Dang, I miss the old site, where Ursula explained that wombats indeed DO have beer as alluded to in the song, but it’s made from roots and tubers and ranges from
…”a mild brew suitable for unwinding with your friends after a long day swinging the pickaxe, to a potato vodka used as an industrial solvent. They also have a form of mead made from aphid Honeydew, which is usually cause newcomers to go ‘that’s…interesting’, is considered an acquired taste, and never enjoyed much success on the export market.”
which of course allowed me to comment.
“oh no…potato home-brew.
I can’t see the words “potato vodka” without bad memories coming to mind.
KIDS! no mater how desperate for cash and drink you become at university, take this advice from me and NEVER try and make potcheen from potatoes and distill it in your freezer by taking out the ice as it forms until all the water is gone and neat alcohol is left. It works, and it’s cheep and easy, and its sure gets you drunk, but dear god your body will not thank you for it afterward!”
Well, Bunnyrock, when you consider neat alcohol is a poison it isn’t too surprising the body complains a bit.
Aren’t we lucky as a species that alcohol gets us drunk but also metabolizes quickly? If the aftermath of a bender lasted as long as even 2 or 3 days I expect alcohol would be a lot less popular.
Depends on what you mean by lucky, AlpineBob. However, poppy milk not withstanding, beer and harder drinks were a popular anesthetic in medieval times. Hate to think wha would happen if the drunken patient woke up before the surgery (a tooth extraction for example) was over. You’d be dealing with an angry drunk with a tooth-ache to boot! Neat alcohol could be a useful anti-septic though…
That’s why you have to go all out and buy a beer brewing kit. My roommates and I are in the fermenting process of our first batch. It’s a pale ale, but we haven’t decided what to name it. we were thinking “dragon piss” as a play on “dragon’s milk” which is really good beer.
@Trogdog: yes well, but then that would imply live birth for your dragons: egg laying terrestrial -vertebrates (not fish) excrete nitrogenous waste as semi crystalline uric acid (the white component of birdshit) as it is non-soluble in water, and so the excreta of the foetus will not be able to dissolve into the egg and poison the developing creature. However mammals excrete Urea which is water-soluble as the foetus develops inside the mother, and waste must exit via the placenta. Therefore waste must be soluble in the mother’s blood as she has to then pick it up at the plecenta excrete it for the foetus. As a result adult mammals urinate, and adult birds crap white stuff: it’s a hangover from development of the young.
I suppose you could have the dragons gain the ability to urinate at puberty possibly as a territorial marking behaviour, or as a cooling system as in Ostriches (although their “urine ” is just very dilute Uric-acid/water suspension. If you’re making pale ale it would look noting like that, so you’d have to have your dragon exerting urea for the name to make any sense) or as a built-in fire extinguisher. Possibly the fact that dragons sleep on hoards of treasure could be combined with this to explain why: as an evolved response to bed-wetting. If they urinate for the first time post-puberty they would have to learn bladder control as adults, and if they are anything like Discworld dragons their every bodily fluid would be corrosive, and so a bed made of a Noble metal may be the only think that would survive a little nocturnal accident. it would not be impossible to have an egg laying creature urinate, but it would be tricky. (Note: I have a perfectly good reason to have given this subject that much thought: My not-quite finished Sci-fi novel had sentient GM Deinonychus warriors in it and I wrote that they urinated and even described the smell in some detail before I realised the above problems with an egg layer urinating, so I wrote it in that as they were GM they were designed to be able, from puberty, to excrete either way: that way they can save water when they are in a dry environment, but can taker advantage of a handy supply of coolant and a way to sterilize battlefield wounds when water is plentiful. I even re-designed them to have a coagulant gland in their bladder as well.)
This may seem completely trivial, but [sincerity mode]who /doesn’t/ want to try aphid mead? It would likely have a sweetish flavor of mead, but lighter without necessarily having a weaker flavor, and with the bitterness to contrast and a hint of that slightly bug-flesh* flavor to add another subtle level to the flavor of the mead.[/mode]
*That distinct quality posessed by the carapaces of herbivorous insects seem to have– not earthy, not meaty, but a kind of quality unto itself that I lack the ability to here describe.
There is a decided dearth of wombattish brevity in the world.
