Puck Log
A shot-by-shot espresso journal for home baristas that connects to a Bluetooth scale and (optionally) a smart controller like GaggiMate, logging weight, time, and pressure, then suggesting grind and dose tweaks based on your taste notes.
Home espresso hobbyists chasing better shots
- One-tap shot capture via Bluetooth scale or GaggiMate controller
- Taste-to-recipe suggestions (e.g. 'sour' suggests a finer grind and longer pre-infusion)
- Side-by-side comparison of your last 20 shots across beans, grind, and dose
- Bean aging tracker that flags when a bag is past its prime
OpenTelemetry-powered controllers are starting to stream rich shot data, and home espresso hobbyists are hungry to turn that data into repeatable recipes.
Home espresso hobby market is real and active (Acaia, Decent, Bookoo hardware ecosystems), but the HN OpenTelemetry post only got 16 points and existing shot-logging apps (Portio, HomeBarista, EspressoGram, Good Espresso for Decent) already serve this exact user, suggesting saturated rather than untapped demand.Portio: Brew & Shot Tracker ↗Instrumenting my espresso machine with OpenTelemetry ↗
Market is crowded: Portio (Acaia/Bookoo BLE), HomeBarista.app (25+ params, AI bag scanning), EspressoGram (sweet-spot analysis, free), and Good Espresso for Decent (multi-scale BLE) all do dose/yield/time/tasting/grind tracking. Only pressure-profile + GaggiMate OTel integration is somewhat differentiated, and Decent machines already expose rich shot telemetry natively.EspressoGram ↗Good Espresso for Decent ↗
Standalone app monetization looks weak — EspressoGram is explicitly free with a 'not trying to sell you a subscription' stance, HomeBarista.app is free-to-download, and Acaia bundles its own free apps with hardware. Users already pay $150+ for Acaia scales and $2k+ for Decent machines, but paying another subscription for a thin wrapper over data their controller/scale already exposes is a hard sell.EspressoGram ↗Our Apps - acaia ↗
Home espresso hobby is durable and expanding (GaggiMate, Decent, Levercraft communities all growing), and shot-history data creates real switching cost. However, longevity is capped by the same commoditization risk — incumbents are free and well-funded by hardware sales.GaggiMate - The smart espresso machine solution ↗HomeBarista ↗
Bluetooth scale integration is a well-trodden path (Portio, Good Espresso for Decent already support Acaia/Bookoo/Felicita/Timemore via standard BLE GATT), GaggiMate is open-source on GitHub with public docs and an OTel exporter, and per-user ML on taste notes vs. grind is a small modeling task. Buildable by a small team.GitHub - jniebuhr/gaggimate ↗Good Espresso for Decent ↗