BENGALURU: Do you know your beer? You may soon not know what makes the fizzy beverage so good. The labelling on beer cans and bottles manufactured and meant for exclusive sale in Karnataka, which give details, including percentage of ingredients used in the popular alcoholic beverage, may soon go.
For ‘ease of doing business’ and ‘simplifying procedures’, the State government on April 10 issued a draft notification to amend the Karnataka Excise (Bottling of Liquor) Rules, 1967, under Section 71 of the Karnataka Excise Act, 1965 (Karnataka Act 21, 1966).
Objections, if any, should be filed within 10 days of issue of the notification to the Additional Chief, Finance. The move to amend the bottling of liquor rules proposes to drop Rule 2 of the Karnataka Excise (Brewery) Rules, 1967.
“In clause (f), the ‘Note’ and entries relating thereto shall be omitted,” the draft notification states. This section, along with other things, is on liquor prepared from malt or grain, with sugar addition capped at 25 per cent by weight (of malt), including ale, porter and stout.
According to informed sources, more than a year ago, the Excise department had directed brewers that “sugar, if used as raw material while brewing beer, should not cross 25 per cent of the total weight of malt, and should be declared along with other ingredients on the label considering health of beer consumers, many of who are also young”.
Buyer has right to know beer’s contents
“If the government amends brewery rules then one will not be able to ascertain the presence and percentage of sugar, if added during the brewing process. As a consumer, one has the right to know the contents of the brew and drink responsibly,” said sources.
The Brewers Association of India (BAI), meanwhile, has “welcomed” the state government’s move to withdraw the earlier notification of mandating malt and sugar content on beer labels.
“It was fundamentally flawed as beer does not have traceable sugar in it, and exact malt content is part of the product recipe and confidential trade information,” said Director General, Brewers Association of India (BAI), Vinod Giri.
“These requirements are also not standard or part of the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) regulations. As it is, labels (in Karnataka) are very cluttered and putting additional information, which is irrelevant, serves no purpose.
In the last couple of years, the beer industry saw too many irrelevant and unnecessary regulatory interventions of this kind. We were, therefore, particularly pleased to see the Chief Minister announce widespread ease of doing business reforms in his budget speech. This withdrawal is part of that,” he said.
Giri added that BAI is “very enthused by the intent and scope of reforms proposed in the (Karnataka) budget and looks forward to notifications covering other proposals as well”.
The Karnataka Excise (Brewery) (Amendment) Rules, 2026, shall come into force from the date of their final publication in the official gazette.