Brewing Specialty Coffee
Learn to taste, dial in, and brew specialty coffee like a seasoned barista. Master the levers of extraction, diagnose flavor flaws, and understand what makes specialty beans unique.
Like Duolingo, but for Brewing Specialty Coffee. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Dialing In Your Cup and Decoding the Specialty Bean. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in Brewing Specialty Coffee
- Sour and bright organic acids wash out of coffee grounds almost instantly
- Pleasant sugars dissolve midway through the brew to balance the acidity
- Astringent and bitter wood fibers only dissolve if brewing continues too long
- A finer grind packs closer together to slow water drainage and exposes more surface area
- Under-extracted coffee tastes sour because water rushed past before dissolving sugars
- Grinding finer pushes extraction forward into sweet, balanced territory
- Specialty coffee typically centers on a 1:15 to 1:17 coffee-to-water brew ratio
- Lower water ratios yield concentrated, intense cups with more tactile weight
- Too much water dilutes strength and strips harsh end-phase flavors out of the grounds
- Near-boiling water rapidly extracts all compounds, including bitter notes
- Lower brew temperatures slow down extraction and soften aggressive bitterness
- Sugars need sufficient thermal energy to dissolve effectively, which cold water struggles to provide quickly
- Channeling creates localized streams that over-extract bitter notes while leaving other dry pockets under-extracted and sour
- A channeled brew tastes jarringly sour and astringently bitter at the same time, lacking middle sweetness
- Uneven coffee beds often show visible cracks, pinholes, or dry clumps after the brew drains
- Water rushed through the grounds too quickly, dissolving acids but missing the sweet sugars
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Brewing Specialty 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.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
When do the pleasant sugars dissolve out of coffee grounds during brewing?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where Brewing Specialty Coffee takes you
- 1
Dialing In Your Cup
- The Four Levers of Extraction
- Diagnosing and Fixing Flavor Flaws
- 2
Decoding the Specialty Bean
- How Processing Dictates Flavor
- Reading Coffee Bags Like an Insider
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
Brewing Specialty Coffee is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. 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.
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Brewing Great Coffee at Home
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Specialty Coffee: Flavor and Extraction
Move beyond basic recipes by mastering extraction mechanics, post-harvest processing, and origin profiles. Learn to diagnose off-flavors by taste and match your brew method to any bean.
Dialing In Great Coffee
Step past basic brewing and learn to troubleshoot every cup like a specialty barista. Master extraction variables, train your palate to diagnose off-flavors, and demystify how bean processing and water chemistry shape your cup.
Brewing Better Coffee at Home
Move beyond basic brewing instructions to understand extraction, grind mechanics, and water chemistry. Diagnose problem cups and dial in pour-over, immersion, and espresso methods with confidence.
Start Brewing Specialty Coffee today.
Download Tomo, search Brewing Specialty Coffee, and play your first lesson in under a minute.