Tally's Beer Universe
AI & Digital Systems
Evidence-backed research, connected historical data, and intelligent discovery tools that help people explore brewing history in entirely new ways — and, at the deep end, preservation systems built to keep records verifiable for decades to centuries.
This page is the plain account of each system: what it does, what it refuses to do, and whether it is running today. Where something is not built yet, it says so.
The short version
- We keep the story of beer — breweries open and closed, who owned them, who made them, and where.
- Every fact shows where it came from, so anyone can check it. If we do not know something, we say UNKNOWN.
- The facts are joined up, so you can follow a beer back to its brewery, its owner, its malt and the farm.
- AI can look things up here, but it never makes things up. It reads the records when you ask and shows you which ones it used.
- Everything is kept so it can still be checked in a hundred years — permanent numbers, nothing deleted, plain files.
Totals as of 2026-10-22 · build 1f03h7m
Proven at home first
Built in Alberta, tested on Alberta
Each system below was proven on Alberta records before it was pointed at the rest of the world.
The Alberta Archive
Live155 Alberta breweries documented, and 32 farms, malt houses, hop yards and laboratories behind Alberta beer.
Checked, not just collected
LiveThe nightly check starts with Alberta. 151 of 155 Alberta records now carry a dated check.
Alberta grain to Alberta beer
Pilot24-2 Stock Ale from Blindman Brewing, traced from a named barley variety to a named field, seed cleaner and malt house — with the links not yet proven shown as unknown.
The rule every AI system here follows
Grounded, never trained.
No model is trained on this archive. When an AI answers a question here, it looks the archive up at the moment you ask, answers only from the records that come back, cites them, and says UNKNOWN wherever the archive does.
A fact baked into a model's memory could not be cited, could not be corrected, and could not admit it was unknown. A fact looked up can be all three — and a correction made in the archive reaches every answer by the next morning.
Evidence-backed research
Every fact carries its evidence
Cited sources
Live36,795 sources — books, newspapers, archives, company filings, brewery pages — each recording its publisher, its date and what it proves. A source attaches to the claim it supports, not to a brewery in general.
Claims with a grade
LiveOwnership, supply and ingredient facts are stored as claims, each graded on its evidence: verified, partial, unknown or contradicted. Two sources that disagree are kept side by side, not settled by guessing.
The watch
LiveA robot revisits the web pages the archive cites and keeps a fingerprint of each. When a source disappears, moves or changes, it files a note for a person to check. It cannot change a record.
The nightly check
LiveEvery night the thirty public records checked longest ago are looked at again, so every public record comes round once a year. 1,211 now carry a dated check.
Open questions, published
Live10,479 known gaps — undated closures, unsourced records, unconfirmed entries — are listed in public rather than hidden. A researched blank is worth more than a confident guess.
Connected historical data
Not a list — a map of who connects to whom
Connections
Live9,411 connections between 3,058 breweries, companies, people and places. 58% carry a date.
Ownership as a timeline
Live2,519 dated ownership events — founded, acquired, merged, sold — each with how it happened and its evidence. A merger is not a takeover, and a stake is not control.
Separate things stay separate
LiveBreweries, companies, people, sites and beers are separate records with their own identities. A shared name is never treated as the same thing: two breweries with one name stay two breweries.
Field to glass
PilotThe chain from seed to grain to malt to beer, with every link marked proven or unknown. The question marks stay visible until evidence replaces them.
Intelligent discovery tools
Ask a question, see the evidence
How an answer is made when an AI is involved:
- You ask a question in plain words.
- The AI searches the archive with read-only lookups — public records only.
- It answers from what came back, and from nothing else.
- Every answer opens with YES, PARTIALLY, NOT YET or UNKNOWN.
- The records it used are listed underneath, so you can check them yourself.
Tally Answers
Live217 questions — who owns it, is it independent, when did it close — researched and checked by hand, published with their evidence and with what is still unknown.
Ask the Archive
Built, not switched onClaude answering a reader's question from the archive's own lookups, in the steps above. A question the archive cannot answer yet can be sent in as a research lead.
The archive, for your AI assistant
LiveAI assistants such as Claude can connect to https://archive.tallysbeer.com/api/mcp to look records up and cite them, instead of recalling them from memory. Read-only, public records only, no key needed.
Pint Passport
LiveIn the Tally's beer app, a beer's tasting note is written from its brewery's archive record. Where there is no record, the note makes no factual claim at all.
Scan the can
Not built yetPhotograph a label and land on the record for that beer — its brewery, its owner, its ingredients and their evidence.
Reading old documents
Not built yetAI transcription of scanned archival material — ledgers, letters, labels — into drafts that a person checks before anything enters the record.
Preservation · the deep end
Verifiable for decades to centuries
Websites last years. Archives are measured in centuries. A record can only be checked in a hundred years if its number still finds it, its evidence can still be read, and anyone can prove it was not changed along the way.
Built
Permanent accession numbers
LiveLike a museum's, each number is issued once and never reused — not after a merger, a closure or a correction. 223 issued so far, none ever reissued.
Tally Records
PilotOne permanent page for each beer it tracks. A QR code on a can holds only the address, so it always opens the current evidence, however long the can survives. One record so far.
Closure is never deletion
Live1,462 closed breweries are kept on the record. When two records turn out to be one, the old one keeps its number and its address forwards to the survivor.
Plain files, every change kept
LiveThe archive is a folder of plain JSON and CSV files under version control. Every change is dated and can be compared and undone, and nothing needs this website or any company's software to read it.
Not built yet
Proof nothing was altered
Not built yetA fingerprint (a checksum) for every file in every release, published apart from the data, so a copy found decades from now can prove it is exactly what was released.
Copies held by others
Not built yetDeposits with archives, libraries and universities that keep copies of their own, so the record never depends on one server, one domain or one organisation.
Saved copies of every web source
Not built yetAn archived snapshot of each cited web page, so the evidence can still be read after the site that published it is gone. Today 11 of 36,795 sources point at one.
Numbers that outlive the website
Not built yetIdentifiers registered with an independent resolver, so a citation keeps working even if the website's address ever changes.
A guide to every field
Not built yetA written description of every file and field kept beside the data, so someone who never met us can read the archive without help.
Robots notice. People decide. Evidence wins.
Nothing automated on this site can change a record. The watch, the nightly check and every AI tool can only point at something; a person checks the evidence and makes the change, and the change keeps its source.