There has been a lot of discussion about correct tamp pressure on the forums lately and I wanted to start a new topic to discuss it.
First off. Within reason I think that tamp pressure has very little effect on the pour. Effectively, the tamp is only sealing the puck from the initial pre-infusion. Once the puck is saturated it expands and your tamp pressure is irrelevent.
This also brings dosing into the equation, as your dose increases your puck expansion decreases. I think people are way to obsessed with updosing. We have been playing with dosing (thanks to Scotts tools which enable us to measure our dose accurately) and are discovering some very interesting results with grind & dose relationships.
Here is what we are aiming for, a 25 sec, 2 x 25 ml pour, from our double deep baskets (18gm). Regular dose is around 18gm, up dose can be as much as 20gm, under dosed as little as 16gm. There are about 20 steps inbetween 20 and 16 gram doses. At each step we get the grind right, taste, evaluate, change tamp (8Kg, 13 Kg, 20 Kg), evaluate. We repeated this with 3 different coffees. There are some interesting results.
1) The tamp pressure has very little effect on the taste of the espresso. There is a minor difference in the intitial few drops of the heavy tamp, but hardly detectable.
2) The espresso of each step had a different flavour. The best dose depended on type of coffee and age of beans.
3) We found as the coffee aged the required dose to get a consistant espresso flavour was changing.
4) As the dose decreased, the tamp pressure had a larger effect, but still very minor compared to the effect of the dose.
Our conclusions were that dose and grind are by far the most important things to consider. Tamp pressure is somewhat irrelevent as we were able to repeat the results of our dose-grind relationship between 3 baristas, all with different tamps. We are even starting to look at how important distribution is, I have had a very presise distribution method for years, and I am starting to get great results without doing any distribution. I am even looking at getting some 16gm Baskets to play with dose Vs basket size.
It just gows to show that you learn things everyday and can always improve what you do. It has improved our espresso making process majorly in terms of consistency from shot to shot and barsita to barista.
Would love to hear others thoughts.
First off. Within reason I think that tamp pressure has very little effect on the pour. Effectively, the tamp is only sealing the puck from the initial pre-infusion. Once the puck is saturated it expands and your tamp pressure is irrelevent.
This also brings dosing into the equation, as your dose increases your puck expansion decreases. I think people are way to obsessed with updosing. We have been playing with dosing (thanks to Scotts tools which enable us to measure our dose accurately) and are discovering some very interesting results with grind & dose relationships.
Here is what we are aiming for, a 25 sec, 2 x 25 ml pour, from our double deep baskets (18gm). Regular dose is around 18gm, up dose can be as much as 20gm, under dosed as little as 16gm. There are about 20 steps inbetween 20 and 16 gram doses. At each step we get the grind right, taste, evaluate, change tamp (8Kg, 13 Kg, 20 Kg), evaluate. We repeated this with 3 different coffees. There are some interesting results.
1) The tamp pressure has very little effect on the taste of the espresso. There is a minor difference in the intitial few drops of the heavy tamp, but hardly detectable.
2) The espresso of each step had a different flavour. The best dose depended on type of coffee and age of beans.
3) We found as the coffee aged the required dose to get a consistant espresso flavour was changing.
4) As the dose decreased, the tamp pressure had a larger effect, but still very minor compared to the effect of the dose.
Our conclusions were that dose and grind are by far the most important things to consider. Tamp pressure is somewhat irrelevent as we were able to repeat the results of our dose-grind relationship between 3 baristas, all with different tamps. We are even starting to look at how important distribution is, I have had a very presise distribution method for years, and I am starting to get great results without doing any distribution. I am even looking at getting some 16gm Baskets to play with dose Vs basket size.
It just gows to show that you learn things everyday and can always improve what you do. It has improved our espresso making process majorly in terms of consistency from shot to shot and barsita to barista.
Would love to hear others thoughts.
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