TeaBuddy: Gongfu Tea Journal

TeaBuddy is a tea journal built around how tea people actually brew.

Most apps assume one mug and one steep. Tea rarely works that way. A good session is a rinse, a first steep that hints, a third that opens up, and a seventh that finally goes watery. TeaBuddy logs all of it, one quick note per infusion, while the timer keeps count.

Start an entry and the facts fill themselves in. Type Jin Jun Mei and you get the tea type, the translation, the origin, and a sensible steep schedule. From there everything bends to you: nudge the seconds, set your water temperature, pick gongfu, western, or grandpa style. The journal records what you actually did, not what a chart said to do.

The timer rings even when your phone is locked, so you can walk away from the kettle without counting in your head.

What else is inside:

• Tasting notes you choose, never chosen for you. Tap suggested words or write your own.
• Star ratings that follow your most recent verdict, because palates change.
• Photos with washi tape corners: the packet on the shelf, the tray shots on the page.
• A shelf of tall cards showing each tea's bag, rating, and session count.
• A calendar where every day wears the color of what you brewed.
• Search by flavor. Find that honeydew white from Fujian in seconds.
• Vendor and price on each tea, with cost per session worked out for you.
• One tap CSV export, ready for a spreadsheet, so you can chart your own palate over a year.
• A clay lucky cat that glistens with this month's pours and darkens over a lifetime of them, like a real tea pet.

Private by design. No accounts, no ads, no tracking, no analytics. Your journal lives on your device and in your own iCloud, and it leaves only when you export it yourself.

Made for the person whose paper tea journal has stains on every page. Keep the scrapbook heart. Add the memory.