Privacy Policy
Last updated September 6, 2026 · Grist is operated by Shotdrum Studios, LLC.
The short version
- Your brewing data is yours. We store it so it can sync across your devices — that's it.
- We do not sell your data, and there are no advertising or analytics trackers in Grist.
- We collect the minimum we need: an email address to identify your account, the brewing data you enter, purchase status, and crash reports.
- You can delete your account and all of your data yourself, from the app or the web app, at any time.
1. Who we are
Grist is a homebrewing app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and the web, published by Shotdrum Studios, LLC ("we", "us"). This policy covers the Grist apps, the Grist web app at web.gristbrew.app, and the Grist backend service. Questions go to hello@gristbrew.app.
2. What we collect
Account information
Grist accounts are managed with Amazon Cognito. Depending on how you sign in, we receive:
- Email address — always. It is the canonical identifier for your account. If you use Sign in with Apple and choose "Hide My Email," we only ever see Apple's private relay address, never your real one.
- Name — only if Apple or Google passes it to us at sign-up, and only if you allowed it.
- A stable internal user ID that we generate. Everything else is filed under that ID.
If you sign in with more than one method using the same verified email address, we link them to a single account so you don't end up with duplicates.
We never see or store passwords. Email sign-in uses a one-time code; Apple and Google sign-in are handled by those providers.
Your brewing data
This is the content you create in Grist: batches, recipes, ingredients and inventory, brew logs and readings, competitions, competition entries, scoresheets and results, your Master Homebrewer Program (MHP) profile and progress, and your brewery details. We store it so your devices can stay in sync and so you can get to it from any browser.
Purchases and subscriptions
We record whether your account has an active Grist Pro entitlement, and the identifiers needed to keep that status accurate — an App Store transaction identifier for in-app purchases, or a Stripe customer and subscription identifier for web purchases. We never receive or store your card number. Payment details go directly to Apple or to Stripe.
Diagnostics
When Grist crashes or hits an error, we receive a report through Sentry: the error, a stack trace, the app version, the device model and OS version, and your account's internal user ID so we can tell whether a bug is hitting one person or everyone. Crash reports may incidentally contain fragments of your data where it was involved in the error.
Services you connect on purpose
Some features only work if you connect an outside account. These are entirely opt-in and are covered in section 5.
What we don't collect
No advertising identifiers. No third-party analytics or marketing SDKs. No location tracking. No contacts, photos, or health data. No cross-app or cross-site tracking of any kind.
3. How we use your information
- To run the service — authenticate you, sync your data between devices, and serve the features you use.
- To provide Grist Pro — check entitlement and keep subscription status current.
- To keep Grist working — diagnose crashes, fix bugs, and prevent abuse (including rate limits on expensive features).
- To contact you — account and transactional messages such as sign-in codes, receipts, and important service notices.
We do not use your brewing data for advertising, and we do not sell or rent it. We do not use your data to train machine-learning models, and our AI provider does not train on it either (see section 4).
4. AI features (Sight)
Grist's AI features are powered by Anthropic's Claude API. When you ask Sight a question or open an AI-generated insight:
- Your device sends the request to our backend — not to Anthropic directly.
- Our backend assembles the relevant facts from your own stored brewing data, computes what it can deterministically, and sends that grounded context plus your question to Anthropic.
- Anthropic returns an answer, which we stream back to your device. We don't keep the generated answer beyond what's needed to deliver it.
Anthropic processes this data as our service provider under its commercial API terms. Anthropic does not use your data to train its models — not the questions you ask Sight, not the brewing data we send as context, and not the answers it generates. Neither do we. Only the data needed for the specific question is sent; Sight does not ship your whole account.
AI output can be wrong. Don't rely on it for anything with a safety, health, or food-safety consequence.
5. Who we share data with
We share data only with the service providers that make Grist work, and only what each one needs. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.
| Provider | Purpose | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon Web Services | Hosting, database, authentication | All account and brewing data (stored in the United States) |
| Anthropic | AI features (Sight) | Your question plus the specific brewing data needed to answer it. Not used to train Anthropic's models. |
| Sentry | Crash and error reporting | Error reports, device and app version, internal user ID |
| Stripe | Web subscription billing | Email address and payment details you enter with Stripe |
| Apple | Sign in with Apple, in-app purchases, iCloud sync on Apple devices | Account identifiers and purchase records |
| Sign in with Google | Account identifiers |
Optional integrations you choose to connect
- Brewfather and Brewer's Friend — if you connect one, Grist uses your credentials to import your recipes and batches from that service. Disconnect at any time in Settings.
- Google Sheets — if you use MHP sheet sync, Grist reads the specific spreadsheet you point it at, and nothing else in your Drive. Access is read-only: we never write to, modify, or delete your spreadsheet.
Each of these services has its own privacy policy governing what it does with your data on its side.
Other disclosures
We may disclose information if legally required (a subpoena, court order, or similar), to protect our rights or someone's safety, or as part of a merger or acquisition — in which case we'll notify you before your data becomes subject to a different privacy policy.
6. How we protect your data
- All traffic between your devices and our servers is encrypted with TLS.
- Data at rest is encrypted by our cloud provider.
- Every account's data lives in its own partition, and every request is authenticated against a signed token scoped to your account.
- Access to production systems is limited to those who need it to operate the service.
No system is perfectly secure, and we can't guarantee absolute security. If a breach affects your data, we'll notify you as required by law.
7. Retention and deleting your account
You can delete your Grist account yourself, at any time, from Settings in the Grist app or the web app. No email, no support ticket, no waiting on us.
When you delete your account:
- Your account and all of your synced brewing data are removed from our live systems immediately.
- Residual copies in encrypted backups are purged within 30 days.
- Crash reports associated with your account are deleted on Sentry's retention schedule (90 days).
- We retain purchase and tax records where the law requires it. These contain a transaction identifier and amount — not your brewing data.
Deleting your Grist account does not cancel a subscription bought through Apple. Manage that in your Apple ID subscription settings. Subscriptions bought on the web are cancelled as part of deletion.
Data stored locally on your device is removed when you delete the app. While your account is active, we keep your data until you delete it — we don't expire accounts for inactivity without telling you first.
8. Your rights
Wherever you live, you can:
- Access and export your brewing data. Email us and we'll provide a machine-readable copy of everything on your account.
- Correct anything inaccurate — you can edit your data directly.
- Delete your account and data yourself (section 7).
If you're in the EEA or UK, you also have rights to restrict or object to processing and to data portability under the GDPR; our lawful bases are performance of our contract with you (running the service) and our legitimate interests (security, debugging, abuse prevention). If you're in California, the CCPA/CPRA gives you rights to know, delete, correct, and opt out of sale or sharing — we don't sell or share personal information, so there is nothing to opt out of. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of these rights.
To exercise a right that isn't self-serve, email hello@gristbrew.app. We respond within 30 days.
9. Age requirements
Grist is not directed to children. You must be at least 13 years old to create an account, and because Grist is a homebrewing app, you must be of legal drinking age where you live (21 in the United States) to use it. We don't knowingly collect information from children under 13; if we learn we have, we delete it. If you believe a child has given us information, email hello@gristbrew.app.
10. Where your data lives
Grist's servers are in the United States. If you use Grist from outside the US, your data is transferred to and processed in the US, which may have different data-protection laws than your country. By using Grist you consent to that transfer.
11. Changes to this policy
We'll update this page when our practices change, and revise the "last updated" date above. For material changes — anything that meaningfully expands how we use your data — we'll notify you in the app or by email before the change takes effect.
12. Contact
Shotdrum Studios, LLC
hello@gristbrew.app
See also the Terms of Service.