eastern european eagle

Chapter 151 Brewing and Grain

Peter started to fiddle with something again. He made some weird things in the alchemy room he built.

Alchemy originated in Egypt and developed during the Hellenistic period.In the Middle Ages, Europeans believed that stones could be turned into gold through some means, so they started a lot of experiments. Although there was no gold, it also promoted the development of chemistry.

In Spain, a Christian country occupied by Arabs, the Jews who were caught between Arabs and Christianity started the first batch of translation work. However, because they were not alchemists and were not very proficient in Latin, translations such as "[-] The translations of works such as "Ten Treatises" are difficult to understand, and even completely miss the meaning.Later, some scholars in the Christian world came into contact with alchemy, which officially announced the opening of the European period of alchemy.

Peter also built an alchemy room, where he tinkered when he was bored.He also communicated with other alchemists under a pseudonym. For example, he learned from a madman alchemist in Florence that gold would appear after a series of processes such as distilling urine.

. . .It is also a unique insight.

But Peter's latest research topic is: how to improve winemaking technology.

Wine is the most common wine in Europe now, and grain wine is relatively rare. Although there is beer, the alcohol content is too low. If there is higher alcohol alcohol, it will be fine, and the Rus people will like it.

He remembered that vodka had an additional filtering step, the original wine was first filtered and then distilled.In this era, only charcoal can be used for filtering. First, the original wine brewed with barley is filtered with charcoal, and then distilled with the brandy still that came from the Crusades.In this way, alcohol with a concentration of up to 90% is obtained, and then desalinated with distilled water, so that a bottle of crystal clear new wine is ready.

During the production process, Peter did not dare to sleep, for fear that the experiment would fail.Moreover, every 10 liters of distillate must be continuously filtered with 1.5 kilograms of charcoal for no less than 8 hours. Such torture is unbearable.If it wasn't for Peter doing something else, the Grand Duke would have thought that his son had gone mad in alchemy.

Finally, after a week of "alchemy", 12 bottles of crystal clear wine were successfully released.Just haven't tried it yet, don't know how it works.

Peter took a sip, and a strong sensation spread in his mouth.The spicy taste rushed straight to the sky, and Peter almost fainted.

“It looks ok”

Such a wine will surely conquer the Cossacks and those who live in high latitudes, for whom such a taste is very suitable.Moreover, the wine liquid before watering can be used as medical alcohol, so that one wine can be used for multiple purposes.

In addition to brewing, Peter also carried out some other experiments, but most of them failed.It can be seen that such success will not last, and this kind of thing can only be left to professional people.

The grain harvest in Dobroga is bumper every year. The application of iron tools and fertilizers has greatly increased the grain production, and the regulation of grain prices has been successful. No matter it is a good year or a disaster year, the price will not be too outrageous, and it will be avoided as much as possible. Low grain prices hurt farmers' situation.

Even so, Dobroja's granary is almost full.A large amount of food is piled up here, and if you don't eat it, it will go moldy.

In order to consume these grains, Peter started with the local staple food, bread.Peter ordered that no strange things be mixed with the bread, including stones and dirt.Add rice chaff and grass chaff to it, and the ratio should not exceed one-fifth.

Originally, Peter was still very disturbed and felt that his heart was too dark. In order not to make the taste of the black bread worse, he specially ordered the bakers to add less chaff.However, the supervisor did something darker than him.Peter ordered to add [-]% chaff to the bread, but he directly asked for [-]%...

In their view, it was definitely a genius idea for the lord to add grass chaff to the bread.And he felt that adding grass chaff was much more kind than adding stones and soil.

You know, black bread with mud and stones added is almost as hard as a brick, and it can be used directly for fighting.It hurts my teeth when I eat it.But after replacing the soil and stones with grass chaff, the black bread is not so brick-like, and it tastes much softer.Although it cannot be compared with pure black bread, it is much better than those "black stick" black bread.

This is also why Peter has never eaten the real "black stick" bread, the kind of black stick bread that can be used as a brick, and the black-hearted boss can mix [-]% of the soil in it.When the soil is dried in the oven, can it not be hard?Therefore, when eating black stick bread, it is often necessary to melt it with hot water.Because, you need to use hot water to soften those soil components, otherwise you can't eat it.

The black bread mixed with grass bran is different. Anyway, grass bran is also edible—although the grade is too low.But for the poor people in the Middle Ages, the ingredients in the bread were all edible, which was considered a very good treatment.After all, grass bran can also be digested by the stomach, but it is not nutritious, but at least it can satisfy hunger.

The improvement of bread has won the hearts of the people again, and they have eaten more than most people in most countries.If I have spare money, I will buy some cakes to improve it.More and more abundant food shows that farmers are getting better off.

But even with such consumption, there is still a lot of food.Peter can only sell it. In addition to selling to the Caucasus, it is also possible to sell to Western Europe and Castile.

Although Castile is a large country, most of it is a plateau.Only 11% of the country's land is located in the plains below 200 meters above sea level.It is only in these plain areas that there are agricultural activities.Moreover, not all of the 11% of the plains were reclaimed into farmland.Therefore, the land of Castile and Aragon looks large, but the area of ​​cultivated land is not much.Coupled with the large population, food prices are relatively expensive.It is a very cost-effective business to transport grain there for sale.And according to reliable sources, Iberia's food demand is greater than that of the UK, and it relies on imports all year round.Aragon transports a large amount of grain back home from the "golden basin" of colonial Sicily every year, and imports a large amount of grain from neighboring France.

In addition, the Balkans are also mountainous.The main sources of food are concentrated in the lower Danube and Vojvodina.Now that most of the Balkans are included in the territory of Wallachia, the food flow is naturally flowing.

Some farmers have begun to plant other crops to gain more income, the most common one is grapes, because the corn and potatoes suitable for planting are still in the Americas, and the planting of beet has also increased, but unfortunately it is not the high-sugar beet of later generations, otherwise Cyprus There will be less than half of the sugar cane plantations.

(End of this chapter)