r/Homebrewing • u/michael2109 • 14h ago

Looking for an Open Source Database of Brewing Ingredients

I’m trying to compile a comprehensive list of open-source resources for fermentables, hops, yeasts, and other ingredients used in brewing. While I’ve come across various scattered lists and databases, I haven’t found anything that’s both complete and freely available.

Do any of you know of popular or well-maintained open-source resources for this kind of information? Or is there a community project working on something similar?

2 Upvotes

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u/garrickvanburen Cicerone 12h ago

What do you want to do once this database exists?

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u/michael2109 12h ago

I want to load the ingredients into my app to allow users to search through and select them

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u/garrickvanburen Cicerone 11h ago

maybe build the database iteratively through using your app?

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u/WTFisBehindYou 9h ago

There used to be a site called brewerwall.com that had ingredient and style APIs but it doesn’t appear to be up anymore.

Maybe you can reach out on other platforms.

It’s possible they still have the full database available for export or something. I remember it being pretty extensive.

It’s something you’d want to host yourself anyway.

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u/chino_brews 8h ago

Will your app be open source, always?

If not, I'm going to encourage you to develop your own database, even though it will be an initial PITA to copy-paste the data and write a little parser for each malster's, lab's, and hop supplier's format for descriptions and stats. Better yet, you can probably write a scraper. Send a letter to each manufacturer asking their permission to use their text -- I am sure anyone who replies will be happy to say yes, as any brewing calculator drives sales for them. You don't want your non-OS app shut down because you are commercializing an OS resource.

If yours is open source, you can open up your database as an open source resource for others to build from.

As /u/WTFisBehindYou mentioned, Brewer-Wall was an app run by some fellow subredditors and they used to keep an open source yeast database in BeerJSON, but I recommend forgetting about it because the database is 9 years old, which means there was no Imperial, no Escarpment, so many other labs, most of the new popular Omega strains are missing, Lalbrew renamed some yeasts, Mangrove Jack renumbered all their yeasts and renamed many, and so on. Also, the BeerJSON used probably is an old version, and may not be compliant with the current but as-yet non-finalized standard.