Every alcohol product sold in the US is governed by a web of federal regulations. What goes on a label, how products are classified, what permits you need, how taxes are calculated — the rules are spread across dozens of CFR parts, TTB rulings, industry circulars, and guidance documents. They're all public domain. They're also scattered across TTB.gov and eCFR.gov in a mix of HTML and PDF, buried in government website chrome, with no cross-referencing or topic organization.
I built a regulatory reference that brings all of it into one place.
What's in it
189 documents across 10 collections, published as browsable, searchable documentation at docs.colacloud.us. About 9.2 MB of clean markdown. Here's what that includes:
- All 36 parts of CFR Title 27 — the binding federal regulations for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms administered by the TTB
- 99 TTB rulings dating back to 1956 — interpretive guidance that carries legal weight
- 20 industry circulars — non-binding guidance on specific regulatory topics
- 14 FAQ pages from TTB.gov — the bureau's own answers to common questions
- 13 boot camp educational decks — training materials from TTB's brewer and distiller programs
- Supporting reference materials — processing times, system documentation, trade practice guidelines
All sourced from public domain US government publications under 17 U.S.C. § 105. Our contribution is the conversion, organization, and metadata enrichment.
The navigation layer
Raw regulatory text is only useful if you can find what you need. We built a navigation layer on top of the documents:
14 regulatory topics — labeling, advertising, permits, formulas, taxes, trade practices, compliance, and category-specific topics for spirits, wine, beer, importing/exporting, and more. Each topic maps to the relevant CFR parts, rulings, FAQs, and educational materials. If you're researching labeling requirements, you get one page that links to every document that touches labeling.
A 127-term regulatory glossary extracted from the definitions sections across CFR Title 27. Each term links back to the source CFR parts where it's defined. "Distilled spirits" means something very specific in federal regulation — the glossary tells you exactly what, and where that definition lives.
Authority levels. Not all TTB publications carry the same weight. We label each collection: Primary (CFR — binding law), Interpretive (rulings — binding guidance), Guidance (circulars — non-binding), Informational (FAQs), Educational (boot camps), and Reference. If you're making a compliance decision, you should know whether you're reading a statute or a training slide.
Supersession tracking. Some TTB rulings have been replaced by newer ones. We track three known ruling chains where this has happened and mark them clearly, so you don't rely on outdated guidance.
Why this matters for data
COLA Cloud is a data product. We serve 2.9 million product records with label images, barcodes, OCR, and AI-powered classification. But data without context is just numbers in a table.
When a product is classified as "distilled spirits, specialty" with a type code of 641 — what does that mean? When a COLA application requires formula approval — why? When a label lists an appellation of origin — what are the rules governing that claim? The answers are in the regulations.
The regulatory reference gives our data a foundation. It's the "why" behind the "what."
Machine-readable by default
The docs site is built on Mintlify,
which auto-generates an llms.txt file from all published pages. With 189 regulatory
documents now in the site, the file at
docs.colacloud.us/llms.txt
becomes a comprehensive index of US alcohol regulation — discoverable by AI agents, RAG
pipelines, and LLM-powered tools.
COLA Cloud already offers an MCP server for AI-native access to product data. Now the regulatory context behind that data is machine-readable too. An AI agent working with alcohol product data can look up the actual regulations governing that data in the same session.
What this is not
This is not legal advice. We didn't write these regulations, interpret them, or endorse any regulatory positions. The content is sourced entirely from public domain US government publications. It's a point-in-time snapshot that may contain conversion artifacts from the original HTML and PDF sources. For authoritative text, always verify against eCFR.gov and TTB.gov.
What it is: a clean, organized, searchable, machine-readable copy of the public regulatory record — something that should exist and didn't.
Explore it
The full regulatory reference is live at docs.colacloud.us/regulatory/overview. Start with the topic map if you know what you're looking for, or the collections page to browse everything.
No account required. It's part of the public documentation.