[HN Gopher] Show HN: BeerBase - an accessible worldwide open bee...
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       Show HN: BeerBase - an accessible worldwide open beer database
        
       Author : midzer
       Score  : 77 points
       Date   : 2022-02-06 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (beerba.se)
 (TXT) w3m dump (beerba.se)
        
       | bzzzt wrote:
       | The site or database seems to have broken unicode support: my
       | favorite Norwegian brewery "Nogne o" is listed as "NA,gne A~" :(
        
       | jerrysievert wrote:
       | since you're missing a lot of data, here's a link to 10k
       | breweries in the US:
       | 
       | https://www.brewersassociation.org/wp-content/themes/ba2019/...
       | 
       | might help fill in a little bit of the missing data.
        
       | ksherlock wrote:
       | Following the links, this uses data from the OpenBeerDB which was
       | last updated in 2011?
       | 
       | https://openbeerdb.com
        
       | fastball wrote:
       | Seems like the data is coming from here[1], which is now...
       | defunct.
       | 
       | Both need a method for crowd-sourcing the data that doesn't seem
       | present.
       | 
       | [1] https://openbeerdb.com/
        
       | malux85 wrote:
       | Good start! I was hoping for ingredients list for beers, I'm
       | lactose intolerant and recently discovered (the hard way) that
       | some pale ales have lactose in them, and many beers don't put the
       | ingredients on the bottle - which I thought they had to do
       | legally :<
       | 
       | I skip beers now because my lactose intolerance isn't the "cheese
       | makes me gassy" kind, but the "2 day splitting headache, flashes
       | in vision, want to drill my skull, 10/10 on pain scale" kind, so
       | it's not worth the risk...
       | 
       | A beer database of ingredients to query would be awesome
        
         | Arainach wrote:
         | You can always ask the servers at the brewery and they'll
         | usually know onhand. Lactose is used to get a creamy texture -
         | if you're able to easily see through the beer, it's not going
         | to have lactose, and if I'm unsure I just take an enzyme pill
         | to be safe.
        
       | Wronnay wrote:
       | Said my next brewery would be 20 km away. But in reality, my next
       | brewery is one kilometer away...
       | 
       | (I live in Bavaria - we have breweries in every village)
        
         | konfusinomicon wrote:
         | what is the most popular type of beer there? in the states
         | right now or atleast my state it seems like everything new on
         | my local stores shelves is either an IPA or some type of
         | heavily fruited sour. which isn't bad at all I'm just wondering
         | about global beer trends
        
       | rafamvc wrote:
       | It is obviously missing a lot data. The opportunity here is to
       | make a better version of the open database.
       | 
       | What's the coming back status of open beer db?
       | 
       | Is there an example of any dataset that is well maintained by a
       | community? It doesn't seem like a technical challenge but a
       | organization challenge.
        
         | yashap wrote:
         | Yeah, this list is incredibly incomplete. Looked up a bunch of
         | my favourite Canadian breweries, haven't found a single one.
         | 
         | The ability for users to add breweries and beers would be big.
         | With that being said, there are already sites like this, with
         | massive amounts of brewery/beer data, like RateBeer and
         | BeerAdvocate, so it's not like this is an unserved space.
        
         | splonk wrote:
         | Untappd, RateBeer, and BeerAdvocate all should have much better
         | data than this, which I believe are all at least partially
         | crowdsourced in various ways. I'm mostly familiar with Untappd,
         | but they're fairly strict about exporting any of their data. I
         | looked into getting API access with them some time ago and
         | basically decided that if I wanted to get any of my data,
         | writing a scraper would be a better idea.
        
         | gibspaulding wrote:
         | > Is there an example of any dataset that is well maintained by
         | a community?
         | 
         | OpenStreetMaps comes to mind, though I don't know what their
         | governance model looks like. Perhaps it's more centralized than
         | I think?
        
         | contr-error wrote:
         | The obvious place for a dataset like this is Wikidata. There's
         | already a lot of content in Wikipedia listicles (including
         | Dutch/German Wikipedia's) that could be copied over.
        
         | wes-ton wrote:
         | > Is there an example of any dataset that is well maintained by
         | a community?
         | 
         | rateyourmusic.com
        
       | PinguTS wrote:
       | Some years ago a met a brand manager from the Radeberger Group in
       | the train.
       | 
       | That time I learned that about 50% of the worldwide breweries are
       | from Germany. Within Germany about 50% of the breweries are based
       | in Franconia.
       | 
       | You should not mixup brands and breweries. Because there a big
       | breweries, which own a lot of different brands.
       | 
       | So what I see from this database a lot of data from Franconian
       | breweries is missing and other data is just wrong.
        
