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