About PlainAlcohol

Our mission

We built PlainAlcohol because a public federal record should be easy for the public to read. The TTB List of Permittees is one of the most complete views of the U.S. alcohol industry, every licensed winery, distillery, importer, and wholesaler, yet it ships as a raw file that almost nobody can browse. Our purpose is simple: take that public data and make it searchable, linkable, and plain to understand, without adding opinion, ranking quality, or selling placement. We believe government data is most useful when it is presented faithfully and for free.

What PlainAlcohol Is

PlainAlcohol is a free, searchable copy of the federal alcohol permit registry. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, publishes a "List of Permittees" naming every business that holds a federal FAA Basic Permit or Distilled Spirits Plant registration. That file is a flat public record that is hard to search, filter, or browse. We reformat it into state, city, and entity pages so it is usable without filing a FOIA request.

We present the data as it is, no rankings of quality, no ratings, no sponsored placements. Every permit holder is shown with the same fields from the same federal source.

Our Data Source

All permit data on PlainAlcohol comes from a single source: the TTB List of Permittees, released under the Freedom of Information Act and published in April 2025. The file is in the public domain.

It covers 83,590 permits across four industry types:

• Wineries - Bonded Winery permit holders (18,038)
• Distilleries - Distilled Spirits Plant registrants (5,590)
• Importers - FAA Basic Permit holders authorized to import (21,314)
• Wholesalers - FAA Basic Permit holders authorized to wholesale (38,648)

Source: TTB List of Permittees.

Why Breweries Are Not Listed

You will not find breweries here. Breweries operate under a Brewer's Notice, and the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 6103) treats that registration differently from the FAA Basic Permits and Distilled Spirits Plant registrations that make up the public List of Permittees. Because brewery data is not part of that public file, PlainAlcohol does not publish brewery counts or brewery pages. We cover only the four permit types that TTB releases publicly.

How the Data Is Processed

An automated extract-transform-load (ETL) pipeline reads the public TTB file and reformats it for browsing. It classifies each permit into one of the four industry types using the TTB permit class, normalizes state and city names so they group cleanly, and computes state-level totals and per-capita rates. Per-capita figures (permit holders per 100,000 residents) use U.S. Census Bureau Vintage-2023 population estimates.

The pipeline does not alter the underlying records, names, addresses, and permit numbers appear as filed with TTB. We do not manually fact-check individual permits against any other registry; the page reflects what the public file says. For authoritative, current status, use the official TTB Public Permit Search.

Independence & Funding

We do not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from any permit holder, distributor, retailer, or trade association. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense, advertisers do not influence which entities we cover or how the data is presented.

PlainAlcohol is an informational resource and is not legal or business advice. It is published independently and is not affiliated with the TTB, the Department of the Treasury, or any government agency.

Limitations

• Federal permits only. State and local alcohol licenses, issued by state Alcoholic Beverage Control agencies, are not included.
• Status may change. A permit shown as listed may have been surrendered, revoked, or modified since the April 2025 file was published.
• Not a quality signal. Holding a federal permit means a business met TTB requirements; it says nothing about product quality or production volume.
• Addresses. Some addresses reflect a corporate office rather than a production site.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or feedback? Email hello@plainalcohol.com. For data corrections, see our corrections policy.