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

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.

I think the "My Tasted Notes" section captures it, that is a really nice looking screen

Thanks for point this, we highlighted lots of features from individual perspective. Because coffee is very personal

Haha, fair enough! Totally see how that line might come across as a bit too “crafted.” What we meant is: many tools are great on data, but few feel fun, delightful, or reflect how expressive coffee culture really is.

But yep, emotions are tricky to “design for”—we’re trying anyway

Em dashes in responses with tone like this are a hallmark of AI generated content these days.

Not Op, but I liked the em dash; I read an article here some years ago on when to use which and it is quite accessible on the phone; even made a Linux shortcut for it. I hope the semicolon won't be flagged as well ;)

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?

Full respect to Beanconqueror! It’s an amazing tool for advanced coffee folks: open source, extremely customizable and supporting Bluetooth gear like scales and refractometers. We admire what they’ve built.

We’re trying things from a different angle:

We’re building for entry to mid-level coffee lovers—people who want to enjoy better coffee, stay organized, and reflect on their brews.

Most tracking apps start with forms.We start with senses, we thinking a lot what coffee looks like in our mind.

What makes BeanBook different:

- Snap-first design: No typing required.

- YouTube/photo to recipe

- Sensory-first interface

- Zero-config start

We want to build a Coffee app as a memory, not just numbers

We think there’s room for both kinds of tools: Beanconqueror is like a cockpit for pros. BeanBook is more like a beautifully illustrated notebook that fills itself in as you brew.

Do you have to use ChatGPT for every response

We tried most of the mainstream models. Currently, we are choosing the Gemini. if you scan, you'll have a call for now, but we are building a new solution to optimize the workflow

I meant for your reply to every comment in this thread

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.

Thanks—that’s great input, and really appreciate you sharing your experience! We’re definitely working toward that direction: tool-first, then building more ways for people to connect and share notes—especially around specific gear or beans.

And yes, Android is on our radar too!

Why only accept Google/Apple accounts? Why even require an account? :(

Google/Apple sign-in is a simple and secure way to reduce spam and support account-based features down the road. And having a sustainable model helps us maintain the team and keep improving the product.

Userbase for acquisition. We're on a site paid for by ycombinator remember.

Well explained, thank you!

We are running a little promotion for earlier users right now(July 3rd-10th), if you want to buy Pro version, here is a link for 10% off

https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6499280064&c...

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.

Thanks so much! Totally feel you on the side project struggle—it took us a while to get this one across the finish line too. Would love to hear more about what you were working on if you ever revisit it!

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.

Thanks for your feedback!

I’m home roasting too—using an entry-level FreshRoast SR800, which has been a ton of fun to learn on. I still buy from great roasters as well, since it’s a great way to rhetorically access to different processing methods and regions.

We also thought about home roasting. A few folks have mentioned wanting to log green bean origins, roast curves, and profiles—there’s a lot of potential there.

Right now, we’re focusing on making the bean & recipe tracking seamless for brewed coffee, we found good amount of people buying from roasters all around the world like us.

Appreciate you sharing your experience—it’s super helpful!

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!

Thanks so much for the honest feedback!

That’s super helpful—we hadn’t considered how the glare and text overlap could affect first impressions. We’ll rethink the first screen

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.

Looking forward to your feedback! Good idea! and Collecting gears is on our roadmap. but each grinder setting also depends on the types of beans and brew method, we'll need good aount of data for the suggestion, thanks for the idea!

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.

Let us know how it goes :D, btw the "single coffees" you mean the single origin coffee beans?

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!

Thank you for the support! And yes—great point bringing up Vivino. It really sets a strong example of where we could go with BeanBook. Lots to learn from that model!

Do you use AI to write every comment for you? Surely copying and pasting everyones comments in to ChatGPT and pasting a reply back is more work than just typing it yourself.

I use AI to refine what I ment to say, English is not my native language, AI really helped a lot! Trying my best to communicate the best I can.

this reply is purely hand crafted by human:)

I get it, but I feel you'd be better off just writing the best you can + Google Translate. LLMs have an extremely distinctive style that comes off dishonest.

Thanks for the reminder! Yes, I felt the same way, but I haven't figured out how to adjust the wording or tone properly. will be extra cautious

Haven't tried it myself yet, but this looks really good!

Thanks for your interested, looking forward for your feedback!

Are you guys shouting at each other from across a crowded room?! I hope everything is OK!

Overwhelmingly excited to hear back from both of you!

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.

Thanks for the feedback! Using a DiFluid Omni—you’re definitely a hardcore coffee enthusiast

We do have a notes feature attached to each bean, so you can always save that kind of data there for now. At the moment, we’re focused on building a solid foundation for entry- to mid-level coffee lovers, but deeper roast profiling and advanced tools like Omni integration are definitely on our radar.

Amazing. Just downloaded! Excited to give it a spin!

Just FYI the text in each screen of the onboarding flow is cut off on my iPhone 14. For example screen 3/3 says "How far have your beans".

Thanks for reporting this! We found on similar issue on SE screen, sorry for the buggy start will definitely fix in next update

Thank you! Glad you like it! Looking forward for your feedback!

You should make this into a Vivino style app

Vivino is a great benchmark!

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

Thank you for your kind words! That means a lot We’d absolutely love to connect! rokeyzhang@beanbook.app

Do you have an Android version coming?

We just two person team, currently we trying to stabilize on iOS developing, then we’ll definitely looking for Android version, lots of people asked for this too!

A trivial idea that might help you: nowadays, you can easily build entire Android and iOS apps by using ChatGPT, even if you have no experience in either platform (though you will need some general programming experience to catch and work around occasional problems). Karpathy mentioned something similar in his recent talk.

Hah, thanks for the idea! Over the past year of developing, we’ve been constantly surprised by what AI can do—and how much it’s accelerated our workflow. Hiring an AI Android dev is definitely a direction we’ll look into more seriously :D

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.

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.

Just thought of a few others:

  Onyx - Geometry
  Verve - Street Level
  Campos - Superior Blend
  Proud Mary - Humbler
  Five Elephant - House Blend

Geometry if you want to go for a bit lighter roast that lets some berry sparkle in. Others are more riffing on the theme.

I started with Onyx, Verve, now I bought beans from Prodial, DAK(eightounce), hydrangea & September etc

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

Please keep things like this on iOS

Thank you! Coffee is a very expressive fruit, so we think the coffee app should be as well :)