Eisen looked at his brewing equipment, and quickly started to think about which recipe he should go for first. Until now, he had mostly gone for Whiskey and stronger liquor, simply because it was something that he was used to making; it was his main source of income on earth right now, after all. But a quite large portion of the recipes in Gordon's book were more focused on things other than that. Certain combinations of spices and fruit that came together in the process of fermentation to create some decent wines and beers. That was the sort of thing that led to the most interesting effets, and most likely, the most uniquely different flavors.
From what Eisen could tell, in the giant country they were generally used to stronger alcohol made using simpler recipes, since that was the easiest way to create the huge quant.i.ties needed for Giants to actually enjoy themselves. Since it was rather cold in this country, getting the large amount of fruit you would need in order to make such ma.s.ses of wine was also pretty hard. But just because it was hard to get didn't mean that people didn't like it.
When he went past the local taverns and pubs, Eisen did see people enjoying wine, but from the glances of the menus he got, it was incredibly expensive compared to other alcohol. It was most likely something imported from other countries, or the few places in this country that did have at least a little amount of fruit to make use of.
As such, it was the obvious choice to go for a large variety of different, uniquely-tasting wines. The cold weather would also make something like mulled wine a perfect choice to get people interested in Gordon's creations.
And so, Eisen took a quick look at the ingredients he had available. Luckily, since Parc was particularly interested in the concept of creating different kinds of potion candies when working with Alchemy, Eisen had a few barrels filled with different fruit. Obviously, not enough for him to make enough for a Giant to enjoy, but he wasn't aiming for them anyway. His targets were the people living alongside them.
In this country, production of most products was focused on the giants; it made sense, of course. The most skilled craftsmen were Giants, the materials available here were perfect for creating items for them, and they simply took longer to make than items for regular-sized people. So, most of the time, especially in terms of food production, the market focus was placed on the giants, and the others simply had to follow along with that.
So, if there was suddenly a unique product that giants aren't able to properly enjoy, it would spread through rumors and word of mouth, further increasing the interest in said product. If they wanted to, the giants could simply shrink down and enjoy the wines like that anyway, it simply wouldn't be available in ma.s.sive amounts.
Eisen looked at the fruit he had; Iceberries, Yellow Grapes and Rock Peaches, fruit that were comparatively hard to acquire simply because they only thrived in specific places. They were of a relatively high rank as well, so the wines would come out great on the effect side of things. Beside that, he had more normal fruit, like Strawberries, Lemons, and Black Apples. While Black Apples looked and sounded rather unappetizing at first glance, taste-wise, they were just like high-quality apples, simply that they had incredibly dark red flesh and black skin, so Eisen counted them on the more normal side. He was sure that the color of the wine they would produce would be pretty interesting, and some mulled apple wine with cinnamon would probably be quite popular too. Eisen already couldn't wait until he was done with it.
Beside those six types of fruit, Eisen also wanted to make some flower wine. However, since the only flowers he had were the kind that were useful in potion-making, he had to think about exactly which to use. Flowers with enough mana within them to be useful for potions could generally cause some pretty unique effects, especially after being fermented. At least that's what Eisen could tell from the recipes made using potion-centric flowers.
He had a lot of them, but he didn't yet feel confident enough in his brewing-instincts to be able to properly guess what sort of changes fermentation could do to the effects he was used to. For example, there was one recipe that used the Golden Morningbellow; it was a flower generally used in different healing potions. On its own, it had just a simple healing effect, but after fermentation, it gave you a certain amount of cold resistance. Eisen didn't yet understand how it went from one to the other; maybe Jyuuk had some more insight on that aspect, but currently, it simply wasn't something that Eisen had a huge amount of intuition for. He certainly wanted to use Gordon's methods to make his own recipes, but that was nothing that he wanted to spend this relatively limited amount of time doing.
Instead, he would just stick to the recipes in the books, at least when it came to potion-flowers. For now, Eisen had three flowers that he wanted to make wine with.
Said Golden Morningbellow to make a nice mulled wine that he could sell alongside the mulled apple wine, a wine with Morxica, a flower that was used to make an Agility-buffing potion, while the wine would have deeply physically relaxing effects, and the last flower he would use was Robingrowth. It was a flower that on its own didn't produce any particular results; instead, it was used as an ingredient to increase the potency of other effects as well as the general stability of certain potions.
This one had the most interesting effect once turned into wine, at least as far as Eisen was concerned. It turned your skin purple for about an hour. It seemed like something fun that he could use to get people interested in the wines, and simply a way for people to have some fun. It certainly wasn't because Eisen was eager to see the shocked expressions of some youngsters that he gave it to for a taste-test. Certainly not.
That being said, Eisen brought out all the ingredients, together with some different spices, herbs, and minerals that would imbue certain flavors and effects into the brews.
Eisen sorted the ingredients that he needed, prepared all the large containers he would be storing the wine in until it was ready, and soon was able to get started. For now, Eisen started with the flower wines.
He brought three large containers of water to a boil and placed one type of flower petal into each one. After stirring to make sure that they were all properly in the water, Eisen already finished the first step of making this wine. He would have to let this sit for a few hours before continuing.
Instead, Eisen could now move onto the next step; prepwork. He had to de-seed the yellow grapes, rock peaches, and black apples, as well as cut the lemons into slices. For this, Eisen quickly summoned a few doubles so that they could share the workload. It wasn't hard work by any means, simply something small and annoying that had to be done.
Especially using Bai, Eisen was able to slice through these simple lemons without a speck of resistance. The de-seeding that was being done by the doubles was also proceeding at a quick enough pace. Though, since Eisen was working with a relatively large amount, it still took a couple of hours for him to finish. The most annoying part was actually to skin half of the yellow grapes.
For regular grape wine, there was a difference between red and white wine. The red color would come from the grapes' skin. So with these, the equivalent would be yellow wine, something that Eisen was eager to try out. But even so, he was still curious about the difference between yellow and white wines made from yellow grapes, so he would simply try out both.
While the doubles already started pressing all the different fruits, with the exception of the lemons, into pulp, Eisen was cleaning up a little and waiting for the flower petals to be ready. And as he did, he saw a curious small face peaking into his workshop.