#alcohol warn

So after a certain point, all pre-war alcohol just becomes outright garbage, right? Like I’m no spirits scholar but almost nothing lasts that long, especially with whatever substandard storage or lack thereof it would experience once most of the power goes down and buildings get ripped apart.

So the people who know what pre-war alcohol tastes like is pretty much exclusively Ghouls, and their sense of taste has probably deteriorated a lot at this point, so even they might not realize people are getting drunk/”drunk” off of piss vinegar basically. And stills definitely exist, but I wonder how many moonshiners would try to emulate the taste of “real” pre-war alcohol, aka vinegar.

And then there’s the Vaults. They had people bring booze down, we know (there’s booze and bullets EVERYWHERE in pre-war buildings, even offices, so I accept that that was just part of the culture of the time like with cigarettes). And I’m certain a few had people set up stills, people who’d actually tasted pre-war booze and passed the taste down via moonshine.

So I don’t really have a conclusion but it’s interesting to think about. There’s no real way to get “authentic” pre-war flavors, even in alcohol, unless there’s a Ghoul out there who had a brewery or still or something and has been painstakingly cranking out the exact same flavor of spirit for however long. Everything is an echo of an echo, a photograph of a photograph, a tracing of a tracing.

On quick research, it seems certain types of alcohol don’t expire, at least in the uncertain timeline here. Not sure if this person means “within your, the reader’s, human lifespan” or “yeah that’ll keep for 200+ years”. Wars, deathclaws, and radiation certainly would have an effect too.

“Most primary (also called "base") liquors like whiskey, brandy, rum, gin, tequila, and vodka, have an almost infinite shelf life if left unopened.

That's because they don't have much sugar and, unopened, aren't at risk of any oxidation. The high alcohol content also makes them particularly inhospitable to bacteria life.”