According to the Brazilian Sindicato Nacional da Indústria de Cerveja (Sindicerv), about R$ 720 million a year used to be lost due to federal and state tax evasion by some beer manufacturers. Tax evasion used to be eased by the method used by the Brazilian federal revenue service (Receita Federal) to monitor the amount of beer manufactured, which was solely based on sales receipts, resulting in large losses for the government and companies. In 2001, in order to create mechanisms to help in tax collection, the Federal government issued the Medida Provisória no 2.158-35, making it mandatory for the manufacturers to install a Flow Measurement System in all bottling lines, at the beginning of the beverage filler. The system was to be initially used as a monitoring device. In addition to measuring the amount of beverage manufactured, the Flow Measurement System is also responsible for detecting the type of beverage being bottled or canned by means of an electrical conductivity sensor. This and other possible methods for distinguishing between alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages in the Flow Measurement System are evaluated in this dissertation, in order to increase reliability for the Receita Federal and the consumers. In addition to the conductivity, density and pH measurements were also evaluated. Due to problems found in these three (3) techniques, an index of refraction optical fiber sensor was also tested for distinguishing between beverages. The main advantage of this sensor is that it makes tax evasion more difficult because, as opposed to the conductivity sensor, it is not affected by external electromagnetic interference. The uncertainty in measurement of the conductivity and index of refraction results were calculated. This dissertation` results are sufficiently significant to substantiate the recommendation that the Medida Provisória no 2.158-35 be revised. Part of this dissertation was financed by the Convênio referência FINEP n° 22.01.0692.00 of the Programa Tecnologia Industrial Básica e Serviços Tecnológicos para a Inovação e Competitividade MCT/FINEP/FNDCT/Fundo Verde Amarelo, a university-company cooperative program.