Malting Grains and new beer recipes

[Blacklotus 276]

So in the process of making alcohol in real life most beer comes from a process called Malting which ferments grains before being used to make beer.

What I suggest is that Wurm take up this process in addition to it's current recipes and here is how it might work:

You would add in the item to be malted.
Common ingredients to be malted would include:

Barley, Rye, Oat, Wheat
Pumpkin, Corn, Potato, Rice
Any Starchy Veggie.

Depending on the ingredient it could be treated in one of several ways to produce one of three new kinds of malt, for our examples we'll use grain but that could be replaced by any of the items listed above.
Base malt. - Would appear as 'Grain, base malt'
- Made by using normal ingredients as themselves. Fermented in a barrel with a ratio of 1 - 1 with water for about 3 ingame days.
Caramel Malt - 'Grain, Caramel Malt'
These Malts are created by the same process as above but also including sugar in the barrel.
Crystal Malt - 'Grain, Crystal Malt'

Crystal Malts are created in a similar process as above, These are roasted wet with a 2 - 1 ratio of malt to water before being sealed in a barrel to ferment.
Toasted Malt - 'Grain, Toasted Malt'

Using unfermented malt in a baking stone to 'dry' them before fermenting them in a barrel with a ratio of 1 - 1 water and malt for 3 ingame days.
Roasted Malt - 'Grain, Roasted Malt'

Made by first roasting the unfermented malts in a roasting dish dry then fermenting in a barrel with a ratio of 1 - 1 water and malt for 3 ingame days.

The process to make one of these unfermented malts would be as follows:
Player would activate press or fruit press and 'crush' the item to be malted. This powder or Unfermented Malt would be used in the next step of the brewing process.

Once malted, you would begin the process of making beer. First by mashing your chosen Malt, then boiling it with sugar and water to create the intermediary type of alcohol to be fermented in the normal way.

Assuming we only use the 8 directly listed ingredients, and each malt could be made from any of those ingredients it gives a possibility for about 800 different affinity possibilities using the 20 known kinds of wood scrap. - This is if we assume only the existing system. I would suggest that beverages be slightly different. It's all about brewing after all.

My system is as follows. There would be 8 new recipes, Lager, Ale, Stout, Porter, Pilsner, Bitter, Beer and Sour. The ingredients chosen from among the malts, would look something like this:
Cooker: Oven
Container: Cauldron, Sauce Pan
Must have: 
Malt (any of the malt types) (one or more)
Sugar (one or more)
Herb ( Exactly one ) (this would determine which recipe is produced.)
Optional (zero or one)
Fruit (zero or one)
Berry (zero or one)

(This would give an added affinity list possibility but is not necessary)

Finally, when the recipe has 'cooked' into it's unfermented alcohol, it's color will be determined based on which malt had the most influence on it. So you could get: Pale, black, brown, blonde, golden, clear... (for example)

It would need to be sealed in a barrel for 3-5 days with a woodscrap. I really wish the booze remembered the ingredients through fermenting to the affinity wasn't tied to the woodscrap used but there are so many possibilities.

Why this suggestion?
The problem with the current beverages alcohol system is that the final product lacks any complexity in it's recipes with the exception of moonshine. The end result is that no matter how good or bad you may be at the skill, you're limited to how useful the beverage is because the timers just don't go above 1-2 hours maximum. I feel this is a way to begin fixing that problem by adding in complexity to the recipes without needing to rework the entire system.

Please, give me your honest thoughts and opinions towards this idea. What do you like, what doesn't make sense, what seems broken. Would you start doing beverages skill if it was implemented?

Thanks for reading.
 

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by Blacklotus

[Drayka 485]

Pumpkin? ... Well I suppose I put belladonna on pizza, so why not pumpkin ... beer? Really? Moonshine, okay, but beer?

 

That's my only hesitation. The rest seems like it could be implemented tomorrow and I wouldn't even notice that the game had changed, except for the huge benefits.

 

Sounds perfectly Wurm-normal.

+1

[Demonix 79]

of the beer types listed, only bitter and sour aren't in the game and currently beer type is determined by the woodscrap you use to seal the barrel.  This means that beermaking would have to undergo some code changes to accommodate the system you are proposing and all current affinity calculations would have to be redone.

 

Otherwise, the idea of adding more recipe complexity to beer in an effort to increase its timers is a good one.

[Blacklotus 276]

11 hours ago, Drayka said:

Pumpkin? ... Well I suppose I put belladonna on pizza, so why not pumpkin ... beer? Really? Moonshine, okay, but beer?

Surprisingly when I was researching beer in real life pumpkin is an actual ingredient lol.

 

as for bitter it is in the game sour is the only one and it’s only a difference in name.

 

as for the affinity calculations they need to be fixed anyway and code wouldn’t really have to change that much it already does most of it.

[Drayka 485]

1 hour ago, Blacklotus said:

Surprisingly when I was researching beer in real life pumpkin is an actual ingredient lol.

 

as for bitter it is in the game sour is the only one and it’s only a difference in name.

 

as for the affinity calculations they need to be fixed anyway and code wouldn’t really have to change that much it already does most of it.

I'd love a link to that, since I couldn't find it - only moonshine, which warned that yeast is a must-add ingredient, since pumpkin doesn't have it's own.

But I take your word for it, I'm merely curious about this unheard of application.

 

I'm pro overwriting the existing recipes for beers, btw. Existing instances can be prefixed with 'heritage', which should also act as a bug-trap.

 

Beer and pizza sounds like a fun combination for those who want the fast-food approach to affinities. That leaves room for distilled spirits to become useful for some completely new mechanic.

[Blacklotus 276]

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/holiday-pumpkin-ale/
 

one recipe I found on a quick google search... seriously there’s a lot of kinds of pumpkin beer and it’s weird but to each their own. Can’t speak for the flavor but why not. That being said, this is only using what wurm already is coded for. It’s just new recipes that could be added in. I really wish the hidden item tags remembered more to help with recipe complexity but that system has needed a fix for a while.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Blacklotus

[Drayka 485]

>14lb of malt to 5lbs of pumpkin? That's pumpkin FLAVOURED beer, not pumpkin-beer! 🤣

TY for the link! Explains why I couldn't find it.

I misunderstood the principles in play, and would need to research brewing in far greater depth.

 

No reservations.

Huge +1

Would DEFINITELY take up brewing beer if this was implemented in WO!

Will be hugely jealous if this is only available as a WU mod.