Guilds/Garden of Eden/beer intro

Orrin: Can you give me a basic explanation? I can find plenty of guides to make specific beers, but nothing general Orrin: I looked at the T3 beer guide, the one for the VP dry black beer thing, but that just told me how to follow recipes Orrin: not what you actually need to work out the recipes Pascalito: well, it's a long explanation , i'll try to describe the general picture first, without tech details Pascalito: when the beer is fermenting and the kettle is not sealed yet, microorganisms enter till you seal Pascalito: Yeasts are good, rest is bad Pascalito: so we need a yeast as first entering organism Pascalito: 2 ways to go then : try to brew with open pot, which is often some trial and error and "feeling" Pascalito: or isolate the yeast and find out when to seal to only have the yeast in the kettle, with known yeast data you can create recipes then with spreadsheet BeerCalc Orrin: hmmm Pascalito: now to the fermentation itself Orrin: so these other things that go in Orrin: can't have *any* of them before the yeast? Pascalito: i'll come to ingredients Orrin: all the bacteria etc Pascalito: well, maybe you could have one before the yeast but in general it is not worth the effort to even try Pascalito: the first one dominates the process, cause will put its mark on the brew fast Pascalito: ok, ingredients now Pascalito: you can add honey and malts Pascalito: they contain sugars (maltose and glucose) Pascalito: and vitamins Pascalito: they also give some flavor and/or bitterness Pascalito: but sugar and vitamins are the main stuff we'll talk about Pascalito: yeasts eat sugar and vitamins to produce alcohol Pascalito: when one of those goes under the minimum required amount for that specific yeast, the alc production stops Pascalito: those minima are called "floors" Pascalito: yeasts also kill themselves with the alc they produce Pascalito: this determines the max alcohol for that yeast Pascalito: then we come to the flavor department Pascalito: the fruit flavors, nutmeg and cinnamon can only be produced by the yeast Pascalito: honey and barley are good flavors too Pascalito: barley flavor comes from malts Pascalito: honey flavor from honey + the yeast Pascalito: there are also bad flavors : grassy and nasty Pascalito: if too much of those, the beer is undrinkable Pascalito: nasty is purely from yeast Pascalito: grassy from yeast and some malts Pascalito: back to ingredients Pascalito: the time you enter the ingredient influences how much vit and flavor it has left Pascalito: o, forgot bitterness Pascalito: is a combo of nutmeg, cinnamon and tannin Pascalito: nut and cin from yeast, tan from malts Pascalito: entering ingredient early makes them cook for long, which makes them lose vitamins and flavor basically Pascalito: best to look at spreadsheet BeerCalc to see what they produce dependent on entry time (link to the spreadsheet at bottom of page http://wiki.atitd.net/tale3/Guides/Beer/Spreadsheet) Pascalito: the art to brew drinkable beer is to have a good balance between bitterness and sweetness Pascalito: sweetness is determined by residual sugar Pascalito: i think i covered most aspects, time for questions (now or later after looking at BeerCalc)