The Brewery Reform

Ideas & Suggestions
1

Continuing the discussion from Edited original title and question not to give spoilers:

Yeah, with the brewery reform we are thinking along these lines:

  • The crafting of items will remain as is, with the different stations as they are, no unity needed or anything like that.
  • We will make another table for the ‘designing’ of alcoholic beverages which will likely need Unity to do. On the screen, you pick the input ingredient, and then pick each stage relevant to your process. Whether it needs mashing, fermenting, distilling, aging and for how long.
  • Each step determines certain effects on the end product. Alcohol content, stats etc.
  • At the end of the creation process, you pick the output barrel the product will come out in when rezzed in-world.

To be able to use the alcohols in cooking, we will create another stage where you might be able to pick bottles instead of barrels, and the bottles can be used in your cooking as they are smaller in qty than a barrel and less costly. Perhaps we break down a bottle into single portions before bringing it to a cooking station or alchemy station.

2

Perhaps thinking out the box a little, we just need to change the way the barrel process works. Instead of the aging barrel giving an output alcohol already in a barrel, we make the different barrels in the carpentry which can be rezzed out empty… and you come up to your barrel and fill it up with an alcohol, any alcohol.

That way you can use the alcohol without having the barrel it if you desired so.

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3

hmmm we need a bottle maker wink:

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4

Allowing barrels to be filled with any drink will make any drink and alcohol created in our system into a rezzable drink that you can now consume in a tavern using mugs, goblets, horns etc

Add sand into the system, bring sand and other required thingies to the smelter and we can make glass bottles and do the same thing for all drinks as with barrels?

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5

oooh that works, smiles

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6

I think adding bottles to the smelter is a great idea! And perhaps make other berries able for the Brewer to juice or mash that could create liquors or essence that can be used in cocktails, or add in herbs like “bitters”. So exciting. And sine we have differnt trees, may different types of aging barrels - a whiskey aged in a maple barrel could be stronger than one aged in birch.

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7

Some thoughts on brewing, alcohol, brewers in SL and therefore SLColonies:
GENERAL
In RL, alcohol is made 1) for its taste, 2) for the role it can play in conviviality at social occasions with family and friends, 3) for excellence particular to a region or variety of wine or spirits, 4) for those who collect wines or spirits for their excellence or age or bottling or labeling, 5) for what it does to food when incorporated into cooking.

In SL, we can taste nothing; we can gather with friends and family for occasions, though the presence of alcoholic beverages adds something to the visual of the gathering, but only in SLColonies is there the added risk of over-indulging. There are no varietals of grapes from which to produce Pinots, Cabernets, Bordeaux, Chardonnays, Moselles, Rheinhessens, Nahes, etc. There’s just red and white for now. Collectors will be attracted to buy for the cleverness of the container or the beauty of the label on it.

I am a brewer. I plant, grow, harvest, mash, ferment, and barrel wines. I am not a farmer, so I must buy potatoes, rice, and wheat from farmers, but after that I control the process. In neither case can I make barrels, so I buy or barter them from carpenters. And I must buy yeast and koji for the chemical process in fermentations. And of course, I must sell or barter the end product spirits, wine, or vinegar to others.

PROCESS
From start to finish, there are time, work, and money costs to brewing. Grapes: I have to have a plot of ground, prepare it, plant it… wait… harvest it to get grapes. For a single large field, it takes 2 minutes, 20 seconds to hoe, plant, and water the field, 7 days for the crop to grow, and 6 mins, 40 seconds to harvest the grapes. Those times are for the highest efficiency work. Seeds have to be bought; what you get from the harvest is not sufficient to begin the next process. Grapes harvested vary from 33 to 49. Enough to run 1 or 2 processes to barrels of wine (20 grapes to run a process). Mash them, ferment them (7 days), barrel and age them (8 days). A process that takes 22 days and change or 29 days and change if you don’t have 2 Fermentors.

Spirits take roughly the same amount of time, 22 or 29 days depending on how many Fermentors you have. Here, I assume that crop growing potatoes and wheat has similar process times.

THOUGHTS
I am happy with process and costs described (ad nauseum, I admit). It should take significant time for the through processes. I would not be in favor of reducing them. An economy ought not to be rushed, or we risk being DFS.

