AI Brewing Assistant

An AI-powered brewing companion that helps you create recipes, get brewing advice, and analyze your inventory

The AI Brewing Assistant is a chat-based companion built into Brewfather that helps you create and modify recipes, get answers to brewing questions, analyze your inventory, and more. It understands brewing concepts and has access to your Brewfather data to provide personalized advice.

Tip

The AI Brewing Assistant requires a Premium Plus subscription and uses AI credits. See Subscription for details on plans and credit allocations.

Opening the Assistant

The AI Assistant is available from any page in Brewfather:

• Mobile: Tap the AI Assistant button to open a full-screen chat overlay

• Desktop: Click the AI Assistant button to open a floating panel. On larger screens (1680px+), it can dock as a sidebar

The panel remembers its open/closed state and size between sessions.

Chat Interface

The assistant uses a conversational chat interface:

1. Type your question or request in the text box at the bottom

2. Tap Send to submit

3. The assistant streams its response in real-time with a typing indicator

4. Continue the conversation with follow-up questions

Messages have a 5,000 character limit per message. The assistant shows brewing-themed thinking animations while processing your request.

What You Can Ask

Recipe Creation

Ask the assistant to create complete recipes from scratch:

• "Create a West Coast IPA with Citra and Mosaic hops"

• "Design a low-ABV session stout for summer"

• "Make a clone of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale"

• "Create a Belgian Witbier with orange peel and coriander"

The assistant generates a full recipe with fermentables, hops, yeast, mash profile, and fermentation schedule.

Recipe Modification

When you have a recipe open, the assistant can modify it:

• "Substitute the Cascade hops for Centennial"

• "Adjust this recipe to lower the ABV to 4.5%"

• "Scale this recipe down to a 10-liter batch"

• "Convert this extract recipe to all-grain"

• "Adjust the hop schedule to match BJCP style guidelines"

The assistant understands your current recipe context and makes targeted changes.

Brewing Knowledge

Ask general brewing questions:

• "What's the difference between ale and lager yeast?"

• "How does mash temperature affect body and fermentability?"

• "Explain water chemistry basics for IPAs"

• "What is a protein rest and when should I use one?"

• "How long should I dry hop a NEIPA?"

Inventory Analysis

The assistant can look at your inventory to give recommendations:

• "What recipes can I brew with my current inventory?"

• "What ingredients am I running low on?"

• "Suggest a recipe using the hops I have in stock"

• "Do I have enough ingredients to brew this recipe?"

Recipe and Batch Lookup

The assistant can search and retrieve information from your data:

• "Find my recipes tagged with 'competition'"

• "What was the OG of my last IPA batch?"

• "Show me my most recent batch details"

Context Awareness

The AI Assistant is aware of what you're currently viewing in Brewfather:

• Recipe context — When you have a recipe open, the assistant can reference and modify it directly. A recipe badge appears in the header showing the linked recipe.

• Batch context — When viewing a batch, the assistant can reference batch details. A batch badge appears in the header.

This means you can say things like "adjust this recipe" or "what went wrong with this batch" without having to specify which one.

Applying Generated Recipes

When the assistant creates or modifies a recipe:

1. The recipe preview appears in the chat as a version notification

2. Tap Apply to save the generated recipe

3. For new recipes, this creates a new recipe in your recipe list

4. For modifications, this creates a new version of the existing recipe (see Recipe Versioning)

Quick Suggestions

Below the text input, the assistant offers suggestion categories to get you started:

• Modify Current Recipe — Suggestions for adjusting your open recipe (ingredient substitution, hop schedule changes, style guideline improvements, etc.)

• Create New Recipe — Suggestions for generating new recipes (style-specific, seasonal, clones, session versions, etc.)

• Brewing Basics — Common brewing questions (yeast types, mashing, water chemistry, dry hopping, etc.)

• Inventory Management — Suggestions for inventory analysis (summaries, low stock alerts, recipe matching, purchase lists)

Tap a category to see specific suggestions, then tap a suggestion to auto-fill the message box.

Conversations

The assistant maintains conversation context throughout a chat session:

• Continue Previous Conversation — When re-opening the assistant, you can choose to continue your last conversation

• New Conversation — Tap the menu icon and select Clear Chat to start fresh

• Message History — Scroll up to review previous messages, with a Load More button for longer conversations

AI Credits

Each message you send to the assistant consumes AI credits from your monthly allocation:

• Premium Plus: 500 credits per month

• Credits reset monthly on your billing date

• Tap the credits indicator in the assistant header to see your remaining credits, usage this month, and days until reset

When you run out of credits, the send button is disabled until your credits reset. You can check your credit balance at any time from the credits popover.

Rate Limiting

To ensure service quality, the assistant limits messages to 10 per minute. A warning appears when you approach this limit (at 8 messages), and a countdown timer shows when you can send again if the limit is reached.

Feedback

You can provide feedback on any assistant response:

• Thumbs up — Tap to mark a response as helpful (submitted immediately)

• Thumbs down — Tap to submit negative feedback. A modal opens where you can describe the issue (20-1000 characters)

Your feedback helps improve the quality of the assistant's responses.

Message Actions

Hover over (or long-press on mobile) any assistant message to access:

• Copy — Copy the message text to your clipboard

• Print — Print the message content

• Share — Share the message through your device's share options

Disabling the Assistant

If you prefer not to see the AI Assistant:

1. Tap the menu icon on the assistant panel

2. Select Disable AI Assistant

3. The assistant button is hidden from the interface

You can re-enable it from the Settings page at any time.