Are you tapping the coffee tamper against the portafilter of the coffee maker?

Stuffing coffee

Prepare your ground coffee beans in the portafilter, tamp them using the distributor, place the portafilter on a flat surface and tamp it evenly. Then just place the lever in the machine and you're ready to start making espresso! Simple, right?

Except that you can make several mistakes when frothing your coffee. And tapping the tamper on the portafilter is one of the most common.

Why not tap the tamper on the portafilter?

Knowing how to use a tamper correctly is the key to good coffee. The technique of tapping with a tamper was taught in workshops, cafes and courses until recently. In the last few years, however, people have begun to realize that is not a good thing.

Tapping can create mischief in the lever. Not only that, the hard impact knocks over the ground coffee in the basket and causes cracksin the coffee surface. It will also damage the barista tools.

A battered tamper means a higher risk of channelling and wrapping, leading to problems in coffee extraction.

Channelling

A problem that arises when the side of the portafilteris tapped. Channelling is a situation where water finds a certain narrow path through the bud of the coffee instead of flowing evenly across the entire surface.

A small separation gap is created in the coffee, which creates a channel through which the water passes.

This means that neither the water nor the pressure can be distributed evenly over the entire surface. More solutes will be expelled from one spot than from the rest of the bud and the resulting coffee will have an uneven taste.

Techniques for proper coffee distribution in a portafilter

There are several steps that can help you achieve the perfect cup of espresso. Let's take a look together at a few clever tweaks that can get you closer to great coffee.

A quality tamper

Start by replacing your damaged tamper with a new one. If you have a good tamper, you're that much closer to good espresso. The right tamper is well made and contains the right size basket in the portafilter.

Next, choose aids for ideal coffee distribution like dosing funnel, WDT tool and coffee distributor. They can also be used alone or in combination for best results.

Dosing funnel

Do you suffer fromscattered coffee all over the table when making coffee? Put on the Dosing Funnel and your problem will be over. The portafilter will just hold the exact, correctly aligned batch of coffee.

With the Dosing Funnel, you will achieve more precise coffee extraction, because the coffee will be extracted from the exact amount of ground coffee without any loss and will taste so much better.

WDT Coffee Tool

Even distribution of ground coffee in the portafilter is one of the important steps in espresso preparation. Grinders sometimes leave us lumps in our coffee and that's what the WDTCoffee Tool is for.

This tool is used to evenly distribute the coffee and helps remove coffee lumps. With it, we can get one step closer to the perfect taste of espresso again.

Coffee distributors

To evenlydistribute the coffee in the lever of the coffee machine, a coffee distributor will help. To make sure your coffee is not uphill, on one side, but straight in the portafilter, take a distributor in your hand.

Just twist the distributor in the lever and your coffee will settle in the right place, creating the perfect conditions for the coffee extraction process.

Home Puqpress

Automatic tamper for perfect tamping of freshly ground coffee. It will take care of uniform tamping of coffee in a busy operation, helping to improve tamping consistency and reduce the number of workplace accidents that often accompany tamping.

Now we know why knocking the tamper against the portafilter is bad. A battered portafilter doesn't just look aesthetically unpleasing. It also causes channelling and uneven coffee extraction. And we don't want that.