Chapter 151 Winemaking and Grain
Peter started tinkering again. He was doing strange things in the alchemy room he built.
Alchemy originated in Egypt and was developed during the Hellenistic period. In the Middle Ages, Europeans believed that some means could turn stone into gold, so they began a large number of experiments. Although there was no gold, it also promoted the development of chemistry.
In Spain, a Christian country occupied by Arabs, Jews caught between Arabs and Christians began the first batch of translation work. However, because they were not alchemists and were not very proficient in Latin, they translated works such as "Seven The translations of works like "Ten Treatises" are difficult to understand or even completely meaningless. Later, some scholars in the Christian world began to come into contact with alchemy, which officially announced the beginning of the European period of alchemy.
Peter also built an alchemy room, where he tinkered when he was bored. He also exchanged letters with other alchemists under false names. For example, he learned from a mad 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.
The most common alcohol in Europe now is wine, and grain wine is relatively rare. Although there is beer, the alcohol content is too low. It would be fine if there were grain wine with a higher alcohol content. The Russians would like it.
He remembered that vodka had an additional filtration step. The original wine was first filtered and then distilled. The only way to filter in this era was charcoal. The original wine brewed from barley was first filtered with charcoal, and then distilled using a brandy still passed down from the Crusades. In this way, you have alcohol with a concentration of up to 90%, and then use distilled water to dilute it, 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. This kind of torture is unbearable. If Peter hadn't done something else, the Archduke would have thought that his son had gone crazy with alchemy.
Finally, after a week of "alchemy", 12 bottles of crystal clear wine were successfully released. I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know how it works.
Peter took a taste, and a strong feeling spread in his mouth. The spicy smell hit Tianling Gai, and Peter almost fainted from the rush.
“Looks okay”
Such a wine will surely conquer the Cossacks and those who live in high latitudes, for whom the taste is very suitable. Moreover, the wine before being mixed with water can be used as medical alcohol, truly making one wine multi-purpose.
In addition to brewing wine, Peter also conducted 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 professionals.
Dobroga has a bumper harvest of grain every year. The use of iron farm tools and fertilizers has greatly increased grain output, 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 avoidance is avoided as much as possible. Low grain prices hurt farmers.
Even so, Dobroga's granary is nearly full. A large amount of food is accumulated here, and it will become moldy if it is not eaten.
In order to consume these grains, Peter started with bread, the local staple food. Peter ordered that no strange things be mixed with the bread, including stones and dirt. Grain chaff and grass chaff are added to it, and the proportion should not exceed one-fifth.
Originally, Peter was still very uneasy and felt that his heart was too dark. In order to prevent the taste of the black bread from deteriorating, he specifically ordered the bakers to add less straw bran. However, the supervisor did something even darker than him. Peter ordered 20% of chaff to be added to the bread, but he directly asked for 30%...
In their opinion, it was absolutely a genius idea for the lord to add straw chaff to the bread. And he feels that adding grass chaff is much kinder than adding pebbles and soil.
You know, black bread with soil and stones added is almost as hard as bricks and can be used for fighting. When I eat, it makes my teeth itch. But after replacing the soil and stones with straw chaff, the black bread no longer looks like bricks and tastes much softer. Although it cannot be compared with pure black bread, it is much better than those "black stick" black bread.
This is why Peter has never eaten real "black baguette" bread, the kind of black baguette that can be used as a brick. The black-hearted boss can mix 20% of the soil into it. When the soil is dried in the oven, will it not become hard? Therefore, when eating black baguette, you often need to melt it with hot water. Because you need to use hot water to soften the soil components, otherwise it will be unpalatable.
The black bread mixed with straw bran is different. In any case, straw bran is 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 good treatment. After all, grass bran can also be digested by the stomach, but it has no nutrition, but at least it can satisfy hunger.
The improvement of bread has won the hearts of a group of people, and they already eat more than people in most countries. If I have spare money, I will buy some cakes to improve them. More and more abundant food indicates that farmers are getting better and better.
But even with this consumption, there is still a lot of food. Peter can only sell it. In addition to selling it to the Caucasus, it can also be sold to Western Europe and Castile.
Although Castile is large, most of its territory is plateau. Only 11% of the country's land is located in plain areas below 200 meters above sea level. Only in these plain areas can agricultural activities take place. Moreover, not all of these 11% plains have been reclaimed into farmland. Therefore, Castile and Aragon seem to have large territories, but they do not have much arable land. In addition, the population is still large, so food prices are relatively expensive. It is a very cost-effective business to transport the grain there and sell it. And according to reliable information, Iberia’s food demand is much 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 River and Vojvodina. Now that most of the Balkans are included in Wallachia's territory, food naturally flows.
Some farmers began to plant other crops to earn more income. The most common ones are grapes, because corn and potatoes suitable for planting are still in the Americas. The planting of sugar beet has also increased, but it is a pity that it is not the high-sugar sugar beet of later generations, otherwise the race will be better. Less than half of Preuss's sugar cane plantations were left.