Beer

<ul><li>"social" is not in the list (None, Medical, Social, Hard, Any) of allowed values for the "Drug Category" property.</li> <li>"chemical" is not in the list (Chemical, Gluttonous, Meditative, Social, Gaming_Dexterity, Gaming_Cerebral, Television, Telescope, Reading, HighCulture) of allowed values for the "Joy Kind" property.</li></ul>

Beer is a beverage product that provides a small amount nutrition and recreation, as well as inebriating the user providing a mix of bonuses and maluses based on how intoxicated the pawn becomes. While not so nutritionally effective, its main use is to improve a colonist's mood to prevent mental breaks. But, overuse may lead to alcohol addiction. The default drug policy setting is both for addicted and for joy.

It provides 0.08 nutrition and 17% recreation.

It can also be used as a somewhat ineffectual weapon.

Acquisition

Beer is produced in three steps:

Plant hops, which is an easy task and can be done without Research (min Plants Skill 3).
Construction of a brewery (Research required), to process 25 hops for 5 units of wort. This task that requires a cook to perform the action, another relatively easy task assuming the colony has enough meals to divert the cook to other purposes.
* Repeating this five times, using a total of 125 hops for 25 wort, is optimal for 1 barrel of beer.
Place up to 25 units of wort into a fermenting barrel for 6 days. Partial loads of wort are possible but less efficient. The work to get the wort from the kitchen/stockpile to the barrel is part of the Haul job. Each wort is converted to 1 beer.

The process of brewing involves a living organism, so difficulty can increase greatly depending on your biome's weather conditions. Avoiding delays or failure requires following temperature requirements:

°C	°F	Effect
7°- 32°C	45°- 89°F	optimal temperature range
1°- 7°C	33°- 44°F	temporarily halts fermentation process, process continues when optimal temperature restored
< 1°C > 32°C	< 33°F > 89 °F	freezing or "too hot" is fatal to the brewing process, all product is lost, all the previous work wasted

Because the "fatal" range is unforgiving even for a moment, it's recommended to keep your temperatures well within the "optimal" range and have a separate, emergency power/temperature system so that an open door or short-term power loss will not cause the loss of the batch. Double-walling your brewery to insulate from extreme temperatures, and/or installing a long* entry hall/room as an "air lock" with doors at each end is not a bad idea. Also, when planning the location of your brewing, be aware that a kitchen will often be quite warm, as active stoves produce excess heat.

(* 6 tiles long gives time for the first door to shut before your colonist opens the next, so that your brewery is not exposed to "outside" temperatures. Autodoors would shorten this required length.)

Colonist taking beer out of fermenting barrel, ready for consumption.

Inebriation

Consuming beer raises a colonist's alcohol level by 15% per beer. Alcohol level, not displayed precisely in-game, determines inebriation level and falls automatically over time at a rate of 75% per day. Once a colonist becomes drunk the game records it so it may be used later in an art description.

Label	Alcohol Level (%)	Mood (+)	Pain Reduction (%)	Consciousness (%)	Social fight chance	Other effects
Warm	>0	10	10	-	x1.5	Manipulation -2%
Tipsy	25	14	20	-10	x2.5	Moving -5%
Drunk	40	20	50	-30	x4	Moving -10% Vomiting mtb 0.75 days
Hammered	70	26	70	-50	x5	Moving -10% Vomiting mtb 0.2 days +5% pain
Blackout	90	26	90	10% max	-	Chemical Brain Damage mtb 10 days

Beers Consumed	Time Warm (Hr)	Time Tipsy (Hr)	Time Drunk (Hr)	Time Hammered (Hr)	Time Blackout (Hr)
1	4.8	0	0	0	0
2	8	1.6	0	0	0
3	8	4.8	1.6	0	0
4	8	4.8	6.4	0	0
5	8	4.8	9.6	1.6	0
6	8	4.8	9.6	6.4	0
7	8	4.8	9.6	6.4	4.8

Addiction

Once a colonist develops Alcohol addiction, a new bar called "Alcohol" will appear in their "Needs" tab. The colonist will consume beer when the bar is low enough. Abstinence will cause the colonist to enter a withdrawal period that adds a negative thought with a -35 mood penalty which is necessary if intending to cure the addiction. Recovery can be monitored by checking the "Health" tab. Once withdrawal reaches 100%, the character will lose the addiction. It will take about 40 days to recover from an alchohol addiction, during which the colonist will have violent and frequent mental breaks.

Animals can also become addicted, and suffer the same negative health effects as humans.

Hangover

Once a colonist reaches a drunk state, they will go through the hangover stages after their inebriation wears off. If a colonist drinks beer while hungover they will be both hungover and inebriated. Severity starts at 100% and decreases consistently to 0% over the course of a full day, however it isn't visible until after the alcohol effect is gone.

Label	Severity %	Mood	Side Effects
Hungover (pounding)	>40%	-12	Consciousness -18% Vomiting mtb 0.4 days
Hungover (strong)	>15%	-6	Consciousness -8%
Hungover (slight)	>0%	-3	Consciousness -3%

Long-term Effects

When a pawn has a visible tolerance to Alcohol, they may develop Cirrhosis of the liver in a mean time of 60 in-game days (or 1 year), which permanently hinders their consciousness, blood filtration, and blood pumping - and the only way to cure Cirrhosis is to perform a liver transplant. Additionally, a Major or worse Carcinoma (with a minimum severity of 0.5) may develop in the liver in a mean time of 180 in-game days (3 years), again being fixable either via transplant, or removed by a skilled doctor. Animals cannot have transplants.

Chemical damage can occur in the brain while unconscious in a mean time of 10 days' spent blacked out, which reduces consciousness to 50%, significantly reducing performance. There is no way to perform brain surgery.

Trivia

In real life, beer is brewed from malted barley/wheat, not hops. Hops are used in the brewing of beer to provide flavor and as a preservative.

Also unlike its RimWorld counterpart, real beer is typically not flammable as it does not have sufficient alcohol content. In fact, a bottle of beer being placed in a fire would be more likely to extinguish it when the bottle broke.

This, along with wood, is one of only two items that serves dual purposes as both a usable item and an improvised weapons.

Version History

0.9.722 - Possibly Added. Beer brewing, beer drinking, inebriated thoughts, ability impacts and hangovers added.
Beta 19/1.0 - Beer fermenting time 10 days -> 6 days. Buffed beer bottles slightly (~10%) above fists in terms of DPS

Drugs