BEERS AND ALES
In Real life - We should be able to brew Corn, Wheat, Oats, Barley, Sorghum, Indian Corn, Popcorn to make a beer like alcoholic beverage with a strength of about 5% ABV. They will ferment with just the addition of yeast, so long as they are prepared properly. They make a variety of beers. So we get Corn Beer, Wheat beer, Oat Beer, Barley Beer, Sogum Beer, Indian Beer and Popcorn Beer
In Real life - Potato, Sweet Potato, Beets all contain sufficient starch that can be converted to fermentable sugars – although they probably need added amylase to do it (My research isn’t clear on this) and they need a yeast. My research does not show relative strengths for the brew - so I am going to stick with about 5% ABV, the same as beers. I think we say that the resulting brew isn’t palatable on its own, but if they are fermented with fruit, a type of fruit beer can be produced with is palatable. In other words this becomes a base ingredient for using other fruits. Lets simplify – add 50% berries to produce Berry Ale
In Real Life – Apples are used to make cider and pears are used to make perry. To the best of my knowledge Both brews are about the same strength as beer. Axcept we call them Apple Ale and Pear Ale
To these real life sources of booze, I want to add a mushroom, a giant mushroom that only grows underground. There is something about that particular mushroom, perhaps it’s the insects that live inside the mushroom itself who secrete a particularly sugary food for their young. But what ever it is, this mushroom can be fermented fairly easily to make a beer strength brew. (various recipes will produce Dwarf Ale and Moss Ale (made in Syn Gond with the addition of a specific type of moss that grows there))
WINES
In Real Life – Purple Grapes, Red Grapes, Yellow Grapes will make traditional wines without the addition of anything but yeast - they wines will have a strength of about 10% ABV. Using a mixture of grapes you can make Red, White or Rose wines.
Apparently Quince, Plum and Peach can all be fermented as well. I suspect as sweeter softer fruits we could treat these as wine equivalents at about. Gives us Quince Wine, Plum wine and peach wine.
Honey can be fermented alone, to make mead – again lets say this is about the same strength as a wine. Add a fruit and you start to get interesting flavours. I suspect honey will be rare - so perhaps we should say 1/3 honey & 2/3 berries to make a fruit mead (perhaps known as Berry Wine?)
OHER STUFF
Rice and Sugar cane can also be fermented to produce Sake and Rasi respectively- Rice wine ferments out at up to 15% ABV, and its fair to assume that Rasi does as well. Again we say that tnot matter how this is flavoured (ie what fruit is added) the drink is not palatable - until it has been distilled to make a sweet liquor spirt. Most common are things like Berry Liquor (2/3rice or sugar cane, 1/3 mixed berries) Ginger liquor (2/3rice or sugar cane, 1/3 Ginger)
Most of the other fruits can be added to other brews as flavourings (and you need quite a lot to add flavour) but I don’t think they will provide enough sugar/starch in their own right to ferment without support (However, I haven’t carried out any in-depth research - but cursory research only shows other fruits being supported by raisins (dried grapes) in all the recipes I found)
SPIRITS
Lets assume sprits have 30-40% abv - Which just about matches up with most modern standards. And if we assume that each distillation process doubles the ABV of the drink —-
We can start getting different classifications and qualities of booze.
Single distilled ales (5%) are only as strong as wines –At 10% - when both get distilled again they give a strange mixed brew at 20%. Double distilled wine comes in at 40% (Brandy) – triple distilled ale (Whiskey) comes in at 40%
We can then have some flavoured Liqueur spirits that are made from Rice/sugar cane - flavoured with fruits, single distilled, at around about 30% abv.
