FAQ

General

What is muddler?

A mobile app that scans cocktail menus and returns structured recipes. Point your camera at a menu; get ingredients, estimated measurements, flavor profiles, and cocktail-family classification for each drink it finds.

Who is it for?

Bartenders, cocktail nerds, people who want to know what’s in a Smoked Rosemary Gimlet before ordering one. Not mutually exclusive.

What platforms does muddler support?

iOS and Android.

Is it free?

The app is free to install and the core scanning features work without an account. Signing up is also free and unlocks custom ingredients, saved scans, and additional features as they get added.

Scanning

What kinds of menus can muddler read?

  • Printed menus (typed text on paper or screens)
  • Digital menus (screenshot the image, or paste the text directly)
  • Chalkboard menus (photograph them, though lighting tends to be the enemy)
  • Handwritten menus (sometimes; optional AI enhancement helps)

The scan didn’t pick up all the cocktails. Why?

Common reasons, in rough order of frequency:

  • Blurry photo. Hold steady. Tap to focus.
  • Low contrast. Dark text on dark backgrounds is hard for OCR. Try increasing brightness when photographing.
  • Unusual formatting. Artistic menu layouts may need text pasted manually instead of photographed.
  • Small text. Get closer or crop to the relevant section.

Can I just type or paste a menu?

Yes. The scan screen has a text input option. Paste the menu text directly and the parser will handle it the same way, skipping OCR entirely.

How accurate is the OCR?

For clearly printed menus with good lighting, accuracy is typically 90%+. The multi-pass OCR strategy with confidence scoring helps. For handwritten menus, enabling AI enhancement significantly improves results. For menus photographed in dim bars, nothing really helps.

Ingredients and recipes

How many ingredients does muddler know?

9,000+ ingredients across 10 categories (spirits, liqueurs, wines, bitters, syrups, juices, mixers, garnishes, dairy, and more), with more added over time. The app ships with a built-in offline seed set. Signed-in users get access to the full live database.

How many cocktail recipes are in the database?

Hundreds of base recipes, including IBA (International Bartenders Association) official cocktails and curated recipes from bartender guides. The library keeps growing.

What if muddler doesn’t recognize an ingredient?

The 8-tier fuzzy matcher handles most cases including OCR errors, regional names, and brand names. If an ingredient is genuinely missing, signed-in users can add it as a custom ingredient, which also helps it show up for future scans.

Where do the measurements come from?

When menus don’t list measurements (most don’t), muddler infers them using template-based estimation. Cocktails are classified into structural families (Sour, Highball, Spirit Forward, etc.) and standard ratios for that family are applied. The result is structurally sound; bartenders will argue about every specific number.

Privacy and data

Does muddler store my scanned menus?

No. Images are processed and immediately discarded. No scan data is stored. See Privacy for the full breakdown.

Does muddler require an account?

No. The core scanning features work without one. Signing up is optional and unlocks additional features.

Is there tracking or analytics?

The app collects minimal technical telemetry required for crash reporting. No user-identifiable data is sold, shared, or used for advertising. The website has zero tracking and zero third-party requests.

Availability

Does the app work offline?

The ingredient database ships with the app so local lookups and browsing work without a connection. Full menu scanning currently requires a connection. Offline OCR is on the roadmap.

Which regions are supported?

The app is available wherever Apple and Google distribute their stores. The ingredient database is strongest for English-language cocktail culture and is still expanding. Menus in Latin-script languages generally parse; non-Latin scripts (Japanese, Thai, Cyrillic, Hangul) don’t yet.

How do I report a bug or suggest an ingredient?

Use the in-app feedback option in the settings menu. Every report gets read.