PHOTO^ ILLUSTRATIONCREATED^ BY^ ELENI^DIMOUUSINGGETTY^ IMAGES^ (HAND)^ ANDLAKOTAGAMBILL(BEER)12 May/June 2020The World’s
Best New
Brewers
Just Happen
to Be Robots
W
E’VE SEEN
artificial intel-
ligence take
over many tasks
in the everyday
world—from
parking cars to
stocking grocery store aisles.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise
that AI has found its way into
the creation of alcoholic bever-
ages, which often involves a host
of different ingredients, f lavor
notes, and precise recipes.
A Swedish distillery and a
Philadelphia brewery are among
the increasing number of manu-
facturers that have incorporated// BY SAR A H KLOEPPLE //4
Drinks
AI and other out-of-the-ordinary
technology in their production.
Why involve machines in these
venerated crafts? Both com-
panies saw it as an exciting
learning experiment, but more
importantly, they recognized
technology’s ability to develop
f lavor profiles at lightning speed
and standardize production.
Just outside Gävle, Sweden,
Mackmyra Whisky partnered
with Microsoft and Finnish tech
company Fourkind to create the
world’s first AI-generated whis-
key. The distillery used machine
learning models on Microsoft’s
Azure cloud platform and AI ▶