I always knew this but never thought about it consciously. With all the labeling laws on products, I'm surprised there isn't a required INGREDIENTS section on beer labels. It would probably be informative to non-BA's to see what adjuncts are in beers. Also, for us BA's it'd be informative to see what intentional additives are included. For example, I recently came upon a bottle that implied it had a Tree Nut in the name of the beer. It could've had the nut flour or extract in the boil, but I wasn't sure. I doubled checked with the brewer, and in fact there were not tree nuts in the beer; the roasting of the grains portrayed that nut quality. Anyway, if there were an INGREDIENTS section on the label, I wouldn't have had to research it.
I am in favor of both ingredients and nutritional information being listed on beer. With that said, I think neither, especially the latter, is going to happen any time soon.
I can't think of any other food item sold in stores (other than wine/liquor) where this is the case. Is there a reason ???
Beer is not a food item and is not regulated by the FDA. There is a thought that the government does not want to lead people to believe that alcohol has any nutritional value, obviously nutritional information on a bottle would do so.... I would be in favor of the government allowing such information to be included but I am completely against requiring it, further regulations are not needed with in the industry.
OP - do you mean adjuncts like the BMC's use (corn, rice) or adjunct like the Craft Brewers use (a much longer list of things not allowed by the Reinheitsgebot)?
Beer labeling comes under the TTB not the FDA. There have been proposals for new "Serving Facts" labeling on alcohol beverages for years. Here's a recent one http://www.ttb.gov/pdf/notice73_serving_facts_nprm.pdf and it would require listing "...The ingredients (including additives) from which the beverage is made;" (pg.4) Within the last week or so this topic came up and was deleted, probably because the threads always get political.
I would imagine that the industry in a whole is against this. Could you imagine the nutritional label (calories especially) on a bottle of russian imperial stout?
Or a brewery could use an ingredient list for marketing BS by including phrases like "free range coastal water" and listing made up hop names for already well-established varieties.
Sort of got that from the nut thing, but there were no nuts, so no adjuncts. The other example was what? This would make the Belgian and American making Belgian style beers add a long long list of stuff to the label.
