Beer Ontology

The scope of this ontology is to help provide beer and beer ingredient traceability, process control and style identification in a language neutral way.

1. Introduction

Since the dawn of man, beer has had a huge impact on human development. Despite our long history with beer, there are still many aspects of beer that are unknown to us and it is still more of an art form than a science.

Beer is made through fermenting malts, hops, and even fruits for additional flavors. Due to differences of terrior in hops, various styles and ingredients, a craft brewer may not know exactly what a batch will taste like until the end of the process.

This ontology was created for beer traceability but also to lay the groundwork for providing standardization for beers and beer styles. This will allow brewers to have a better idea of what to expect when they brew a new batch of beer, with the hope that this ontology will help boost creativity for new beer recipes. It will also allow better relationships to form between the brewers and growers since the brewers will know exactly what they are purchasing.

2. Brief History of Beer

Alcohol has been intertwined in human history for thousands of years, in fact, it is the reason for our primate ancestors descending from the trees. Fruit that had fallen from the trees and started to ferment were a prime source nourishment since they were easier to digest. Those who could smell the alcohol got more calories, and it is suggested that our ancestors even started cultivating grains not for bread but for beer (Curry, 2017).

According to National Geographic, the first known evidence of alcoholic beverages occurred around 7000 B.C. in Jiahu, China (Curry, 2017). From then on, with the domestication of more grains, fruits and vegetables, fermented beverages blossomed into the various styles of beer, wines and spirits.

Today, beer is the second most consumed alcoholic beverage (34.3%) behind spirits (44.8%) (WHO, 2018), with China as the lead producer of beer with the United States as the second largest producer.

With humankind's deep history with beer, it has become so ingrained in our culture and is seen as a symbol of community. However, due to humanity's long relationship with beer, the different styles have evolved and blended over thousands of years, which makes this ontology essential for beer traceability.

3. Organization

The beer ontology has three major structural constructs: Beer Styles, Beer Organizations and Packaging.

3.1 Beer Styles

In this ontology, beer styles are based on the ingredients and brewing processes. This definition of a beer style serves to avoid confusion between generally accepted beer styles and 'marketing' terms. These styles are sub-classed since they are specializations of certain types of beer.

3.1.1 Brown Ale

Brown ales are mostly a descriptor term rather than a style, some styles do have the word 'brown' in it but not all of those styles are characterized as being brown colored. The coloring of beer comes from the color and/or the quantity of the malts.

3.1.2 English vs British Style

While 'British' and 'English' account for different locations, in terms of beer they mean the same thing. 'English Style' is used as foaf:name since it is more common.

3.1.3 Lagers vs Ales

Lagers are often said to differ from beers because they have "bottom fermenting yeasts" while ales have "top fermenting" yeasts. This is more of a description of the yeast's flocculation rather than where it ferments. "Top" fermenting yeasts are yeasts whose flocculation process produces flocs that rise to surface, also called 'creaming'. "Bottom" fermenting yeasts are yeasts whose flocculation process produces flocs that settle to the bottom, also called 'sedimentation' (Kulkarni, 2016, Stewart, 2018).

3.1.4 Non-Beers

As they are not beverages derived from the fermentation of malts, ciders and meads are not beers. However, their consumption is closely aligned with beer and are listed in this ontology for the sake of convenience.

3.2 Beer Making Organizations

3.3 Packaging

The beer ontology attempts to strike a balance between a fully descriptive encoding of beer product packaging and an easy of use that operationally feasible. Multiple measurements with imperial and metric units are available for the same packaging dimensions with the expectation that end users will query their way to the needed measurement. Units are identified using UN/ECE Recommendation No. 21 and the quot ontology. The actual assignment of the measurement to the dimension is achieved using GS1 and schema.org vocabularies for trade quantities and SOSA/SSN ontologies for nominal packaging measurements in a combined representation whenever possible. Often types, classes and subclasses are explicitly stated even through inference is possible so that the ontology can be used as is without reasoner support.

Different communities have different approaches to measuring packaging due to their context: while GS1 and schema.org measure quantity with respect to the product traded, packaging vendors will record packaging dimension with respect to an engineering or capacity measurement. This explains why the ubiquitous "202/211" soft drink and beer list a 'net content' of 12oz / 355ml, which is essentially 'nominal content', with an 'overflow capacity' of somewhere around 380ml. Packaging for liquids can be filled by weight which makes for large variety of measurements.

