jkraybill
commented
4 years ago Per comments on #37463 and based on some very old Reddit/Discourse comments on the topic, I also propose to reintroduce the culturing of wild yeast using at least 1 of these 3 methods, all 3 if they can be done with a single game recipe and output (pretty sure they can):
https://readynutrition.com/resources/survival-food-series-3-ways-to-naturally-make-yeast_02032011/
This would be similar to the yeast culture, but not require a flask or yeast, and take a longer time (5 days?)
Brian-Otten
stale[bot]
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I noticed when fixing #33223 that the brew times, and a couple techniques, for various brewables feel arbitrary. The times currently required to brew these recipes are (in order of time taken):
ALCOHOL Moonshine, Vodka: 6 hours Beer: 9 hours Whiskey, Rum, Fruit Wine: 12 hours Mycus Wine: 15 hours Dandelion Wine: 1 day 12 hours 40 minutes Pine Wine: 1 day 16 hours 50 minutes Mead: 5 days
(Not sure why dandelion and pine wine are so oddly specific.)
OTHER Yeast Culturing - 2 hours, requires a glass flask Curdling Milk - 4 hours Vinegar - 7 hours Gin (not an actual fermentation - a steeping that requires alcohol and juniper): 24 hours
(The current times for cream / pickles / sauerkraut / pickled eggs look OK to me and appear to be based on 1/3 of RL time.)
Sources I've googled show (in order of time taken):
ALCOHOL Fruit Wine: 4-7 days primary fermentation (https://www.homebrewit.com/making-wine-with-fresh-fruit-general-instructions-and-tips) Mycus Wine: not a thing, but presumably similar to fruit wine Pine Wine: closest I could find is Retsina, but that is just grape wine flavored with pine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retsina) Whiskey: 5-17 days (3-15 days for ferment plus 2 days) (https://moonshiners.club/homemade-whiskey-recipe-and-technology/) Moonshine Mash: 1-2 weeks (https://milehidistilling.com/how-to-make-moonshine/) Dandelion Wine: 10-14 days (https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-make-dandelion-wine-1327932) Rum: 3-7 days with raw cane sugar, 12-14 with molasses (https://milehidistilling.com/how-to-make-rum/), scientific sugar beet fermentation 3 days (https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2016/3154929/) Vodka Mash: 2 weeks (https://milehidistilling.com/how-to-make-vodka/#fermentingyourmash) Beer: about 2 weeks (https://www.hoptech.com/pages/homebrewing-questions-and-answers) Mead: 2-4 weeks (https://meadist.com/making-mead/mead-recipes/hop-head-mead/) (https://meadist.com/making-mead/mead-recipes/home-made-lavender-blackberry-mead-recipe-by-bill-savage/)
OTHER DIY Yeast Culturing - few days to 2 weeks, and can be done in normal glass jars (https://bootlegbiology.com/diy/capturing-yeast/) Curdling Milk for Cheese - 10-20 minutes (https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-make-homemade-cheese-2215814) Steeping Gin - 24-48 hours (https://foodanddrink.scotsman.com/drink/beginners-guide-making-gin-home/) Vinegar - 2 months (https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Own-Vinegar)
I don't think making all these recipes THAT much longer is going to make the game more fun. I'm suggesting streamlining the brewing recipes into three tiers of speed, across a tighter spread of time (1-3 days).
Another oddity is that in the game, fermenting gin mash can be made from homebrew beer and juniper. That seems odd and I could not find any real-life reference to people making gin from beer, other than gin-flavored beer. I did find references to people distilling beer into hard alcohol, but the existing gin recipe in the game is not a distillation, it's just steeping juniper in vodka/whiskey/beer.
Describe the solution you'd like
I'm proposing streamlining the brewing times for these recipes into something like:
Fruit Wine, Mycus Wine ("fruit-based wines"): 1 day Whiskey, Moonshine, Dandelion Wine, Pine Wine, Rum, Vodka ("distillates and non-fruit-based wines"): 2 days Beer, Mead: 3 days
Curdling Milk: 1 hour Yeast Culture: 1 day, change recipe so that you can use glass jars in addition to the glass flask (sterilization already implied by the fact the recipe requires fire) Gin: 1 day (unchanged), remove beer as an ingredient Vinegar: 3 days
You could argue that Rum should have a fast recipe with sugar beets (or raw cane sugar if/when that is in the game) and a slow recipe with molasses, but that seems gratuitous and an unnecessary additional recipe.
This does make the super-fast brews take significantly longer but is at least a bit more consistent - right now whiskey/beer/moonshine at 6-9 hours but mead at 5 days seems very odd. The biggest gripe I can see from players who brew is that beer is getting moved from 9 hours to 3 days. If that's a legitimate hassle, this could move to a 2-tier system by making both beer and mead take 2 days.
Describe alternatives you've considered
Keeping as-is, or tweaking on a smaller scale. This seems like a system that doesn't get much attention so it seemed like a better alternative just to revisit the current recipes as a whole.
Additional context
I propose making this change until after the current release is out the door. I'm happy to implement it and have already made several of these changes in my local codebase.
Suggestions and input very welcome, this is my first proposal of any significance.