In the world of espresso...
there are very few things that the majority of baristas agree is a necessity, but one of those things I thought we could was tamping, or at the very least adding pressure to your grinds in one way or another. But after a short video of mine exploring one of the concepts I look at in today's video went viral it became clear that just like everything else tamping and its value is still debatable. So I thought it may be time for me to revisit the topic in a full length, data driven video to see if tamping can actually be optional.
To do this I put a few techniques like the use of a leveling tool, soft tamping, and even not tamping at all to the test. Of course they all go up against a good old fashioned 30 pound tamp. The tests carried out in this video vary from basic observations in terms of the all important variable of taste and visual extraction cues like channeling. I also include the must have yield percentages of shots pulled in each of the technique categories.
So if you're curious and wanting to get into the weeds of espresso tamping hit play on the video above and let's brew this!