How to pack your espresso properly?

You have probably noticed it in bars and cafes, the barista cups his coffee before inserting it into his percolator. This gesture can be performed with a machine or by hand. A question of regularity. After filling your filter holder with the right amount of ground coffee, it is very important to tamp the coffee correctly. In fact, the water from your machine will try to make the easiest and shortest possible path to your cup. It will therefore favor the air holes in your coffee. So, there will be under-extraction in some places in your grind and over-extraction in others. You will then get bad coffee. Tamping therefore makes it possible to obtain a perfectly smooth cake and to distribute the coffee in a balanced manner. The water will therefore have the same difficulty in infiltrating the entire wafer, which will give a homogeneous coffee. Which tool to tamp my coffee? In many bars and cafes, the tamper which is integrated into the grinder is used. This allows you to always pack in the same way regardless of the barista, but also with the same force. On the other hand, it happens that the diameter of the compactor is less than that of the filter holder, and therefore that the entire cake is not compacted. The best is to tamp by hand with a tamper adapted to the diameter of your filter holder. We offer tampers from the Joe Frex brand which adapt perfectly to the diameter of our Dedica percolator machines by Delonghi How do I tamp my coffee? When freshly ground coffee comes out of your grinder, it will form a mound in your filter holder. The first step then consists of leveling the grinding, that is to say leveling it. Use the back of a spoon or a small stick to pass over the filter and push the grounds so that they are distributed at the same level. Then place your filter holder on a tamping mat to prevent it from slipping or damaging your work surface. You must then press your tamper on the filter holder while respecting the following 3 rules: Level: your tamper must be perfectly parallel to the filter holder. You must therefore be careful not to lean to one side or another. Compact: In order to sufficiently compact the filter holder, you must exert a pressure of approximately 15kg. If you are a beginner, we advise you to practice with a scale. Practice using a tamper by pressing on your scale until it displays 15kg. This will allow you to control the pressure you must exert to reach this precise weight. Remove: Before lifting your tamper from the filter holder, you must make a quarter rotation to avoid leaving grounds on the tamper. Do you think you have succeeded in your settling? Flip your filter holder down! If the coffee falls and your coffee was not packed enough, you must then practice on a scale. If the coffee holds, you've succeeded!