Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Tamping Techniques

James from Jimseven, Kiril from Espresso Run and Jaime from Barismo know how to tamp. At least that's my idea.
They are some of the new pack no-kick tampers.

What?
Well for long we had a fixed system to tamp.
Shortly in steps : Dose, level, kick, tamp, clean and pull (the shot).
First you dose your coffee, mostly perfectly distributed full basket, Secondly you level the grounds as horizontally as possible with the weight of your tamper, Three, you kick the sides of your portafilter with the back end of your tamper, Fourth you tamp with coffee with a plus minus 15 kg hand force, Five, you clean the filter basket and then the portafilter is ready to be inserted in the group head.
What i want to tell you is these three men don't kick the sides any longer. They idea is to keep the coffee packed as perfect as possible, to prevent micro cracks in the puck and to improve the extraction.
Believe it or not, but it works. I mean the crema is more developed and the espresso tastes sweeter. Test it.
Below a nice clip where Jaime van Schyndel shows you his tamping technique. Be aware your tamper needs to be the right size, perfectly fitting the basket.

Dose/Distribute/Tamp by Jaime

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