Beanlog Makes Coffee Bag Notes Into a Stock Journal

A half-empty bag of beans can become an unhelpful mystery: you remember liking the coffee, but not its roast, the notes you wrote down, or whether there is enough left for another morning. Beanlog is built to keep those details with the bag rather than scattered across memory or scraps of paper. It is a coffee bean journal for iPhone and iPad, combining a photo-based collection with tasting notes and a simple stock estimate.

The developer describes it as an app for home coffee drinkers who want to keep track of the beans they buy. That is a narrower job than managing a whole brewing setup. Its focus is the coffee itself: what the bag was, how you rated it, what you noticed in the cup and how much remains. If that is the record you are missing, Beanlog gives it a dedicated place.

The bag is the starting point

The workflow begins with a photograph of a coffee bag. Beanlog’s page describes removing the photo background on the device, then adding the bag to a library. From there, the developer says you can record roast level, a rating and tasting notes. The result is meant to be a small archive you can return to when deciding which coffees you enjoyed.

That emphasis makes sense for specialty coffee drinkers who encounter more bags than they can reliably remember. A note such as “bright” is more useful when it is attached to the bag and rating that prompted it. Beanlog also lets you mark beans for rebuying and keep a to-buy list, so remembering a favourite can lead to a practical next step.

The landing page presents the collection as photos, ratings and notes, with a separate bag wall that turns selected bags into a shareable poster-style display. That is an optional presentation layer, not the core record-keeping job. The useful distinction is that the app offers both a private memory aid and a way to arrange the collection for sharing.

Stock follows your logged cups

The inventory feature is the part that moves Beanlog beyond a tasting diary. You set how many grams remain in a bag and enter a dose per cup. When you log a cup, the app deducts that dose from the remaining stock. In practice, this should make the estimate easier to maintain than updating the weight manually after every brew, provided the dose you entered matches what you actually used.

That last condition matters. The deduction follows a logged cup and a configured dose; the description does not suggest that Beanlog detects a brew or weighs beans on its own. If you change doses often, share a bag, or make coffee without recording it, the displayed remainder can drift from the real amount. It is an inventory aid that depends on keeping the routine current, not an automatic measurement system.

The app’s described fields are centred on the bag and the tasting result. There is no stated detail about storing brew recipes or variables such as grind size and water ratio. Someone who wants to diagnose why a pour over changed from one brew to the next may need a more detailed brewing log, or a separate place for those variables.

A small, iOS-only home coffee tool

Beanlog runs on iPhone and iPad, with the developer listing iOS and iPadOS 17 or later. That gives it a clear boundary: it is not presented as a desktop or Android journal. The developer also says no account is required and that the app supports full export and import backup. Those are useful assurances for a personal archive, although the submission does not explain the export format or how a restore works.

Beanlog has a free plan with a paid upgrade. The free plan covers up to ten bags, which is enough to try the basic collection and see whether logging becomes a habit. Someone rotating through many coffees may reach that cap and need the upgrade; the app is less compelling if they want an unlimited record without paying.

This is for iPhone and iPad users who buy several coffees, forget which ones deserve a repeat, and want remaining stock to reflect the cups they log. It is not for people looking for a comprehensive brew-analysis tool, automatic weighing, or a journal they can use across desktop and Android. Beanlog’s value depends less on collecting every possible brewing detail than on whether you will actually photograph each bag and record each cup.