Originally posted by CafeLotta
View Post
Glad I did as I found I've probably been slightly underdosing by only grinding and tamping without tapping.
Tapping the bottom of the portafilter on a rubber mat 2 or 3 times gave the best results for me once I got the technique right.
So many variables to play with and so little time!
With a proper dose in the basket I found grinding slightly coarser and tamping a bit harder achieved a really good result.
This brought me back to a much drier tightly packed puck with consistently no channeling and a brew with noticeably more depth.
The color of the extraction was also noticeably darker.
I suppose its easy to get lazy when you're changing beans and roasts frequently but I'm glad I made the effort to experiment again thanks to this thread.

I'm not a chemist but do have a background in mineral sample preparation for analysis, I attempted to draw parallels between prepping samples and coffee making quite some time ago (grind consistency in particular) the silence was deafening.
Leave a comment: