Food & DrinkThe ProfessorIntermediate
The Home Barista's Craft course icon

The Home Barista's Craft

Like Duolingo, but for The Home Barista's Craft. 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.

21 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Bennie the Bean
The Home Barista's Craft
with Bennie the Bean
21
Levels
4
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in The Home Barista's Craft

  • The 1:2 ratio is a calibration baseline to find a bean's flavor profile
  • Longer yields extract more sugars and bitters to balance early acids
  • Deviating from the baseline allows for intentional flavor profiling
  • Shorter yields cut off the extraction before bitter compounds dominate
  • Sticking strictly to 1:2 can result in missing a bean's peak sweetness
  • Yield is the primary lever for moving between 'sour' and 'bitter' poles
  • Dialing in with yield
  • Yield adjustments for flavor
  • A larger coffee puck creates more physical resistance for the water
  • Darker roasts are more soluble and require cooler water to avoid ashiness
  • The 1:2 ratio is a starting point for dialing in, not a fixed target for every bean.
  • Higher doses generally lead to a more viscous, heavy-bodied mouthfeel
  • Lighter roasts are denser and need higher heat to extract sweetness
  • Using yield adjustments to fix flavor imbalances like sourness or bitterness.
  • Matching brew temperature to roast level to optimize extraction.
  • Flavor is the ultimate metric, while time is just a secondary indicator
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 The Home Barista's Craft 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.

Mastering the Yield Lever

If your espresso tastes unpleasantly sharp and acidic, what does increasing the yield achieve?

Get it right to open this lesson and 20 more in the app.

Course map

Where The Home Barista's Craft takes you

Move beyond the basic shot. Learn to manipulate extraction variables, master microfoam chemistry, and build a professional-grade cafe menu using your home setup.

  1. 1

    Precision Extraction Control

    • Beyond the 1:2 Ratio
    • Advanced Puck Dynamics
  2. 2

    The Science of Milk and Texture

    • Microfoam Chemistry
    • Pouring with Intent
  3. 3

    The Professional Menu

    • Building the Espresso Menu
    • Sensory Diagnosis
  4. 4

    The Bean and the Machine

    • Roast Profiles and Solubility

4 sections · 7 units · 21 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Professor

The Home Barista's Craft 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 The Home Barista's Craft today.

Download Tomo, search The Home Barista's Craft, and play your first lesson in under a minute.