Three cheers for personalised beers: a taste of the future

That beer you’re sipping not quite to your taste? Thanks to AI, connoisseurs will be able to have their brew tweaked by tapping into a QR code.

Your first beer at your local was good, but maybe just a bit too hoppy.

Ideally, you could dial that down, maybe boost up the floral notes, and refine your second beer to your own personal tastes.

It’s a vision which is coming to life as a result of a collaboration between Adelaide-based technology company Deep Liquid, and members of the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, whose directors Simon Lucey and Anton van den Hengel and adjunct professor Jamie Sherrah are helping brewery founder and chief executive Denham D’Silva realise the vision.

As with many good business origin stories, this one began over a few beers, says D’Silva – a former regional vice-president with Merrill Lynch.

Deep Liquid’s current beer recipes were formulated by feeding 200,000 or so recipes into a machine learning process, with the outcome used by the brewers at D’Silva’s Barossa Valley Brewing to make products such as “The Rodney” IPA.

Drinkers can scan a QR code on the can and give feedback to the brewers, who can then refine the taste profile.

“The real opportunity here is to be able to create a process leveraging a neural network, that can iterate based on customers’ feedback,’’ D’Silva says.

With the ability to turn around a new product in as little as three weeks, this give smaller brewers an edge over larger counterparts.

Deep Liquid’s real-time “AI Bar” is debuting at the Treasury 1860 bar in Adelaide on Saturday and also at the upcoming Beer and BBQ Festival.

D’Silva says drinkers on Saturday will be reviewing a panel of beers and providing feedback, which will result in a tailor-made, personalised beer based on their preferences.

“We can create a beer on the spot for you, based on your personal preferences,’’ he says.

The process works by using a “base” beer, to which concentrates are then added.

“In one bar we can literally have hundreds of thousands of flavour components, D’Silva says.

At the AI Bar event on Saturday, the algorithm will not only take into account each drinker’s preference, but also what is being served for dessert, to provide the absolute best fit, he says.

The company is also working with a convenience store chain to adapt the process for use in energy drinks, with the ability to dial up and down elements such as caffeine and sugar envisaged.

From a company perspective, the main “product” in the long run will be the platform, not the ability for the company to personalise beers, D’Silva says.

“This is truly where I believe AI needs to go,’’ he says.

“Where AI is being used to augment human endeavour, that’s where it’s really powerful.’’