Low Alcohol Beer as a 'Style'

Something to consider:

Yes, Low Alcohol Beer is already listed as a style, but really it's a feature of the beers that fall into this category, but there may need to be a sub-category that better defines these beers, such as Low Alcohol Beer - IPA; or Low Alcohol Beer - Stout, etc.

My reasoning is that I recently started investigating NA beers on the Athletic Brewing page https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/52867/ and was unable to determine a 'style' since all of the beers are listed as Low Alcohol Beer in the style column. Yes, some beers list a style in the name column as part of the beer's name, but some don't have that. So, either a sub-style needs to be created for the major 'styles' of when one of these beers is submitted as a new entry, or if it doesn't list a 'style' as part of the beer's name, the mods should return it to the person submitting the beer and ask that a style name be included.

Just my 2-cents.

 

How about all of these beers be incorporated into the standard styles but keep some sort of 'marker' for all beers that currently carry the low alcohol designation. Then remove the low alcohol as a choice in the style list when a new beer is being added. That forces everyone to choose the beer's real designated style.

When a member adds a new low alcohol beer, the abv is likely known for a specialty beer such as a low alcohol product so that field will likely always have data (not blank) for new additions.

On the Beer Styles page, low alcohol can continue to be listed. When anyone clicks on it a definition is displayed like all other styles that explains that all beers less than 5% are included in this category. Then below that definition is a list that @Todd codes that uses abv to create the database, but is then arranged in the list alphabetically by style as the primary sort, and abv as the secondary sort.

Since there are a gazillion beers in the total beer database, any beer with a blank abv field has to be ignored when creating the list UNLESS the 'marker' that I mentioned above for a beer in the current low alcohol style is also blank in that abv field. It can then be included in the list and shown at the bottom in its appropriate style section as blank. The user then decides how to interpret the blank.

The only problem that I see with doing this is identifying every beer's true style to be able to incorporate it into the style where it needs to be. Many of the current low alcohol beers mention a true style as part of the beer's name to be added to that particular style in the database. But how many don't do that, and is that a forbidding project to undertake manually? (Can a code be written to flag the beer names that include a style name and then group them accordingly?)

Thoughts?