USA: ChatGPT creates beer recipes with artificial intelligence

In April, Rio Bravo Brewing Co. from Albuquerque, N.M. is releasing a new beer called Alegorithm. The beer is one of the first beers, developed using artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The recipe for its new pale ale was created by using ChatGPT.

ChatGPT, part-owned by Microsoft, is an artificial intelligence chatbot that was launched as a prototype on November 30, 2022, and quickly garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. The chatbot for example, can compose music; write poetry, song lyrics, teleplays, fairy tales, and student essays; answer test questions, often better than the average human test-taker; debug computer programs; simulate an entire chat room; control multiple platforms such as robot arms, drones, and home assistant robots intuitively with language; just to name a few applications.

Denise and Randy Baker, the founders of Rio Bravo Brewing, came up with the idea for an AI-generated beer recipe after her daughter Jennifer Baker who is in charge of marketing at the brewery told her mom about different uses of artificial intelligence, including making meal plans and creating food recipes from ingredients in a person's fridge.

After being consulted, ChatGPT created a recipe for a pale ale but the recipe the AI machine originally created wasn't perfect. The Bakers and head brewer Austin Giorgetta had to tweak the prompt to make sure it created a beer good enough to serve at Rio Bravo, the Bakers said. The company even used AI to create the name for the new beer.

Alegorithm, once ready, will be available in 12-ounce cans (sold as six-packs) and on tap at Rio Bravo's tap room in the first week of April.

Rio Bravo Brewing is not the first to develop a beer recipe with ChatGPT. Three weeks earlier Detroit-based Atwater Brewery has created the first ever beer using a recipe fully generated by the chatbot. Atwater’s brew, called Artificial Intelligence IPA, or AI IPA for short, is a clear, straw-coloured India pale ale with 'tropical and citrus flavors and aromas'.

Joe Platt, quality manager at Atwater, who came up with the idea, asked ChatGP the question “Can you brew me an American IPA using centennial, citra, amarillo, and melon hops?", because those were the hops the brewery had at hand. Apart from water, the chatbot gave Platt 13 ingredients, including three malts –pale malt, wheat malt and Munich malt – an American ale yeast and corn sugar and eight varieties of hops – an extra four than what was requested.

The resulting beer has 6.55 per cent alcohol-by-volume and is “more bitter and had higher IBUs than IPAs we usually tend to make,” Platt said. But nevertheless, the brew was well received by Atwater’s clients.

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