Currently, Kegs and commonly used 355ml "soda" and the 473ml "tall-boy" cans have been implemented in this version. Container material and sealing mechanism (such as the common "wide mouth") are not currently reported nor is the lining of the can. Given the potential uses for recycling and detecting unwanted packaging-content interactions, this will be investigated in a later version.

3.4 Beer vs. Beer products

The Beer ontology makes a distinction between Beer and Beer Products where one term represents the actual substances and the second represents the beer in its commercial packaging before consumption. The beer product also inherits branding, pricing and inventory constructs from other ontologies as it is the commercial trade unit.

4. Linkages to Other Datasets

The Beer ontology links to FOODON equivalent classes and makes use of the GS1, schema.org, sosa/ssn ontologies to represent measurements and prov ontology for provenance and documentation.

5. Global Cross-Reference

6. Detailed References for All Terms, Classes and Properties

Dictionaries

[1]	Brewers Association. Craft beer industry market segments, 2020. [ http ]
[2]	Dave Carpenter. What is the difference between ale and lager? May 2017. [ http ]
[3]	Craftbeer.com. Ipa, 2020. [ http ]
[4]	Craftbeer.com. Ipa, 2020. [ http ]
[5]	Andrew Curry. Our 9,000-year love affair with booze. National Geographic, February 2017. [ http ]
[6]	Terry Foster. Pale ale. Boulder, CO: Brewers Publications, 2nd edition, 1999.
[7]	Terry Foster. The oxford companion to beer definition of pale ale, 2020. [ http ]
[8]	Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson's beer companion. Philadelphia: Running Press, 1993.
[9]	Vitthal S. Kulkarni and Charles Shaw. Chapter 7 - preparation and stability testing. In Vitthal S. Kulkarni and Charles Shaw, editors, Essential Chemistry for Formulators of Semisolid and Liquid Dosages, pages 99 – 135. Academic Press, Boston, 2016. [ DOI \| http ]
[10]	Graham G. Stewart. Yeast flocculation—sedimentation and flotation. Fermentation, 4(2), 2018. [ DOI \| http ]
[11]	World Health Organization. Global status report on alcohol and health 2018. 2018. [ .pdf ]

The Beer Ontology Specification 1.0

The Beer Ontology is an ontology created to represent data about beer.

Working Draft — 04 February 2021 (Version Française)

Abstract

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Brief History of Beer

3. Organization

3.1 Beer Styles

3.1.1 Brown Ale

3.1.2 English vs British Style

3.1.3 Lagers vs Ales

3.1.4 Non-Beers

3.2 Beer Making Organizations

3.3 Packaging

3.4 Beer vs. Beer products

4. Linkages to Other Datasets

5. Global Cross-Reference

6. Detailed References for All Terms, Classes and Properties

Dictionaries

Dictionary: beer:BeverageCan

Dictionary: beer:Keg

Dictionary: beer:LiquidContainer

Classes

Class: beer:Ale

Class: beer:AmericanLager

Class: beer:AmericanPaleAle

Class: beer:BarleyWine

Class: beer:Beer

Class: beer:BeerProduct

Class: beer:BelgianAle

Class: beer:BelgianBeer

Class: beer:BeverageBottle

Class: beer:BeverageCan

Class: beer:BlondeAle

Class: beer:Brewery

Class: beer:Brewpub

Class: beer:BrownAle

Class: beer:Cider

Class: beer:ContractBrewery

Class: beer:Craftbrewery

Class: beer:EnglishPaleAle

Class: beer:EnglishStyleAle

Class: beer:IndiaPaleAle

Class: beer:Keg

Class: beer:Lager

Class: beer:LiquidContainer

Class: beer:Mead

Class: beer:Microbrewery

Class: beer:PaleAle

Class: beer:Pilsner

Class: beer:Porter

Class: beer:RegionalBrewery

Class: beer:Saison

Class: beer:SourBeer

Class: beer:Stout

Class: beer:TaproomBrewery

Class: beer:WheatBeer

Properties

Instances

Instance: beer:D201

Instance: beer:D251

Instance: beer:D301

Instance: beer:D501

Instance: beer:Euro20

Instance: beer:Euro25

Instance: beer:Euro30

Instance: beer:Euro50

Instance: beer:can355

Instance: beer:can473

Instance: beer:corneliusKeg

Instance: beer:halfBarrelKeg

Instance: beer:miniKeg

Instance: beer:quarterKeg

Instance: beer:sixthBarrelKeg

Instance: beer:slimQuarterKeg

7. Version History

8. General Notes

8.1 Alcohol by Volume

8.2 Storeability