😉
Dang, I miss the old site, where Ursula explained that wombats indeed DO have beer as alluded to in the song, but it’s made from roots and tubers and ranges from
…”a mild brew suitable for unwinding with your friends after a long day swinging the pickaxe, to a potato vodka used as an industrial solvent. They also have a form of mead made from aphid Honeydew, which is usually cause newcomers to go ‘that’s…interesting’, is considered an acquired taste, and never enjoyed much success on the export market.”
which of course allowed me to comment.
“oh no…potato home-brew.
I can’t see the words “potato vodka” without bad memories coming to mind.
KIDS! no mater how desperate for cash and drink you become at university, take this advice from me and NEVER try and make potcheen from potatoes and distill it in your freezer by taking out the ice as it forms until all the water is gone and neat alcohol is left. It works, and it’s cheep and easy, and its sure gets you drunk, but dear god your body will not thank you for it afterward!”
Well, Bunnyrock, when you consider neat alcohol is a poison it isn’t too surprising the body complains a bit.
Aren’t we lucky as a species that alcohol gets us drunk but also metabolizes quickly? If the aftermath of a bender lasted as long as even 2 or 3 days I expect alcohol would be a lot less popular.
Depends on what you mean by lucky, AlpineBob. However, poppy milk not withstanding, beer and harder drinks were a popular anesthetic in medieval times. Hate to think wha would happen if the drunken patient woke up before the surgery (a tooth extraction for example) was over. You’d be dealing with an angry drunk with a tooth-ache to boot! Neat alcohol could be a useful anti-septic though…
That’s why you have to go all out and buy a beer brewing kit. My roommates and I are in the fermenting process of our first batch. It’s a pale ale, but we haven’t decided what to name it. we were thinking “dragon piss” as a play on “dragon’s milk” which is really good beer.
@Trogdog: yes well, but then that would imply live birth for your dragons: egg laying terrestrial -vertebrates (not fish) excrete nitrogenous waste as semi crystalline uric acid (the white component of birdshit) as it is non-soluble in water, and so the excreta of the foetus will not be able to dissolve into the egg and poison the developing creature. However mammals excrete Urea which is water-soluble as the foetus develops inside the mother, and waste must exit via the placenta. Therefore waste must be soluble in the mother’s blood as she has to then pick it up at the plecenta excrete it for the foetus. As a result adult mammals urinate, and adult birds crap white stuff: it’s a hangover from development of the young.
I suppose you could have the dragons gain the ability to urinate at puberty possibly as a territorial marking behaviour, or as a cooling system as in Ostriches (although their “urine ” is just very dilute Uric-acid/water suspension. If you’re making pale ale it would look noting like that, so you’d have to have your dragon exerting urea for the name to make any sense) or as a built-in fire extinguisher. Possibly the fact that dragons sleep on hoards of treasure could be combined with this to explain why: as an evolved response to bed-wetting. If they urinate for the first time post-puberty they would have to learn bladder control as adults, and if they are anything like Discworld dragons their every bodily fluid would be corrosive, and so a bed made of a Noble metal may be the only think that would survive a little nocturnal accident. it would not be impossible to have an egg laying creature urinate, but it would be tricky. (Note: I have a perfectly good reason to have given this subject that much thought: My not-quite finished Sci-fi novel had sentient GM Deinonychus warriors in it and I wrote that they urinated and even described the smell in some detail before I realised the above problems with an egg layer urinating, so I wrote it in that as they were GM they were designed to be able, from puberty, to excrete either way: that way they can save water when they are in a dry environment, but can taker advantage of a handy supply of coolant and a way to sterilize battlefield wounds when water is plentiful. I even re-designed them to have a coagulant gland in their bladder as well.)
Right, bed time.
This may seem completely trivial, but [sincerity mode]who /doesn’t/ want to try aphid mead? It would likely have a sweetish flavor of mead, but lighter without necessarily having a weaker flavor, and with the bitterness to contrast and a hint of that slightly bug-flesh* flavor to add another subtle level to the flavor of the mead.[/mode]
*That distinct quality posessed by the carapaces of herbivorous insects seem to have– not earthy, not meaty, but a kind of quality unto itself that I lack the ability to here describe.
I wonder if anyone else spotted the typo on the page…
Hey, BunnyRock? What’s GM mean?
Might mean “Genetically Modified”.