The problem with G&S brewing is that there are few “off-ramps” for the end products. A few recipes, making interesting bottles and labels for bottles and barrels, or a ridiculous contest for the most Grand Reserve barrels made in the year; something that you can only influence by having hundreds of fields in production. You can’t change the algorithm that produces GR.

I like the idea of being able to bottle the products; innovation in bottle design increasing the value of the offering. Fine if that task is given to Smelters, adding glass and sand to their ingredients. Who then bottles the wine? I think Brewers and Merchants, ordering bottles from Smelters. G&S has a bottling machine that empties a barrel into bottles. That’s unnecessary. Just make Smelter-made bottles a container that barrels will recognize, like mugs and clay jars are.

Labeling I leave to those clever at graphics, brought into SL as files that SLColonies allows to be attached to Smelter-made bottles.

Label and bottle designs should be capable of being proprietary, an added cost to make it so.

MIXED DRINKS
I am happy to be proven wrong, but I don’t see this as a sustainable off-ramp for spirits or wine in the short or medium term. The whole social RP not currently present.

COOKING
Would love to see what our legions of cooks can conjure up for delicious looking foods that contain spirits or wine as ingredients that add to the food value inherent in consuming it.

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8

I agree with pretty much everything you had to say. I’ve taken a break for quite a while.

The big problem is procuring the resources to continue producing wine.

I have no revenue really other than endlessly harvesting reeds to sell.

It makes brewing a losing venture for the most part. I don’t have a sustainable way to even break even.

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9

We will put everything into consideration. Costs will definately drop with barrel requirements and so forth and the abikity to name your own creations and label your own creations will be something you will be able to do.

Any drinks made in brewing and cooking station will be able to be barreled or bottled, but only brewing will get special extra stats added.

We already have a drunk stat but we are thinking different processes added and times will play around with stats given and we could add more information to brewed products.

We will ask for more input when we get to it. Its not too far off!

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10

Apologies for my answers being a bit short. I like to reply as soon as I can, and sometimes that means I am responding from work using my mobile phone, and I don’t get to be as detailed as I’d like. So here goes :wink:

I am glad you seem to like the added risk of over-indulging. Perhaps we can make Drunkness have a benefit as well as a risk in later iterations. Such as for the rangers in combat, increasing damage the drunker you are, but your vision is dropped and you might bleed easier or something, who knows?

We can add different varieties of grapes very easily, they can use the same red and green coloured grapes we have right now on the fields, and just have new names and new seed variants if you guys like.

Definitely no consideration in reducing times. When we create the new brewery station for inventing alcohols, you will be able to select times to ferment/distil/age, but the higher the time, the better the stats, and the sweet spot will be those 7-day periods to keep everything consistent.

I’m thinking carpenters make the barrel variants and the smelters make the bottle variants. I’m thinking we will remove the requirement to add a barrel to the aging process for the end product in brewing. Instead, the brewer will get x amount of alcoholic serves of whatever they made. You could then sell those serves individually or use them individually as is through the marketplace. This would be needed if you want to make those products available to cooking and alchemy, as once they are bottled, the process of reversing the bottling/barreling would require more stations released which I think is a waste.

Anyone can then purchase the rezzable barrels and rezzable bottles and fill as well as refill these barrels and bottles. You’ll be able to set your price per serve from the dispenser. Allowing anyone to fill bottles and barrels will open the system up to all drinks becoming rezzable. So you could bottle orange juice, milk, water, as well as all the variations of alcoholic beverages you can make.

Then, we have two options for barrels as finished products, if we make a barreling, bottling and labelling station… Do we have it so:

  1. You fill your barrels and bottles with what you like, apply your labels to the barrels and bottles and display them as you wish (but that means they are already rezzed out and cannot be sold on/transferred), or;
  2. Do we make it so the barreling, bottling and labelling station actually is another unity type based WebGL setup that lets you pick a visual representation of the barrel/bottle you would like to use in your end product, lets you upload a UUID texture to apply to that selection and then the end product is ‘registered’ to you specifically as a recipe/trademark and the barrel/bottles with the product inside are given to you like everything else, a virtual inventory item which can be transferred/traded in Vendors, Marketplace HUB and rezzed when ready to use with all your labelling affixed.

