Food & DrinkThe BestieBeginner
Brewing Better Coffee, a free food & drink course on Tomo

Brewing Better Coffee

Like Duolingo, but for Brewing Better Coffee. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.

A short one: 11 levels across 2 sections, about 22 minutes end to end, roughly 4 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Dialing In the Brew and Choosing and Handling Beans. It starts from scratch.

11 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Cap the Capybara, the guide who teaches the Brewing Better Coffee course
Brewing Better Coffee
with Cap the Capybara
11
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Brewing Better Coffee

  • Dark roast beans expand and lose moisture, making them lighter and less dense than compact light roast beans
  • A volume scoop holds fewer grams of puffed dark roast than dense light roast
  • A kitchen scale measures the actual mass of coffee, keeping your dose identical regardless of bean size or roast
  • A 1:16 brew ratio is the dependable baseline for balanced strength and body
  • Using far too little water relative to coffee yields an overly thick, intense cup
  • Using far too much water relative to coffee dilutes the cup into a weak, tea-like brew
  • Water straight off a rolling boil (100°C) over-extracts harsh, bitter, scorched flavors from coffee grounds
  • Water that has cooled below roughly 90°C fails to extract enough soluble flavor, leaving the coffee sour and flat
  • Letting a boiling kettle rest for about thirty to sixty seconds brings it into the sweet spot for brewing
  • Brewed coffee is about 98% water, so off-flavors in your tap water pass directly into the cup
  • Chlorine and chemical sanitizers in municipal tap water impart a sharp, chemical taste to coffee
  • Bright and sour fruit acids dissolve almost instantly when water hits coffee grounds
  • Sweet oils and sugars dissolve next during the middle of the brew
  • Heavy bitter compounds and plant fibers dissolve last if water keeps extracting
  • Under-extraction happens when water fails to dissolve enough sweetness to balance early acids
  • A sour and thin taste profile signals the brew was cut short before sugars emerged
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives Brewing Better Coffee the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Weighing Your Beans and Water

You fill the exact same scoop with dark roast beans instead of light roast beans. What happens?

Get it right to open this lesson and 10 more in the app.

Course map

Where Brewing Better Coffee takes you

Transform your daily routine by understanding the simple levers behind every brew. Learn how to fix sour or bitter cups, adjust your grind, and buy beans you actually enjoy.

  1. 1

    Dialing In the Brew

    • Getting the Recipe Right
    • Fixing Bitter and Sour Cups
  2. 2

    Choosing and Handling Beans

    • Decoding the Bag and Roast
    • Grind Size and Freshness

2 sections · 4 units · 11 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Bestie

Brewing Better Coffee is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

Start free

Start Brewing Better Coffee today.

Download Tomo, search Brewing Better Coffee, and play your first lesson in under a minute.