How we check where a beer is brewed

This site makes one kind of claim: that a named beer sold in a British supermarket is brewed in a particular place, owned by a particular company, and sold at a particular strength. Each of those is checkable, and each carries a source and a date on the beer's own page. This page explains where those come from and what we do when they disagree.

Cans and bottles, not draught

Every beer page is about the cans and bottles sold in supermarkets. Draught in pubs can come from a different brewery and can be a different strength, so a page covers draught only where its table of pack formats includes it.

What counts as a source

What matters is what the source is copying, not how well known it is. Strongest is the brewer's own statement about its own product: its website, press releases and product pages. Next is a seller's product page that transcribes the printed panel on the pack, giving the producer name and address, the country of origin and the strength. Any UK retailer or wholesaler qualifies there, because they are all reproducing the same panel. Alongside those sit rulings by the Advertising Standards Authority, Companies House filings and the trade press, meaning The Grocer, Morning Advertiser, Just Drinks, The Drinks Business, Beer Today and Food Manufacture, along with the BBC, the Financial Times and the Guardian.

One condition applies to a seller's listing: it has to name the pack, and the pack has to be one sold at retail. A draught or catering listing describes a different product. St Austell Proper Job is 4.5% in cask and 5.5% in bottle, and Timothy Taylor Landlord is 4.3% in cask and 4.1% in bottle, so taking the pub figure for the supermarket product would be wrong in both directions.

Wikipedia, Untappd, marketing copy, forums and blogs never saw the pack. They are useful for finding a lead and are not used to establish a fact. Where a beer rests on one of them, it does not count as confirmed, and the page says which claim is the weak one.

How firmly each beer is established

Three things matter on every beer page: where the beer sold in the UK is brewed, how strong it is here, and who owns the brand. For 104 beers, all three rest on the brewer's own statement or on a seller's page that copies the pack. For 34, at least one of them rests on a secondary source or an inference, or a split supply has a pack format we have not read, and the page has a short section saying what we have not confirmed. For 12, we have not found a source we trust for the key facts; those pages are published so readers can send evidence, and are kept out of search results until there is a source behind them. The beer list can be filtered by these levels.

The exact brewery is a different matter. A pack has to name the producer's company and address, not the brewery, so for a brewer with more than one site the pack cannot say which. Where a brewer's statement or the trade press names the site, the page records it; where only the company is named, the page says the site is inferred. That does not stop a beer counting as confirmed, because the question this site asks is which country the beer is made in, not which town.

A level can be lowered without a source, because lowering it is the honest direction: if we lose confidence in a claim, we say so immediately. Raising a level always requires a fetched primary source, quoted in the change that makes it. The same rule governs the strengths, the supply and the brewery sites: a value can be moved back to "not confirmed" with a note, but it cannot be changed to a new value without evidence.

When the sources disagree

It happens more than you would expect, and usually between two listings for the same beer at the same retailer. Where a pack in hand or the brewer's own statement settles it, the beer's page says what each source said and which one we have gone with, and why: the can says one thing, a listing says another, and we go with the can. Where nothing that strong is available, we do not pick the more plausible side; the page sets out both readings and says the question is still open.

Accuracy

We have taken care to get every entry right, and we publish the evidence so that anyone can check it. Each beer's page carries the sources it rests on, the date each was read, and a note of anything inferred rather than read. Where a source is a retailer's product page, the page records what that listing said on that date.

Even so, this is a record of published sources, not an inspection of breweries. Brewing arrangements, strengths and pack wording change, sometimes without any announcement, and a listing can be out of date or wrong. A page here can therefore fall behind what is on the shelf this week. Where two sources disagree and neither the pack nor the brewer settles it, the page shows both rather than choosing between them.

Nothing on this site is a statement about the quality of any beer, or about the honesty or conduct of any brewer, owner or retailer. Brewing under licence and adjusting a recipe or strength for a market are lawful and ordinary practices, and the site says so. The site reports where a beer is brewed, at what strength and by whom, as the sources state it, and it draws no conclusion beyond that.

If you represent a brewer, brand owner or retailer and believe an entry is wrong or out of date, we would like to hear from you. Send the current pack wording or a statement of where and at what strength the beer is produced, and the entry will be corrected and the beer's last-checked date updated. What the site collects about its readers, which is very little, is set out on the privacy page.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we would rather know. A correction changes the page, cites the source that prompted it, and updates the date the beer was last checked. Every change is kept in the site's records with what the value was and what it became, so nothing is quietly edited. Write to mark@pretendpint.com.

Spotted an error?Tell us what the pack says and we will check it. mark@pretendpint.com

What would close the gaps

The single most useful piece of evidence is the small print on a can or bottle: the producer name and address, and the country of origin field. That one panel settles most of the open questions here, and it is the only evidence that reflects what is on the shelf this week rather than what a website said last year. If you have one to hand, a photo of that panel sent to the address above is the most useful correction we can receive. Until one arrives, an open question stays open on the beer's page rather than being quietly guessed at.

Who runs this

Mark Porter, one person, in the United Kingdom. There is no institution behind this and no pretence of one. The site takes no advertising, sells nothing, and has no commercial relationship with any brewer or retailer. No brand pays to appear on any list here, and the lists are built by rules that are stated on the pages themselves.

It is a reference, not a campaign. Brewing a foreign brand under licence in Britain is legal and has been normal since the 1970s. The point of the site is that the beer is often a different beer from the one on the label, which is a fact you can check, and which you are entitled to know before you pay for it.