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Originally Posted by chico20854
Thanks for this Homer! A question for the hive mind: how effective are breweries for producing alcohol for fuel, etither methanol or ethanol? I'm aware of the vast numbers of breweries all throughout Germany, certainly many times more common than distilleries. While units would likely carry smaller stills (like the small and medium stills in the v1 equipment list), it seems likely that units in static positions would want to take advantage of industrial-scale alcohol production capability to build up those stocks.
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I spent A LOT of time on this in the past. Still weight seemed too high by nearly an order of magnitude for the production volumes. The exception to this is when the fermentation process is ongoing due to liquid weight (I suppose the large volume could be a factor in the "weight"). Therefore I see units needing to be static for the actual production (other reasons as well such as needing fires, having to preprocess the biomass, etc). I suppose reducing still weight by 90% reflects having perfect equipment and maybe 66% to 75% reduction due to ad hoc construction would fit the game better. With these numbers I can see more stills being in the field. The biggest issue in the field would be the refining of the alcohol to 100% as simple distillation only takes you to 95%.
When looking for realism related to alcohol production in game bumps up against a lot of real world problems (like not being able to make it from wood without genetically modified yeast or bacteria we are just now refining). Agricultural waste and things like sawgrass and switchgrass have tremendous potential to be used, but they require more preprocessing which makes the industrial production easier to explain. In the field you would probably need to use something you would much rather save for eating.