How to tamp coffee - Step by Step Guide
Tamping your coffee is an important part of the coffee extraction process. It does a number of things, most importantly to ensure an equal and even distribution of pressurised water through your coffee puck so as to ensure a consistent and full bodied extraction.
- After dosing the required amount of coffee into your portafilter, gently tap or shake the filter on a clean surface or tamping mat.
- Apply your precision tamp to the coffee grounds with a light amount of downward force
- without removing the tamp of the coffee grounds, inspect your tamping angle from eye level to ensure you are tamping horizontally. Any failures here can be corrected in the second stage of the tamp
- tamp the coffee further with around 7kg of downward force. A great tip here is to tamp onto bathroom cales for a few times so you can build muscle memory on what 7kg feels like. Keep in mind it is more important to remain consistent in the pressure you apply each time, rather than to be completely accurate. IE: if you feel more comfortable with applying 5kgs each time, just use that as your personal tamping pressure. Your coffee grounds will need to be more fine compared to someone that tamps heavier, but no problems at all.