         | jerrysievert wrote:
         | I think your brand manager might have been fudging the numbers
         | a little bit.
         | 
         | as of 2019, there were ~1550 breweries in Germany. for Germany
         | to account for 50% of the breweries in the world, there would
         | need to be a maximum of ~3100 breweries in the world.
         | 
         | as of 2017, there were ~7450 breweries in the United States.
         | 
         | the link that I posted of ~10k breweries in the United States
         | (elsewhere in thread) includes every location for those
         | breweries, which accounts for an additional ~2500 entries.
         | 
         | those numbers definitely don't jive with Germany having 50% of
         | the breweries in the world, especially given that a very large
         | number of them in Germany are actually client brewers (like a
         | virtual brewery that is just a "brand" that has real breweries
         | brewing their beer).
        
           | PinguTS wrote:
           | First it happend to be about 15 years ago. Still when there
           | was the big boom of microbreweries in the US.
           | 
           | Don't remeber the exact numbers it was something like 8.000
           | worldwiede. 4.000 in Germany and 2.000 in Franconia.
           | 
           | Never verfied that.
           | 
           | Currentl, just living in an old country house that was used
           | for hops and the region is very well known for hops. The
           | neihgboring city has his own brewery, which is not in the
           | data. It's not a new one. It is here for more than 50 years.
        
             | jerrysievert wrote:
             | > First it happend to be about 15 years ago. Still when
             | there was the big boom of microbreweries in the US.
             | 
             | even 15 years ago, it would in no way been true, while
             | we've added quite a few breweries in the last decade, we've
             | also lost quite a few due to a mix of attrition and
             | consolidation. so, the number likely even out to about the
             | same.
             | 
             | as noted, a large portion (maybe 45%) of those in Germany
             | are really virtual breweries, so that skews the numbers
             | quite a bit. PBR is an example in the US (since 1999).
             | 
             | > Currentl, just living in an old country house that was
             | used for hops and the region is very well known for hops.
             | 
             | awesome! I personally am always on the lookout for
             | interesting hops! if you happen to have some interesting
             | varietals, I'd happily take them off your hands in trade
             | for some home-brew or one of the interesting breweries that
             | I've worked with in the Portland area :)
             | 
             | > The neihgboring city has his own brewery, which is not in
             | the data. It's not a new one. It is here for more than 50
             | years.
             | 
             | yeah, the data is ... not very good. the list I posted with
             | 7500 is a big step up, but only includes the US. I really
             | need to see if DigitalPour will do an export of their
             | brewery list, and see if it can help add to a public
             | brewery data source. there are so many great lists, but
             | most of them are private.
        
         | Green-Man wrote:
         | Thanks for suggesting the topic. I was interested in these
         | numbers from more reliable sources. Apparently, a very detailed
         | statistics is available in the BarthHaas Report
         | (https://www.barthhaas.com/downloads/berichte-broschueren)
         | 
         | Here is a approximate bier production per year for comparison:
         | 
         | World's total: 200.000.000.000 liter = 200 Gl
         | 
         | Germany: 9.000.000.000 liter = 9 Gl (5th place; try to guess
         | the leaders. We are talking about quantity, not quality)
         | 
         | Radeberger Group: 1.000.000.000 liter = 1 Gl
         | 
         | Bavaria: 2.300.000.000 ~ 2 Gl (terribly sorry, I didn't find
         | Frankonia separately :) But for the region's defense I should
         | say that excellent report comes from Nurnberg.
         | 
         | Data for years 2019-2020. There is even Top 40 breweries in the
         | world in there.
        
           | PinguTS wrote:
           | Didn't talked about the produced beer.
           | 
           | Beer from the smaler microbreweries tastes much better than
           | the one from those big ones.
           | 
           | Just to do put in relation, if there is one big brewery in
           | Mexico who produces for the whole area, like Dos Excuies, its
           | much more than a local one right next to me.
        
       | prisout64 wrote:
       | Nice, but it is missing a ton of small breweries. I will add
       | Berliner Berg to the database of there is the option:
       | https://berlinerberg.com/en/
        
         | pieter_mj wrote:
         | There are tons of microbreweries missing, some of which can be
         | pretty popular (in Belgium at least). I'll be adding a few to
         | the openbeerdb when possible.
        
