Today I decided to see if ChatGPT could create a homebrew recipe. The answer is yes. Describe the style of beer you want, any flavor characteristics and - poof- recipe. I will be playing with this for my next few brews. the system will even give it to you in BeerXML if requested.
Using ChatGPT to design a base recipe can be fun, but make sure to use your own common sense because my experience is that it’s pulling from a lot of older freely available recipes and can have a lot of strange attributes from that (like a lot of crystal malt - a lot)
agreed. I’ve seen some pretty bad recipes from it.
And I’ve seen some that had errors and misunderstandings.
One of the advantages of books and videos is that you can often chat with the creators of that content.
Simple Homebrewing has an excellent chapter on recipe templates.
For classic styles, there is Designing Great Beers and Brewing Classic Styles.
“Mean Brews” is popular video channel that covers styles and recipes.
Basic Brewing Radio has a recent set of podcasts on recipes and recipe designs.
The strengths of these resources is that they are a “single voice” rather than (currently) statistically generated text.
Why accept an intermediary when you can go straight to the source and often chat with the authors?
Because one wants to see if the technology is capable of it most likely.
Or to avoid talking to people. Could be either.
I played with ChatGPT a cpl times a while back. It was fun but I never brewed the recipe or use it often.
Why? When there are so many tried and true recipes available at your fingertips… why? When you can get recipes directly from craft brewers… why?
Here is my 2 cents on it. I enjoy creating a recipe. The time spent researching and applying ideas to a recipe is relaxing. It helps to keep the mind active, at least for me.
Because I want to learn new things. I want to experiment with small changes. With Chat GPT I can put in a recipe from another source and then ask for it to have a little more citrus, or maybe a little more malt character and it will adjust it. My go to for recipes has always been BCS. I am also interested in brewing some of the Brewdog recipes that they published. I only get to brew once in a while, but I can play with recipes and read about this hobby everyday. Looking at ChatGPT was just something else to make me think about it.
With regard to hops, Stan H and Scott J are two (of a number) of experts. Their best work is in copyrighted material (books or videos behind paywalls).
FWIW, within AI/ML, a term for this is “hallucinations”. I’ve seen (and skimmed) articles recently from organizations that are trying to quantify it.
You are not going to learn anything from AI. You need to get your hands dirty and learn the flavors of each ingredient yourself. If you have time to read something read Randy Mosher’s Mastering Homebrew. It will walk you through the recipe design process and how to use ingredients that work together well.
I used it to design a Mexican lager. I had to make a couple of adjustments, but it was a good beer.
Better than you could have done on your own?
Please don’t let the number of posts next to my name confuse you. I have brewed almost a hundred batches and have designed my own recipes using all of the great resources that have been mentioned here. I have listened to hundreds of hours of brewing podcasts and enjoyed hundreds of homebrews of my own and from members of my local club. Saying that someone will learn nothing from AI is ignorant of the power of AI. When I say I want to learn from it, I mean that it can point me in the right direction because no matter how much I have read, watched, or listened to, it has more.
My guess back in #1 was that you were aware that a number of craft breweries had used ChatGPT to generate recipes. I would also guess that you were aware that there are a number of topics over in HomeBrewTalk or /r/homebrewing where home brewers with deep knowledge in AI and LLM explained the strengths and weaknesses of LLMs.
And, currently, it gets that for free, from the public internet.
This is had a “chilling” effect on public discussion in software development Q&A forums (like Stack Overflow).
I stand by my statement no matter what your experience or the number of posts. You simply can not develop critical thinking if you rely on AI to give you the answers. You have to roll up your sleeves, experience problems and use your brain to overcome them. However, you do you. As for others reading this with less experience; don’t rely on AI. Roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, use your brain and think for yourself. The I in your head will serve you much better than AI.
I can see someone who is an experienced brewer benefitting from AI. It’s not hard to imagine an AI recipe giving someone an idea that they hadn’t considered then using their own experience and perhaps research to work with that idea. It’s not something I am interested in myself but I think it’s black and white thinking to say either you are doing critical thinking or blindly following what AI says to do.
This right here.