Personally, I pick option 2, a little bit more work. What about you guys? This would likely not be restricted to a profession or locked with recipe levels, Or, we could add that as a restriction to Merchants and give that profession something to look forward to.

Only alcoholic beverages made in the brewing process would have a drunk state and the ability to affect stats through the process options made.

Barrels and bottles will have a maximum use, like durability, requiring to be replaced after being refilled numerous times.

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11

I like the idea that what I brew ends up in a “vat” with me, as a particular brewed alcoholic beverage, which I can barrel, bottle, or sell onward to someone else who wants to barrel, bottle, serve the beverage. Barrels and bottles are made by carpenters and smelters, respectively. I think option 2, unity based WebGL works best: I can barrel or bottle items without rezzing them, retaining the product particulars when sold/traded and/or rezzed. Is there a notion in option 2 that what’s in my “vat” is unbranded? For instance, White Wine that I brewed, but not branded to me, can be barrel/bottled by anyone and sold as WalMart or Car Trunk Sill Finest by someone else… that the branding is in the bottling or barreling?

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12

Actually, I’ve been thinking about this a little more.

Since the database can already change the colour of the liquid on barrels based on the colour settings in the database, and since with cooking and alchemy the database can already determine the colour of a product based on input ingredients (we’ve registered every raw ingredient with a base colour in the database, the more of an ingredient you use, the programming mixes colours behind the scenes and gives an output finished colour based on quantities), it would not take much to then have the database have a stamp or brand which is registered to the recipe creator.

So we could create another station called a Trademark or Branding station which you can go visit. I’m thinking it could be a main-store type station that you have to come to which isn’t sold publicly.

When you go to it, it will display all drink recipes you’ve created in the game. Whether they be from the cooking station, or from brewing. You can select the recipe you would like to trademark, and then apply your own UUID to that drink.

When someone fills or refills a barrel or bottle, the scripts will determine the liquid colour, and if a brand has been registered by the creator of that recipe, it will apply the logo to the barrels and bottles used with that drink.

Perhaps branding/trademarking will have either a coin sink or a cxp sink cost to register or change a brand.

Also, this would not need to be a unity system. Anyone could use it then. And, the station could have a display of all the barrel types and bottle types with it that you can see live an example of what your image would look like on each of the barrels and bottles, so you can adjust to what you like works best on everything.

Thoughts?

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13

I understand what you are suggesting as follows:

  1. brewers make alcohol as spirits, wine, or vinegar as liquid end products, there are currently 11 of us
  2. various containers are made, barrels by carpenters, bottles by smelters, which anyone can buy
  3. provision could be made for varietals of wine (chardonays, pinots, cabernets, etc in the growing process
  4. provision through trademarking could be made such that, for instance, Cyssan Merlot, is marked as such when sold onward either as a quantity of alcohol product, or as barreled/bottled in labeled containers purchased separately by the brewer or anyone… It’s Cyssan Merlot
  5. cooks are free to create food or drink items using brewed alcohol
  6. trademarking is limited to specific wines, etc, made at a specific location – i.e. meaning no one can trademark all white wine or spirits
  7. containers are refillable, if you have more or buy more of that product; like other tools there’s a limit to how many times a container can be re-used
    — have I misstated or misconstrued anything, so far???
    — I am in favor of what I understand the thus-far is
    —hmmm, this could lead to establishing contract relationships with taverns/pub owners who exclusively carry particular brands, the contracts providing the drinks at very preferential prices to the innkeeper, just a downstream thought as this economy matures :slight_smile:

presumably, as this reform goes into effect there might be some way to de-barrel currently stored barrels from the current system into stored liquid

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14

If I understand it all correctly, I like this idea.

The only issue I might see pop up is if a liquid is assigned a uuid will it display correctly regardless if its in a small bottle, a large bottle, or various types of barrels? It’ll all depend on the size of the face/prim its applied to. If it’ll be a universal attach to anything this drink goes into thats an unknown variable.

Maybe the recipe for the liquid requires the specific type of bottle that you want it to go into.

in DFS there is only one size bottle and label so its easy to know how it will look.

Without being able to directly apply to the prim and move it around it could cost hundreds of lindens uploading images to size and resize your design so it looks right on the bottle you want.

