Two open bags on the kitchen counter can create a surprisingly difficult decision. One was roasted recently. The other made a lovely cup last weekend, but you can't remember how much is left. Choosing a coffee means checking labels, feeling the bags, and trying to reconstruct what you brewed yesterday.
Bloom, my coffee companion for iPhone, puts that information on one shelf. It tracks a bag's roast date, estimated freshness stage, remaining weight, and brew history. If you're looking for the best app for tracking coffee at home, those connections are a useful place to start: they help you choose what to brew and remember what happened when you did.
The shelf becomes particularly useful when you rotate between coffees. Imagine a light roast you're still resting and an older medium roast you've already opened. Bloom's Flavor Window uses roast date and roast level to place each bag on a resting, peak, and fading timeline. You can compare the two without working out their ages from the dates printed on the packaging.
The timeline is an estimate, and you can change the resting period for a coffee. A label saying “peak” doesn't know how you stored that bag or how today's cup tastes. It gives you a starting point. Your brew notes supply the experience that makes the record personal.
Quantity matters just as much as age. When you save a brew linked to a coffee, Bloom deducts the logged input weight from that bag. For example, if you begin with 250 grams and log five 18-gram brews, the recorded balance is 160 grams. That is a useful answer to “can I make coffee for everyone this weekend?” without another trip to the scale.
The balance depends on what you record. If someone else uses the beans, or you make a cup without logging it, you can edit the remaining weight. Bloom keeps track of the numbers you give it; a quick correction keeps the shelf useful.
The details on a bag can also be worth keeping after the beans are gone. Bloom stores origin, roaster, process, variety, and flavor notes alongside the coffee. On iOS 26 or later, its on-device bag scanner can fill in details from a label photo. You can check the result, add anything missing, and save it. Manual entry is available too.
When you finish a bag, archiving it clears space on the active shelf while retaining its record. That matters when you return to a roaster months later. A name and a note about the cup you enjoyed are more helpful than vaguely remembering which color the packaging was.
This is why Bloom makes sense as a coffee bean tracker: the inventory and the tasting history belong together. The shelf helps you decide what to use now, and the recipe and Brew Coach workflow helps you make something worth recording.
You can start with a small shelf. Bloom's free plan allows three active coffees and five recipes, enough to try the workflow with the bags you already have. The Bloom FAQ explains the limits and storage options. Add one bag, record its roast date, and log your next brew. The shelf gets more useful as it starts to reflect your kitchen.