Alcohol/Beers

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Purpose

The purpose of this project is the:

• Creating a map of breweries;
• Developing the taxonomy;
• Solving inconsistencies;
• To get the maximum out of beer labels

Instructions

• Complete the information from beer bottles;
• Complete brewery address - add the complete brewery address as Brewery Name, Streetname, Postal Code, City, Region, Country;

Fields

Each product that is entered into Open Food Facts has a set of fields. What should be entered in these field is not always clear and ambigious. In order to limit this confusion the best practice is listed here. The principle is that only information available on the labels, bottle and capsule might be used. Use the language selected on the OFF Edit Product page. If you use another language to enter fiels, precede it with a lanuage specifier. Thus on the french edit page we would enter en:Wheat Beer.

Best Practices

Have a look at the best practices-page to see detailed information on how to fill in each field.

Enhanced Fields

Several fields might be enhanced with information that is not found on the label.

Categories

The categories found on a label are very limited. They can be enhanced using the Global categories taxonomy.We try to define the rationale behind the categories here.

Current taxonomy

The current categories taxonomy for beer is:

1. Beverages : food that can be drunk

1. Alcoholic beverages - Beverages with ingredient alcohol on the label;

1. Beers : Alcoholic beverages based on fermentation of (malted) grains (wikipedia), implying that a grain should be on the ingredient list;

1. Lager : light coloured beer;
2. Amber beers : intermediate colour beers (fr:Bières ambrées)
3. Red beers : not sure about the definition;
4. Stout : very dark coloured beers;
5. Belgian beers : beers with the brewery in Belgium (fr:Bières belges)
6. French beers : beers with the brewery in France (fr:bières françaises)
7. Beers with fruits : beers where fruits have been added

1. Cherry beer : beers where the fruit cherry has been added

1. Wheat beers - beers based on unmalted wheat in a large proportion (wikipedia);
2. Strong beers : beers with a high alcohol level

1. Artisan Products - indicates the scale? of the manufacturing

1. Artisan Beverage Products

1. Artisan Alcoholic Beverage Products (alcool artisanaux)

1. Craft Beer : beers produced on a small scale (needs better definition)

Possible categories

Some other categories that are found on labels:

• Lambic;

Wikipedia

Links to Breweries on Wikipedia could be entered. To make clear it is external information, this link should be preceded with wikipedia:. Here is an example of how this could work: (see product 5411098110000 m).

Do not like how this works out. The field should only be used for keyword like attributes. There is not really a place to put url's such as these.--Aleene (talk) 18:59, 5 September 2015 (CEST)

Open Street Map

Location of breweries could be specified through an Open Street Map link. The link should then point to the brewery building (the way in OSM terms). To make clear this concerns external / non-OFF / non productlabel information is should be preceded by OSM:. Here is an example of how this could work: (see product 5411098110000 m) .

Observations

While entering the beers, we make various observations and conclusions, which are nice to keep; List them in this section.

Nutritional values

The nutritional values are rarely found on beers. Exceptions are:

• Guiness Special Export with a complete list (see product 54004207 m);
• Grimbergen ambréé with the energie (see product 3080216003306 m);

Alcohol prevention

Some beers in France (2340.fr) and the UK (drinkaware.co.uk) show information to limit alchol consumption. This is expressed in Alcohol units.

Discussion

Non label information

In order to complete a brewery map, information not found on the label must be added. This could be indicated by the prefix added:

Reinheitsgebot

Beers in Germany can only be called beers if the adhere to the Reinheitsgebot, i.e. beer ingredients can only contain water, malt and hops. Thus a product such as Lammsbrau is not labeled as beer, whereas in other countries it is.

I am definitely no professional on the topic (nor a lawyer), but I believe that this no necessarily more true. See the following excerpt from the German Wikipedia:

Was als Bier bezeichnet werden darf, regelt die Bierverordnung (BierV) von 2005. Demnach ist die Einhaltung der im Vorläufigen Biergesetz normierten Herstellungsvorschriften maßgeblich. Besonders strenge Vorschriften gelten nur noch für die untergärige Bierherstellung in Deutschland für den deutschen Markt. Hersteller von importiertem Bier sind aufgrund des nach dem Urteil des Europäischen Gerichtshofes von 1987 angepassten deutschen Rechts nicht an diese Vorschriften gebunden; auch deutsche Brauereien können davon abweichen, wenn sie untergäriges Bier für den Export produzieren, oder für „besondere Biere“ eine Ausnahmegenehmigung erhalten.

And the following from the English Wikipedia:

Thus, German breweries continue to comply with the Biergesetz, and often claim compliance with the Reinheitsgebot even when it is patently incorrect (for example, for Wheat beer which were prohibited by the Reinheitsgebot). Thus the Reinheitsgebot has become a valuable marketing tool. Until superseded by a change in EU law, the Reinheitsgebot was also enforced in Greece from the early 19th century due to a law by the first Greek king, Otto (originally a Bavarian prince) that had remained in effect for over a hundred years. The law drew criticism from foreign brewers as a form of protectionism that allowed Germany to prohibit beers from Belgium and England which contained sugars, grains such as Corn and Rice, and clarification and fining agents.

--hangy (talk) 16:11, 23 August 2015 (CEST)

OK, then the question is whether we re-label an alcoholic beverage as beer, when the ingredients are right, but it is not called as such on the productlabel (malt, hops). --Aleene (talk) 19:48, 23 August 2015 (CEST)

Sixpack and single bottles

Often beer is sold in a sixpack (or more). What to do with single bottles that came from such a sixpack. Often(?) these bottles do not have a barcode, but might contain interesting information. So do we add these bottles as products without a barcode?

Bottle shapes

Would it be possible to register the shapes of a bottle? We could mesure height and maximum width to characterise a bottles shape.

OFF Limitations

The current setup of Open Food Facts has some limitations if you want to markup beer products in extreme detail. As these are extreme details, they are not really relevant to the main purpose of OFF, but you will find them listed on a separate page.

Search Queries

Some search queries that can be done related to beer:

• Find all "biere" in the world [410 results @ 24/8/15] (query);
• Find all "bier" in the world [33 results @ 24/8/15] (query);
• Find all "beer" in the world [242 results @ 24/8/15] (query);
• Find all biere with the label "en:Not advised for pregnant women" query;
• Find all biere with the packaging code "en:Green Dot" query;
• All "biere" with a geographic location [17 results @ 24/8/15] (query);
• Alcohol distribution of "biere" [343 results @ 24/8/15] (query);

To Do's

• Clean up existing beers following above best practices;
• ANSWERED : How can we make a beer/biere/bier search with all beers entered in all languages? -> Use the categories field in a search;
• ANSWERED : Recycling instructions now appear in the labels field and not the packaging field. Needs to be corrected. -> it is left as such for the moment;
• ANSWERED : In which field should the brewer be added? EMB code field is best, as it might be added to the geographic search results.

The EMB field is one of the most misused. I think it should ONLY be used for EMB codes and European sanitary stamps… --Tacite (talk) 20:44, 23 August 2015 (CEST)

• Some label logo's are not public domain, need to as permission to use them, or make a public domain version ourselves.
• The Nutritional Values fields should have one for Alcohol Units (Unité alcool), which has no unit.