There has to be some kind of statistical advantage to using the alcohol also. Most people concern themselves with the stats of the game rather than pure rp.

If its just for RP purpose the market for being able to sell will still be extremely limited as it is now

Would it be feasible to give it the ability to possibly affect xp gain? That would increase its utility quite a bit. Wouldn’t have to be an extreme boost just enough to make it useful.

As far as stats go cooking, potions, alcohol, will all affect the same stats equally based on ingredients.

What might be cool is to have each of the consumable types affect one primary stat and affect the others minimally. So a drink type can affect thirst mainly and pad a few other stats minimally.

Food affects hunger

Etc…

As it stands whether a potion or through cooking you can just assign it to heal 200 blood, thirst, hunger, and cure poison all at once. No need to seek out other consumables.

Imagine drinking and smelting lol. It would help alleviate that extremely slow progress.

Another idea that I think would be awesome to piggy back off this since you are building the capability for it.

Custom bottling potions in the same manner. Having a rezzable apothecary would be really cool.

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15

To add to one of the points in my rambling about each consumables affecting one primary stat…

I’m not a programmer so I’m not sure how this could be done but it seems that the stats of all ingredients wouldn’t have to be messed with.

Giving each consumables a type, such as drink, food, potion, etc

And by type allow it to utilize the stats fully of its intended stat and suppress the other stats to allow only 10-20% of its full stat.

Maybe this would break already existing systems I don’t know.

Its just a thought in creating a need for various foods, drink, and potions.

Since everything can affect all stats equally I just drink our private label herbalist brew and everything is pretty much back to full without needing anything else.

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16

Assuming the alcohol produced by brewing ends up as vat stored with the brewer, and the barrels and bottles are separately produced by Carpenters and Smelters respectively. Those containers could be generic or designed by those professions for aesthetic or novelty looks. And, of course, the brewer or others could design bottles/barrels of their choice, contracting them to be made by Carpenter or Smelter.

Labeling: Sample versions of barrels or bottles could be available, which could not be filled but are used for label designing and placement. These Neutered-Samples would be free.

XP goes with the work performed, to the person who did that work.

I am not yet concerned about the time to create barrels and bottles. Things will take however long they take. Once we can see the processes we can see how to plan. I know brewing from seed planting to collecting aged barrels. This enables me to order barrels ahead of need, to get seeds in advance of planting, to make mashes ahead of time, etc. Advance planning. Plan ahead for your needs; order in advance of those needs. Carpenters need wood, metal loops, metal scrap for barrels; Smelters will need sand and other ingredients to make bottles. Means they need to start ordering those ingredients and stockpiling. Contracts could be made with varying pricing and completion date requirements that allow people to not have to live on SL except for sleep and bathroom breaks. :slight_smile:

My hope is this reform fosters planning ahead, avoids simple DFSesque solutions, and keeps the fun in functionality :).

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17

And further reducing times to filling needs, Carpenters and Smelters could stockpile their standard barrels and bottles the same way I constantly keep making grape crops, rotating between the three varieties of grapes currently available.

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18

I do the same thing. I have so many grapes stockpiled away because I don’t use them.

Buying barrels is just so expensive and not much room to sell anything I produce so I’ve put it on the back burner. That is a huge bottleneck for me.

I’m just concerned that if I go ahead and make everything into wine or alcohol in barrels to stock pile those they may not be compatible when the upgrade comes and able to be turned back into liquid to be used.

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19

I agree non useable samples could be used, but then you have the same problem if a bottle type is not included in your recipe.

Say I make something designed for a barrel and it looks great. But someone takes whatever I made and puts it in a small bottle you still have the same problem as the uuid you intended is getting used on something else of a different size and may not come out how you intended.

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Hi, I’m making no great changes in what I am doing until this reform is sorted out and implemented.

As envisioned so far, you will be creating stored alcohol of various kinds at the end of the brewing process. Bottling and Barrelling happens after that.

I am assuming that there will be some mechanism whereby stored (not rezzed) barrels of alcohol product from the current system can be de-barreled for continued storage as the alcohol product that went into that aging barrel.

The only purpose for the “Neutered Sample” barrel or bottle is to test for label placement. I wouldn’t think there’s a need for a recipe to do that. It’s graphics to me.

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