Food & DrinkThe BestieIntermediate
Dialing In Your Coffee, a free food & drink course on Tomo

Dialing In Your Coffee

Like Duolingo, but for Dialing In Your 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 Troubleshooting Your Extraction and Bean Characteristics and Water Dynamics. It assumes you already know the basics.

11 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Barista Barnaby, the guide who teaches the Dialing In Your Coffee course
Dialing In Your Coffee
with Barista Barnaby
11
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Dialing In Your Coffee

  • Bright organic acids and salts dissolve almost immediately into coffee.
  • Under-extracted brews lack the later-dissolving sugars needed for balance.
  • Grinding finer or increasing contact time extracts more balancing sweetness.
  • Slow-dissolving plant fibers and heavy polyphenols extract late in the brew.
  • Over-extraction produces harsh, lingering bitterness rather than pleasant snap.
  • Astringency creates a dry, puckering sensation like stewed black tea.
  • A balanced cup maximizes aromatic compounds and complex sweetness.
  • The sweet spot occurs right after acidity peaks and before tannins dominate.
  • Stopping the brew at peak sweetness avoids harsh, heavy flavors.
  • Water finds narrow fissures in the puck, flowing rapidly through them.
  • Grounded coffee along the channel over-extracts from excess water flow.
  • Denser areas bypassed by water remain cold, dry, and under-extracted.
  • A salami shot splits a continuous espresso pull across separate cups.
  • Acids and concentrated solubles dominate the first few seconds of a pull.
  • Caramelized sugars emerge midway before giving way to astringent bitters.
  • Lock your coffee dose and final liquid yield completely fixed
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 Dialing In Your 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.

Tasting Under and Over Extraction

Why does an under-extracted coffee often taste sharp, sour, and hollow?

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

Course map

Where Dialing In Your Coffee takes you

Move beyond basic brewing by learning how to diagnose extraction, adjust variables intentionally, and unlock the distinct flavor profiles hidden in specialty beans.

  1. 1

    Troubleshooting Your Extraction

    • Diagnosing Extraction by Taste
    • The Core Dial-In Loop
  2. 2

    Bean Characteristics and Water Dynamics

    • Decoding Fermentation and Processing
    • Water Composition and Thermal Control

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

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Bestie

Dialing In Your 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 Dialing In Your Coffee today.

Download Tomo, search Dialing In Your Coffee, and play your first lesson in under a minute.