Food & DrinkThe ProfessorIntermediate
Dialing In Your Daily Brew, a free food & drink course on Tomo

Dialing In Your Daily Brew

Like Duolingo, but for Dialing In Your Daily Brew. 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 Mastering Extraction and The Source of Flavor. It assumes you already know the basics.

11 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Barney the Bean, the guide who teaches the Dialing In Your Daily Brew course
Dialing In Your Daily Brew
with Barney the Bean
11
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Dialing In Your Daily Brew

  • Acids dissolve first, making under-extracted coffee taste sour
  • Over-extraction pulls out heavy polyphenols that cause dryness
  • Saltiness is a chemical byproduct of incomplete extraction
  • Bitterness increases as water stays in contact with grounds too long
  • Under-extracted coffee lacks the sugars that balance acidity
  • Astringency is a tactile mouthfeel, not just a flavor
  • Identifying under-extraction through sensory cues
  • Recognizing the physical sensation of over-extraction
  • Sweetness is the result of balancing acidity and bitterness
  • Acids and salts extract in the first few seconds
  • The window for peak sweetness is very narrow in the brew cycle
  • Maximum sweetness occurs just before over-extraction begins
  • Understanding the flavor evolution in a Salami Shot
  • Finer grounds increase surface area to fix sour under-extraction
  • Defining the goal of the 'Sweet Spot'
  • Coarser grounds reduce extraction to eliminate bitter notes
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 Daily Brew 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.

The Sour and the Sandpaper

What specific compounds are responsible for that parched, 'sandpaper' feeling after a sip of over-extracted coffee?

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

Course map

Where Dialing In Your Daily Brew takes you

Move beyond following recipes to understanding the variables of extraction. Learn to diagnose flavor imbalances and manipulate grind, temperature, and water to craft your perfect cup.

  1. 1

    Mastering Extraction

    • Rescuing a Bad Cup
    • The Variable Hierarchy
  2. 2

    The Source of Flavor

    • Decoding the Coffee Bag
    • The Invisible Ingredient: Water

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

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Professor

Dialing In Your Daily Brew 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.

Start free

Start Dialing In Your Daily Brew today.

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