Methodology & Data Sources

Data Source

PlainAlcohol uses one source: the TTB List of Permittees, published by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The TTB regulates and collects federal taxes on the production, importation, and wholesale distribution of alcohol.

The list is released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and is in the public domain. The file PlainAlcohol uses was published in August 2026. Source: TTB List of Permittees.

What We Cover

The List of Permittees covers four categories of TTB-permitted business:

• Wineries - Bonded Winery (BW) permit holders that produce or blend wine
• Distilleries - Distilled Spirits Plant (DSP) registrants that produce or bottle spirits
• Importers - FAA Basic Permit holders authorized to import beverage alcohol
• Wholesalers - FAA Basic Permit holders authorized to wholesale and distribute

As of the August 2026 file, that is 84,273 permits, 18,120 wineries, 5,670 distilleries, 21,526 importers, and 38,957 wholesalers, across 52 states and territories (the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico) and 11,126 cities. The TTB registry is the federal layer; states maintain separate licensing systems for retail and on-premises sales.

Reading a Federal Alcohol Permit Record

A federal Basic Permit is not the same as a state license, and the distinction matters. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau issues this permit under the Federal Alcohol Administration Act to authorize an entity to produce wine or spirits, import beverage alcohol, or operate as an alcohol wholesaler in interstate commerce. It identifies the operating business, the premises, and the class of activity, but it does not, by itself, authorize retail sale. Almost every permit holder also needs a separate state Alcoholic Beverage Control license to actually sell within a given state, and most states route product through licensed wholesalers before it reaches a store shelf.

The permit number is federally standardized, which is what lets this directory compare holders cleanly across state lines. A permit remains in effect until it is surrendered, suspended, or revoked, so a record on a producer page reflects the entity's status as published in the TTB List of Permittees. Because permit status can change between publications, treat a producer page as a federal reference point and confirm the current status against the official TTB Public Permit Search before relying on it for a transaction.

Why Breweries Are Excluded

Breweries do not appear in this directory. A brewery operates 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 DSP registrations that make up the public List of Permittees. Brewery information is not part of the public file, so PlainAlcohol honestly excludes it, we publish no brewery counts and no brewery pages, only the four permit types TTB releases publicly.

How We Process the Data

1. Read the public TTB List of Permittees (August 2026 release)
2. Parse permit type, permit number, business name, and address fields
3. Normalize business names and state/city fields for consistent browsing
4. Classify each permit into one of the four industry types using the TTB permit class
5. Compute state and city totals, type breakdowns, and per-capita rates
6. Load into a search-optimized database that serves the site

We reformat the public file without altering the underlying records, and re-publish whenever the TTB issues a new edition. Individual permits are not hand-verified against any other registry, the TTB list is reproduced faithfully and cited as the single source.

Per-Capita Rates

Where we show permit holders "per 100,000 population," the denominator is each state's resident population from the U.S. Census Bureau's Vintage-2023 population estimates. This is a density measure for comparison across states of different sizes, it is not a measure of production volume or market value.

Corpus placement (#N of M)

Producer, city, and state detail pages carry a corpus-relative placement derived from the TTB List of Permittees inventory, never a hand-picked list:

• Producers - ranked by directory order (name ASC) among active Basic Permits of the same class in the same state. This is a peer-set position in the federal permit directory, not production volume, revenue, or quality.
• Cities - ranked by producer_count DESC (most federal alcohol permit holders with premises in that city = #1).
• States - ranked by total_producers DESC among states and territories with at least one permit (same basis as the state inventory listings).

Data Currency & Verification

PlainAlcohol reflects the August 2026 List of Permittees. TTB releases updated lists periodically, and a permit's status can change between releases, new permits are issued and existing ones may be surrendered, revoked, or modified. We refresh the directory when TTB publishes a new file. For the current, authoritative status of any specific permit, use the official TTB Public Permit Search before relying on it for legal or commercial purposes.

Limitations

• Federal permits only, state distributor and retail licenses are not included
• Brewery data is not in the public source and is not covered here
• Status shown may not reflect changes filed after the August 2026 release
• Some businesses hold multiple permit types and may appear in more than one category
• For informational use, not a substitute for official TTB verification

Not Affiliated

PlainAlcohol is not affiliated with the TTB, the Department of the Treasury, any alcohol producer, distributor, retailer, or trade association. This site is for informational purposes only and does not provide legal, regulatory, or business advice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Corrections

Reports are verified against the public TTB List of Permittees. When the error is ours, we fix it in the DB/pipeline (so every affected page updates together) and aim to acknowledge within 72 hours on business days. Material corrections and presentation changes that reach the public site are recorded on the data & editorial changelog. Use the contact form or see the full corrections policy and editorial & corrections.

Revenue diversification readiness

This section is a paperwork readiness note, not a product launch. Nothing below activates a new ad network, paid API, or pricing page. Activation steps marked [operator] stay off until the operator explicitly turns them on.

What is productized today

• State landscape CSV at /data/ttb-state-landscape.csv (live text/csv) - the same 52-jurisdiction rollup shown on /statistics.
• Dataset JSON-LD on methodology, statistics, and entity pages naming a CC0-derived license.
• No public query API and no commercial data-license SKU yet. Reuse today is download-the-CSV + attribute.

License and attribution

The underlying TTB List of Permittees is U.S. federal public-domain data (Freedom of Information Act release). The CSV extract itself is offered under CC0 - reuse freely, but cite PlainAlcohol as the compiler and the TTB as the primary source when quoting a derived count or table. See Our Data Source for the full provenance chain.

Affiliate / ad unit rules (IF activated)

PlainAlcohol carries no affiliate links today. If the operator later adds display or affiliate units, these rules bind before any placement ships:

• No unit above the primary permit/count answer on producer, city, or state detail pages.
• No adjacency framed as health, legal, or financial advice: this is federal permit/regulatory data, not a drinking-guidance or medical surface, and stays that way.
• Units clearly labeled as ads or sponsored; density ceilings shared with Module 36 AdSense placement rules.
• No speculative prerender of ad-bearing pages once any display network is approved - ADSENSE_APPROVED already gates the Speculation Rules prefetch block site-wide.
• [operator] Turning on a new network, slot, or paid data product requires an explicit operator decision. This page does not self-activate any of those.

Alternative network eligibility (paperwork only)

Against Mediavine Journey (the estate's measured alternative to AdSense), PlainAlcohol is not gate-ready today. Journey's practical readiness bar for this estate is Tier-1 sessions ≥1,500/28d with engagement ≥30%, average session ≥60s, bounce ≤70%, and pages/session ≥1.2. Current GA4 telemetry: 77 Tier-1 sessions/30d, 28% engagement, 108s average session, 72% bounce, 1.77 pages/session. That passes on session length and pages/session but is still short on volume, engagement, and bounce. Paperwork that already exists: clear About / Contact / Methodology / Corrections pages and a crawlable content catalog. Missing for Journey: sustained engaged traffic at the required scale.

[operator] Enrollment in Journey (or any second display network) happens only after the readiness gate passes and the operator files the Monday list item. Do not install Journey tags from this readiness note.