Breweries in the United Kingdom

Improving the mapping of breweries and pubs in the UK.

Objective

Primary

1. Map all the breweries

Secondary

1. Associate pubs with breweries
2. Map other alcohol producers, e.g., cider and perry houses, distilleries and wineries (and associated vineyards).

Possible

1. Map off-licenses that sell ale on draught; or specialist bottled ales (need to define cut-off point or any old of-licence./ supermarket)
2. Determine extent of 'Good Pub Guide' style material, being mindful of copyright, etc

Status

Currently this is just an idea and an attempt is being made to develop consensus with discussion on the talk-gb mailing list.

There is a start of a rendering system for it at github.com/jones139/BrewMap. It works by generating data files containing information about the breweries, which are then plotted on the map in the web browser (rather than generating image tiles).

An early working version can be seen at brewmap.maps3.org.uk. There is still plenty to do with the styling aspects of it - suggestions for what information to display in the popups, and what to use for icons much appreciated! Maybe raise an issue on Github?

The page includes a link to a 'tagQueries' page which lists things that may be breweries, but are not tagged as such according to the scheme below.

Proposed Tagging Scheme

Producers

Tag the area describing the site with craft=* for small volume producers such as Microbreweries and Microdistilleries, and industrial=* for larger volume producers use. See the table below for suggested values. Separate multiple values with semi-colons.

Value	Comment
brewery	For beer, e.g., (real) ale, lager etc.
cider	For cider
perry	For perry (sometimes, though imprecisely, known as pear cider)
mead	For mead
distillery	For spirits and liqueurs, e.g., whisky, gin, rum, tequila, Grand Marnier, Frangelico etc.
winery	For wine

Buildings within the site should be tagged as best describes the design of the building. For example building=industrial for a modern micro-brewery in an industrial unit, building=barn might suit many west country cider houses, building=brewery or building=distillery for purpose built structures. Or building=yes if unknown.

Use operator=* for the company who runs the brewery.

Use brand=* to describe the different brands of beer produced if different from the operator. For example, for large industrial sites producing beer under license, or for sites owned by one company but producing beer under specific brands.

If real ale is produced tag the site with real_ale=yes.

If there is a visitors centre or tours tag the site with opening_hours=* and if 'significant' tourism=attraction.

Tag other useful information such as the address, website=*, wikipedia=* etc.

If landuse is desired place the site within a larger landuse=industrial area.

Pubs

Follow amenity=pub, with attention paid to the extra tags.

To describe the brand of beer served at a particular pub use brewery=*.

Use microbrewery=yes for pubs that produce beer on site, brewpubs. Note that these are only a particular type of microbrewery.

Examples

The St Francis Abbey Brewery in Kilkenny, Ireland after a long history is now owned by Diageo and used to produce the Smithwick's brand of beer; it takes the following tags:

• name=Saint Francis Abbey Brewery
• brand=Smithwick's
• industrial=brewery
• operator=Diageo
• tourism=attraction

The Dark Star Brewery is a small brewery in an industrial unit. They are based at a single site but the brewery has a different name than the operating company.

• building=industrial
• craft=brewery
• name=Dark Star Brewery
• operator=The Dark Star Brewing Co. Ltd
• website=http://darkstarbrewing.co.uk/

Things to Do

1. Agree on tagging scheme
   • Appropriateness of industrial=*
   • Need for sector wide tag, to cover brewery, distillery, pub, off licence
   • Cut-off between small ("craft") and large ("industy") scale producers
   • How to add detail on specific drinks produced, i.e., a brewery producing both real ale and wheat beers?
2. Table of entities mapped and tagged?
3. Rendering
   • Get basic rendering working (done, see Status above)
   • Make data update automatically (done - should update every 10 min, but you need to reload the page).
   • Decide on Icons, what data to show in popups. (have used some temporary ones for now)
   • Extend the rendering to cider and perry producers and distilleries. Done
   • Add some statistics on the numbers of the different types of breweries. Done - Thanks to Craig Loftus.
   • Make the web page look nice with some css black magic.Done - thanks to Craig Loftus.
   • Link to customised editor (Potlatch2?) with pre-sets for this tagging scheme?
4. Get drinking?!

Resources

• Quaffale directory of Uk breweries - with "recent openings" log