a campfire and allows for large quantities to be processed at once with relative ease and safety.

 

+Nutritional Value

Beer would work like the cans of beer in game. It'd be beneficial as it'd give you hydration and energy in the same amount of space as the water. It should probably be a little more nutritious than canned beer, imo.

 

You could also eat the mush from whatever you use as your sugar source... Waste not want not, I guess.

 

- Work

This system obviously takes a bit of work. While it's nothing massive, especially if you set up base somewhere near an orchard, it's something. This makes it more of a pain than just using water tabs, but far more reliable. The stores also could be found, which could tip off people to the presence of a nearby base (though they'd not be too obvious).

 

- Drinking Effects

I think that there should be some effects from drinking alcohol, but nothing absolutely awful. Add a slight blur to the screen for a short period after consumption and possibly some mildly increased sway, but you'd build up a tolerance very quickly and it'd be fairly low alcohol content.

 

 

So, what do you guys think? I simplified the process to make it reasonable for gameplay, but I think that it could actually be an interesting mechanic which would provide some real benefits as a replacement for water, while still remain balanced.

 

Would also be funny to be able to leave it brewing for longer and not water it down to get your character pissed and watch him stumble around for a bit until it wears off, though that'd be entirely for the novelty (or, actually, you could use it as animal traps? Not sure how inclined a wild animal would be to drink alcohol, but maybe small animals could get wasted off of it and fall asleep near an open container you leave out).

 

For all of those lone wolf players out there (myself included) I think this'd add a whole new level to the survival aspect of the game. Great feel, good mechanics and fairly justified.

Edited January 3, 2015 by Beizs

[Rags! 1966]

You can boil water in a styrofoam cups and plastic water bottles, actually. 

[LoveAffair 329]

I Like it , Every camp should have it's own alcohol still. 

[IkaikaKekai 1957]

I brew in real life.  It takes about 3 or more weeks for a batch of beer (in real life)  That's a couple of hours of brewing, two weeks of fermentation (I use a different vessel each week) another week to carbonate in the bottles, and while I don't drink myself, my test subjects said the bottles we let age for another week tasted much better than after the week of carbonation.  And you do need to boil the water to actually brew, so it wouldn't be any easier than boiling water for safety.  That and if you didn't boil the water any bacteria in the water would just feed on all that sugar, malt, and flavorings and become a big ole carboy or bottle of liquid death.

Edited January 4, 2015 by BigMike

[Beizs 186]

I brew in real life.  It takes about 3 or more weeks for a batch of beer (in real life)  That's a couple of hours of brewing, two weeks of fermentation (I use a different vessel each week) another week to carbonate in the bottles, and while I don't drink myself, my test subjects said the bottles we let age for another week tasted much better than after the week of carbonation.  And you do need to boil the water to actually brew, so it wouldn't be any easier than boiling water for safety.  That and if you didn't boil the water any bacteria in the water would just feed on all that sugar, malt, and flavorings and become a big ole carboy or bottle of liquid death.

 

Real life times are kind of irrelevant here, honestly. I know that it's a very involved process if you want to make anything half decent, but, purely for utility, you can knock something together relatively quickly. The game's not meant to be gruelingly realistic, after all. I'd say leave it for a day or two and it'll be ready. It's supposed to be for a long term supply rather than quick drinks, so you can probably handle running to a well for the first day or so.

 

The main benefit of the beer/cider/whatever is that it provides nutritional content as well as the water, much like the cans that you can get. Unlike the cans, however, it can be stored in any water carrying container and stashed in barrels easily (though you should be able to pour any liquid in to any container imo - but then you'd have to loot beer cans as opposed to being able to make beer yourself). However, you don't need to boil the water to make the process safe. Boiling water sterilizes it. You don't need to sterilize water for homebrew, you can get away with sanitizing it, which can be achieved by keeping it at 45+ degrees Celsius for extended periods of time. This could be achieved by placing it in embers (no need for a smoky full fledged fire which you'd need for boiling water), putting even large amounts over a gas cooker (removing the issue of having to boil it in lots of small containers) or, on a hot day, even leaving it out in the sun in a black barrel (one of the mini festivals I used to go to had a tradition of making a large batch of homebrew, different every time, over the duration of the camp and sharing it at the end of the few weeks. They stored and sanitized the water for it this way, as they were all major hippies who wanted to live off of the land entirely, and there was never any issues - they also used the same process for the showers and even when it was mixed with the cold line it was real toasty).

 

I agree that brewing could be a lot more interesting if they went a lot more in depth with it, but, purely as a survival mechanic for storing liquids and creating a renewable source of safe liquids with an added bonus of providing you with energy, a basic system would be sufficient. 

Edited January 4, 2015 by Beizs

[IkaikaKekai 1957]

You do make some good points, and hard cider would be easier to make than beer from my understanding.  But sanitizing water is still a simpler process than either, and at least in the case of beer you need to sanitize it anyway, and if you're really after long term storage you need to pasteurize (easiest way is to boil the bottles in a pot of water) the batch afterwards too.  You are right about the added nutritional value (beer is often called liquid bread), though there are some drawbacks from drinking alcohol (or I should say solely alcohol, there's a reason sailors would cut their rum rations with water).

 

That aside, there's still a few realism issues they'ed have to flesh out, even if they compress the 'brew' time to say 3 days.  Size of the batch would be one thing, after all it's a waste if you're just making a canteen's worth of beer.  The brewing kit I use uses a 5 gallon bottling bucket and carboy.  In game you could probably get away with one vessel to ferment in, and even ignore the temperature restraints (I need to use an ice bath here in Hawaii to keep the temperature around 72 degrees).  This would be something that you would probably need a camp/base for as carrying around 5 gallons of anything is heavy as fuck.  Bottling/canning would also be another issue (12oz bottles are the 'standard', but me and my brother use .5L bottles with resealable flip tops) even though you could use the water bottles or canteens you'd still need a lot of them for a small batch.  That or some sort of cask or keg, which could be looted from the many bars along with equipment to actually brew, all of which you still need to clean and sanitize (two different things).

 

Brewing beer could go hand in hand with bread making as well, they would often go hand in hand in the old days (they often use the same grains and brewers would skim yeast off the top of the vats to sell to bakers).  And player gardening would help out with brewing beer as well, (growing hops and the grain).

 

@LoveAffair Distilling and Brewing are two different things.  To maybe oversimplify it you distill wine into brandy and beer into whisky.