         | pantalaimon wrote:
         | Eschenbrau, Vagabund, Brlo, Rollberg and Lemke are also
         | missing, but Kindl is there twice (both times with the wrong
         | address).
         | 
         | Not sure how that data set was sourced.
        
         | rzzzt wrote:
         | I only knew of Untappd, but haven't used it extensively, just
         | for casual search. Looks to be a considerable contestant in the
         | beer database space. Here's Berliner Berg in it:
         | https://untappd.com/BerlinerBergBrauerei
        
         | astoltzf wrote:
         | It's missing 90% of the breweries in my city and some of them
         | aren't that small either.
        
       | turbojerry wrote:
       | My location is incorrect and there is no manual way to specify my
       | location to find breweries.
        
       | sam_lowry_ wrote:
       | I type "westvleteren" in the search box and it finds 0 results.
       | 
       | This is the most complete beer in the world, how can it be
       | missing?
        
         | bzzzt wrote:
         | The name of the brewery is "Brouwerij Abdij Sint Sixtus".
         | https://beerba.se/brouwerij-abdij-saint-sixtus/
        
           | sam_lowry_ wrote:
           | I tried that as well. There is a typo on this website. Sint,
           | not Saint ;-)
           | 
           | The beer is known as Westvleteren, anyway.
        
       | bryanrasmussen wrote:
       | I suppose we should have an argument now as to what constitutes a
       | truly open beer, and if our favorite open beers are actually only
       | partly open or perhaps even closed.
        
         | kaetemi wrote:
         | When you remove the bottle cap, it's an open beer.
        
         | rzzzt wrote:
         | Open beer: does not emit a hiss when you open the escape hatch
         | on its container. Don't let it linger around for too long, or
         | it will develop a terrible taste.
        
       | kwhitefoot wrote:
       | The OpenBeer database seems to be out of date. it only lists Aass
       | fro Drammen, Norway but there are at least four more.
       | 
       | It's a pity that there seems to be no indication of when the data
       | for any given area was updated.
        
         | bzzzt wrote:
         | Found another Norwegian brewery and just commented on broken
         | unicode support...
         | 
         | I think 'at least four' is a bit underwhelming considering the
         | craft beer explosion that has been going on the last decade.
         | Seems like everyone with a kettle is brewing nowadays. And I
         | would expect homebrewing to be especially popular in Norway
         | where beer taxes are through the roof.
        
           | kwhitefoot wrote:
           | How does a craft brewery help with beer tax?
           | 
           | Anyway I think four breweries including Norway's oldest isn't
           | too bad for a town of 65 thousand. That's more than the
           | English town I come from that has more than three times the
           | population
        
       | hansvs wrote:
       | Cool!!! Is there maybe something similar for wines and spirits?
        
         | Wronnay wrote:
         | Yeah - would love something like that for Gin
        
           | inerte wrote:
           | As someone building a cocktails website, I have a broad
           | question. Why? You like Gin and want to try new ones, wanna
           | keep track of what you tried, wanna go for something local,
           | something else?...
        
       | dark-star wrote:
       | It's a little bit embarrassing that they cannot handle umlauts
       | (dropping them completely), considering that the most well-known
       | beers come from Germany, which is known for having lots of
       | umlauts in their names and stuff...
        
         | Fnoord wrote:
         | Umlaut vanishing is easy to work around with, akin to how
         | foreigners use them. Replace umlaut with letter + e. Example:
         | schoen.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | loeg wrote:
         | > the most well-known beers come from Germany
         | 
         | In the part of the US I live in, the most well-known beers
         | definitely don't come from Germany. Maybe in other parts of the
         | world?
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | c0balt wrote:
         | Besides Umlaute they also either have no entries with other
         | unicode symbols, for languages other than english, which will
         | inevitably exclude a huge number of breweries and beers.
        
       | benbristow wrote:
       | Untappd is pretty good in the same space - https://untappd.com/
       | 
       | Kind of like Foursquare for beer.
        
       | jamespwilliams wrote:
       | https://beerba.se/augustiner-bra-u-ma1-4nchen/ there's an
       | encoding problem here (UTF-8 has been interpreted as Latin-1 at
       | some point)
       | 
       | (edit: turns out it's a problem with the upstream data!
       | interesting https://github.com/midzer/beerbase/issues/1)
        
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