A can, a jar, a batch code, and about ninety seconds of film.
Scan the code on a Hawkstone can or a shop jar and you get the batch it came from: which field, which variety, which week it was made, who made it, and the film shot on the day.
What a scan actually does.
You point the camera at the code
A two-dimensional barcode on the base of a can or the shoulder of a jar. Your phone’s ordinary camera will do it.
It resolves to a page, not an app
The code is a web address with a batch number in it. It works from any camera app and it works if we go out of business.
The page knows the batch
Not the product. The difference is the entire point: batch 0114 is a specific week in a specific tank.
It shows the film
About ninety seconds, shot on the day, showing the field, the tank or the pan.
And the record underneath it
Field, variety, harvest date, malting, brew date, package date, and the person whose name is on it.
Then it offers you the thing again
Which is the commercial reason this exists, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What is behind each kind of code.
| Scan this | And you get | How far back it goes |
|---|---|---|
| A Hawkstone can | Brew date, tank, malt, and which field the barley came off | To a field and a harvest date |
| A jar from the shop | Making date, batch size, the producer, and their page | To a named producer within sixteen miles |
| A box | Everything in it, individually, with its own batch codes | To six or seven separate producers |
| Patch produce | Your own patch reference, your field, and the twelve-frame year | To the day it was drilled |
| A cask bottling | Fill date, regauge, strength, and the bottling day | To 2029, if you are patient |
| A gift | The same record, plus who gave it to you | Same as the underlying product |
Why the code is a web address rather than an app.
The two-dimensional codes going onto packaging across the industry over the next few years carry a web address with a product and batch identifier inside it. That is a deliberately boring choice and it is the right one.
It means an ordinary phone camera opens the page. It means the code still works if nobody has our app, because there is no app. It means a retailer can scan the same code for stock and a customer can scan it for a film, and neither has to care about the other.
And it means that if this platform stops existing, the code on the can degrades to a dead link rather than to a puzzle. Which is a low bar, and one that a surprising number of provenance schemes fail.
Batch 0114, on film.
Ninety seconds from the barley block to the tank: the field it came off in August, the malting, and the eleventh day of lagering. Shot on the days it happened rather than assembled afterwards.
Scanning a can does not prove you are old enough to buy one.
The batch page for anything alcoholic shows the film and the record without an age check, because information about how beer is made is not age-restricted. Buying it is. The age gate sits at the basket, at checkout and at the door, and a scan does not shortcut any of the three.
Scanning, questioned.
Yes, entirely. Provenance is not a membership benefit and putting it behind a login would defeat the object.
The record stays up permanently. A jar found at the back of a cupboard in 2031 will still resolve, and it will still say when it was made.
It tells us that batch 0114 was scanned, and where in the world roughly. It does not attach that to you unless you are signed in, and you can turn that off.
You can scan anything. Codes we did not issue resolve to somebody else’s website, which is how the standard is supposed to work.
The provenance record, at length.
Every line in the shop, who makes it and how far away.
