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Show HN: We're two coffee nerds who built an AI app to track beans and recipes (beanbook.app)

60 points by rokeyzhang ↗ HN
It’s available on iOS now: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id6499280064

We got into specialty coffee during COVID and, like many others, fell deep down the rabbit hole. Along the way, we ran into the same frustrations:

- A drawer full of empty coffee bags.

- No simple way to track grind size, rest dates, notes—by bean.

- My coffee history scattered across photos, screenshots, notebooks, and half-memories.

- The unique traits, people, and stories behind each coffee disappearing from the internet once it sold out (since coffee is an agricultural good)

- In our opinion, no coffee tool really captures the flavor, emotion, and aesthetic of great coffee—from a design perspective.

So we built BeanBook—a coffee notebook log beans, extract recipes, and organize your coffee life in one place with just a snap, powered by AI

Here’s what it does:

- Snap a bag → Auto-detects roaster, origin, process, roast date, notes, producer, farm, and more

- Paste a YouTube link or photo → Extracts a structured recipe automatically

- Log grind size, roast timeline, ratings & notes → All saved in a clean, elegant UI

- See your coffee year in review → Track habits, trends, and favorites

- Ask BeanBook AI → From brew temps to bean facts, get instant answers

My co-founder and I built everything ourselves—branding, code, and UX design. If you’re into coffee (or trying to get more into it), we’d love your feedback.

- Rokey & Eric

23 comments

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rorylaitila
Congrats on the launch and good luck!

Back when I was home roasting as a hobby, I built a database to track my roast times and tasting notes. I thought it would be interesting to build a database of roast recipes and green bean sourcing, because that was the hardest to remember what I liked best.

As for purchased roasts, I just find a brand I like I stick to it. So not much for me to track.

wmrio
Congrats on the launch! I have been making a similar app.

Happy for you for the launch, mad at my self for not finishing my side projects!

Cheers

Def will download and check it out. Thanks for sharing.

easygenes
Nice app! Quick note of first thing I noticed: Would be nice to have a more detailed option for roast. In my case I have a DiFluid Omni and use it for roast analysis, so would like to be able to enter the data from it.
jeemusu
Looks great, hopefully you have plans to bring it to Android. I've been tracking every shot I pull in a coffee journal for the last 2-3 years. While I love writing it all down, it would be quite nice to have all the stats related to habits, trends, spending, etc. I think the biggest frustration I have with home espresso is when I pick up a bag of new beans that I've never tried before, or have no point of reference for, and end up wasting coffee getting it dialed in. It would be great if there was a way to see other peoples brew notes, especially people using similar coffee hardware.
garysahota93
I've been wanting to build this forever now... I LOVE IT!

Would love to connect & share more ideas that I don't have time to build myself + feedback

radicaldreamer
Haven't tried it myself yet, but this looks really good!
wjgilmore
Amazing. Just downloaded! Excited to give it a spin!
whoamii
Why only accept Google/Apple accounts? Why even require an account? :(
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spiralcoaster
If I were drinking coffee at the time, this line would have made me spit it out in a fit of unbelievable laughter:

"- In our opinion, no coffee tool really captures the flavor, emotion, and aesthetic of great coffee—from a design perspective."

What does it mean to capture emotion in a coffee tool from a design perspective? You can't make this stuff up! Actually, I guess you can.

But anyway, I'm sure this comment section will be full of exclamation points (!) about how exciting this is and good luck and can't wait and this is amazing and wow thank you's and so on. Carry on.

mastazi
As a coffee aficionado I always wanted this, especially after one of my wine loving friends showed me the Vivino app. I've always wondered why we don't have a similar thing for coffee. Well done!
ChrisMarshallNY
Good luck!

For myself, I have done the whole shebang, Jamaican Blue Mountain, Tanzanian Peaberry, Mocha Yemen Mattari, Kona, etc.

Never did Catshit Coffee or Jura coffee machines, but I’ve invested in a lot.

But the last ten years or so, I have been buying 4 bags at a time (once a week), of Dunkin’ whole bean, and I’ve been using standard Braun Melitta-style coffeemakers.

I know, I know. I’m doomed to Coffee Hell for my blasphemy, but it really is the best coffee I’ve had. Home-roasted is better, but too high-maintenance for me.

rokeyzhang
Haha, based on you described, I'm in the same position as you were previously. I know its a lot of work, but also very satisfied! I'm very enjoying the process of making coffee, and also enjoy how people around me enjoy my coffee
easygenes
If you care for a similar cup profile with higher quality beans, I’d characterize Dunkin original blend as a medium-light roast (lighter than Starbucks’ Pike). Aroma: toasted cereal, brown sugar, roast almond, and hint of citrus. Flavor: caramel sugar, roast nut, hint of milk choc and citrus. Acidity: sweet/malic, soft and smooth. Body: light/medium, silky. Overall: Very well balanced but simplistic.

A blend to achieve this cup would rely on primarily (50-60%) Brazilian naturals for the core sweetness, with Colombian washed for the clean citric-malic acidity and silky body (~25%), and some mix of Guatemala/Honduras and Ethiopia washed for the last quarter to tweak body and acids.

If this profile (sweet-nutty, caramel-driven profiles with gentle citrus lift) is absolutely your jam, I’d check out the following blends for a similar cup put together from higher graded green beans:

  Counter Culture - Big Trouble
  Stumptown - Holler Mountain
  Onyx - Monarch
  Intelligentsia - El Gallo 
  Blue Bottle - Three Africas
  La Colombe - Nizza
  Square Mile - Red Brick Espresso
  Coffee Collective - Espresso Blend
Counter Culture and Stumptown are probably closest in profile. Intelligentsia and Blue Bottle will add more sparkle to the finish. La Colombe and Square Mile lean sweeter.
desigooner
Just curios - Outside of "AI", what's the benefit of using your app over Beanconqueror (https://beanconqueror.com/), which is open source, has a lot of functionality built out already across multiple years and supports integrations with scales, refractometers, etc?
ladidahh
Not a coffee person, but the design of the app under "Coffee notes reimagined" looks great. However, I think your splash video isn't doing it justice, between the overlayed text and the glare from it being shot outside, I didn't get a sense of how great the UI is till that section down the page.

Best of luck!

tiltowait
This seems nice. I'll play around with it tomorrow. One thing that would be cool to see is the ability to list the gear you have and get custom suggestions. For instance, instead of "medium-coarse", the app could know which grinder I have and recommend a specific setting.
Hyperboreanal
Please keep things like this on iOS
rokeyzhang
Thank you! Coffee is a very expressive fruit, so we think the coffee app should be as well :)
zahirbmirza
Nice. I go to cafes that always have different beans, and some are really good. I'm going to try this with the beans I end up liking from the single coffees vs the bags which I rarely buy.