BeerXML

Lore & Background

BeerXML was designed as a free, fully defined XML data description standard for the exchange of beer brewing recipes and other brewing data. Tables of recipes as well as other records such as hop schedules and malt bills can be represented using BeerXML for use by brewing software. It is an open standard and a subset of XML, making it both human-readable and machine-readable. The standard is supported by a number of web sites, computer programmes, and an increasing number of Android, Windows Phone, and iOS apps. Plugins and extensions supporting BeerXML have been written for a variety of platforms including Ruby via RubyGems, WordPress, PHP, and JavaScript. Many brewing hardware manufacturers incorporate BeerXML into their systems, and third party plugins and patches are being developed for brewery control hardware and embedded systems, allowing automation and fine control of processes such as mashing and potentially fermentation. The standard has a proposed second version which has been mooted and is under development, but it has not been validated or published as its feature set is still under discussion.

Reader's Guide

BeerXML's significance lies in its role as a standard for exchanging brewing data across diverse software and hardware platforms. It is used in both amateur and professional brewing, facilitating the sharing of brewing data over the internet. Users of different applications such as the open-source software Brewtarget (with more than 52,000 downloads) can share data via XML with users of popular proprietary software such as Beersmith and ORRTIZ: BMS 4 Breweries, or upload their data to share on BeerXML compatible sharing sites and cloud platforms such as Brewtoad (over 50,000 registered users) or the Beersmith Recipe Cloud (with 43,000 registered users). A user of a recipe design and sharing site such as Brewersfriend.com can import and export BeerXML to and from mobile apps or enter it into a brewing competition database such as The Brew Competition Online Entry & Management (BCOE&M) system. The adoption of BeerXML as a standard is leading to new developments such as ingredients databases which attempt to standardise ingredients definitions and characteristics. Brewers can use platforms like Brewblogger.com to create recipes and log their brewday for publication as a blog and for export to databases and common spreadsheet applications. JavaScript applications such as brauhaus.js allow users to run them on a local machine or web browser for execution through any standards compliant web browser.

Did You Know?

• BeerXML supports no more than three fermentation steps in version 1.0.
• All units in BeerXML are converted to SI units internally, which can cause loss of precision when converting from Imperial, US Customary, or metric units.
• Tag names in BeerXML are always uppercase, for example 'HOP' is acceptable but 'hop' is not.
• The standard has a proposed second version under development but not yet validated or published.