Craft beer, brewed at home. One app that guides you from grain to glass.

MiniBrew makes compact, automated home brewing systems that allow anyone to brew craft beer without prior experience. The hardware handles the brewing process automatically; the app is how users control it, follow their brew, and access recipes. MiniBrew came to Elements as a startup needing the full digital layer built from scratch alongside their hardware launch.

A brewing companion that connects to the hardware

The app connects to the MiniBrew machine via Bluetooth, giving users real-time visibility into their brew: temperature, fermentation stage, time remaining, and alerts when action is needed. Users can start, pause, and monitor a brew from anywhere, receiving push notifications when the process reaches a new stage.

A recipe platform with CMS-driven content

The app includes a recipe library managed through a CMS, so MiniBrew can add and update recipes without app releases. Recipes guide users step by step through the brewing process, with ingredient lists, timing, and instructions tied to the machine's actual state. As the community grows, user-generated recipes can be surfaced alongside official ones.

Backend, CMS, website, and mobile in one build

Elements built the full stack for MiniBrew: the mobile app, the backend that handles device communication and user accounts, the CMS that powers recipe content, and the marketing website. Delivering everything from one team meant the architecture was coherent from day one, without integration gaps between separately built components.

Why build everything together?

Startups launching hardware and software simultaneously cannot afford integration gaps between their digital components. A backend built by one team, a CMS built by another, and a mobile app built by a third creates three sets of assumptions that rarely align perfectly. Elements built everything, which meant one architecture, one data model, and one team accountable for how it all fits together.

Hardware and software launches are high-stakes, high-pressure moments. Elements worked in close coordination with MiniBrew's hardware team throughout the build, aligning on the Bluetooth communication protocol, device state model, and error handling before the hardware was finalised.

As MiniBrew expands its recipe library and user community, the platform can support user-generated content, social features, and personalised recipe recommendations based on brewing history. The CMS architecture makes adding new content types straightforward.