When our home-brewed coffee tastes fantastic, we often wish for one thing: to prepare it the same way again, for ourselves and those around us. But coffee preparation is a interplay of many factors, and it's not at all easy to master an espresso pull or a filter coffee brew exactly the same way twice.
Some home baristas help themselves with a notepad, some freestyle from time to time, and more and more are using Beanconqueror. Beanconqueror is the app of German developer Lars Saalbach. He makes Beanconqueror available to the coffee community for free, constantly develops the app further, and does so exemplarily when it comes to data protection and transparency.
We are excited about Beanconqueror and have now used the app several times in videos. In this article and the accompanying video, we introduce you to Beanconqueror.
By the way: if you want to import the info about our coffees into the app, you can now do it easily via a button. You'll find the buttons integrated with many of our coffees.
In a nutshell - what is Beanconqueror?
Beanconqueror is available as an app for Android and iOS. The app allows you to track almost all variables of a coffee pull. Whether brew method, beans, grinders, scales, or pressure sensors, and much more; everything can be entered or even integrated into Beanconqueror.
Integrated means that we can connect many Bluetooth-capable scales, thermometers, and even refractometers or pressure sensors (connectable to, e.g., Faema E61 brewing groups, the Flair, or Cafelat Robot) with the app. These are displayed to us as a graph during brewing. But we don't have to do all of this, although a connected scale unlocks many interesting possibilities.
Beanconqueror not only has an incredible range of functions, but is also very flexibly customizable. You can use the app, for example, as a flavor database for tasting results, as a recipe book, as a tool for comparing brewing equipment or grinders, and even as a green coffee archive as a home roaster. There are no limits to what you can use the app for. And the best part: the app is constantly being developed further. Curious?
Let's dive in and look at different usage procedures.
Recording filter coffee pulls
We're brewing filter coffee. We've already set up the grinder and brewing method beforehand, as well as the coffee to be brewed. They are now available for us to select. We enter the brewing temperature, note the grind size, briefly check that the scale is connected, and press the start button when we begin brewing.
We add the water for the bloom. Thanks to the connected scale, the amount of water added is visualized in real time. In addition to the time and weight, we can see the real-time flow as well as the calculated flow. These graphs can also be deactivated in the settings.
If desired, we mark the first drops and the end of the bloom with a button. The brewing continues until we reach the target amount. When the dripping ends, we stop the timer.
If you want, you can now add a note and rating of the coffee. In the parameters, you can enable many other options, such as saving the TDS, photos, or the effective drink amount. Was the brew your favorite? Then save it as such and find it quickly in your brewing archive.
Recording espresso pulls
Instead of the filter coffee method, we select a portafilter. Our input window changes and Bluetooth-connectable pressure gauges are connected in addition to the scale. These create a new option: we can automatically start the pull when a definable pressure value is reached. Of course, we can also continue to start the pull manually, record the first drop and the end of a possible bloom by hand.
The graph now shows a pressure curve in addition to the weight on the scale. With espresso, we can also have the scale automatically stop the brew when, for example, a minimum flow of 0.1 g/s is reached.
And it gets even more impressive. If you have Bluetooth-capable temperature controllers like the ThermaQ Blue or BlueTherm from ETI Ltd, you can even integrate temperature curves. Naked Portafilter offers a corresponding adapter with which both the pressure sensor and the thermometer can be connected to the Faema E61 and similar machines. That's simply brilliant!
Functional diversity and flexibility
Pull recording is the heart of the software, but the range of functions goes much further. The app is flexibly designed. You choose for yourself which functions and input options you want, or even different ones for each brewing method if needed.
Is water important for you? Then you can unlock a water database and track water in addition to grinders and filter methods.
If you want to save the Free On Board (FOB) or farmgate price of your coffee, you can enable that. You log and save what you want. No more and no less.
You design your views, interfaces, and workflows to your liking.
Open source, transparency, and data protection
When it comes to transparency and data protection, the app is exemplary. When we thought about our CO2 calculator for roasteries, Beanconqueror was an inspiration in this regard.
It is transparently shown which data is tracked, how the app is financed, and what financial expenses are involved. Lars and the supporting developers also make the complete source code publicly available.
Do you want to support Beanconqueror? You can do so here.
Supported tools
We are currently testing various Bluetooth-capable devices, and so we've also looked through the lists of supported devices on Beanconqueror. There's quite a lot, and it's not to be underestimated what Lars and a small open source community of supporters are achieving here.
In fact, every Bluetooth scale and every interface must be integrated individually. And while common sense would suggest that all scale manufacturers should celebrate this, some behave rather shamefully by not supporting open systems or even actively putting obstacles in their way. Unfortunately, Acaia must be mentioned at this point as the world market leader in Bluetooth coffee scales.
What is currently supported?
Scales
- Decent Scale
- Acaia Scales
- Felicita Scales
- Hiroia Jimmy
- Skale 2
- DiFluid Microbalance
- Smartchef Scale
- Blackcoffee.io
- Eureka Precisa
(As of September 8, 2023) There are always updates. It's best to check directly in the app to see which additional scales have been integrated.
Pressure gauges
- Pressensor
- Smart Espresso Profiler
- Popsicle - Do It Yourself
Miscellaneous
- DiFluid R2 Refractometer
- ETI Ltd Thermometer (ThermaQ Blue)
Bean inventory and statistics
Beanconqueror can also be your bean inventory. You can add beans or import them from roasteries that support Beanconqueror. We're doing that with more and more coffees and are continuously working to add more. In our case, you can import the bean info from the website. Some roasteries even have a QR code printed on the package. Also handy.
Once you've scanned the beans and entered the quantity, Beanconqueror tracks your consumption and shows you how much of that coffee you have left. All of this feeds into your personal consumption statistics. How much coffee have you ground? How long have you spent brewing in total? How much money have you spent on coffee…
But if you'd rather not know, you don't have to look at these numbers.
Thanks to our Lelit Bianca test, my portafilter usage has definitely increased and has pushed the V60 and Hario Switch off my personal top list, says Beanconqueror.
Currently, the following roasteries have entered information into Beanconqueror:
- Us 😉 (in the German and Swiss shop)
- The Coffee Board
- Onoma Coffee
- Max Hase
- Roestbar
- Van Gülpen
- Good Karma Coffee
- Hoppenworth & Ploch
If we've forgotten your roastery, please comment below this article so we can update the list.
Conclusion and thanks
Beanconqueror is a really great tool. An excellent tool that makes brewing easier and at the same time opens up a large playground for us. All of this for free, securely, and with short channels to the developer, who offers direct support via Discord, email, Telegram, and in English and German coffee forums.
Beanconqueror is a wonderful addition and a gift to the entire coffee community. We want to say thank you for that and look forward to exploring the app further and introducing it in more videos.
We're just getting started with Beanconqueror. At the same time, the app is developing so dynamically and is taking input from the community, so we're pretty sure there's more to come. In that spirit… here's to more, and thanks Lars.
PS: We exported the first espresso pulls from Beanconqueror and imported them into the Visualizer, which can also archive Decent espresso pulls. Another tool we'll be taking a closer look at.
