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The New Button Tamper arrived
This morning I got a text message from DHL telling me the tamper would be delivered between 6pm and 9pm, then on their website the sheet said it was temporarily stalled and they were looking into the matter. So I did not think it would come but a few minutes before 9pm there it was! A car stopping, footsteps, the beep of someone scanning something, doorbell.
I unpacked and tried it out right away. This tamper allows 'nutating' deeper than straight walled tampers but as Reiss said, you need to make sure that you tamp level, so look at it from the side up close to check, not standing up and looking down at the portafilter way below you.
The first extraction was very good! I regret that it's in the evening and I don't drink coffee but I tasted it and it was great.
I unpacked and tried it out right away. This tamper allows 'nutating' deeper than straight walled tampers but as Reiss said, you need to make sure that you tamp level, so look at it from the side up close to check, not standing up and looking down at the portafilter way below you.
The first extraction was very good! I regret that it's in the evening and I don't drink coffee but I tasted it and it was great.
Comments
Did you notice that it pulls grounds up out of the basket?
It certainly does not. Exactly because the widest part is so thin, air can easily flow past and you do not get the 'suction' that a tight fitting straight wall could cause.
thank you for taking the time to take the images
i apologise to everyone who has been waiting for these - i tried to ensure that we would not stock out during the transition from the original design to this one but i was caught out by a perfect storm of christmas demand, discovering we had less stock than we thought of the original design, and running into unforeseen difficulties in the manufacture of the new design
anyway we have caught up on the backlog, bar one or two orders
On my blog there's a picture with the tamper sitting snug and deep in the basket.
It's not a loose fit but quite a tight fit where it matters, right at the top of the puck.
The photos posted above by Frans shows the unwrapping. My photos below show the tamper in the PF using the OEM basket. So much easier to use and you are free to nutate as much as you wish and do so evenly. Avoid the temptation of over doing it as it's very easy to do an extreme job!
As Frans has mentioned, as the barista you must create a level puck by checking from a side view.
"Polishing" the puck is quick and easy leaving nothing clinging to the tamper. Extraction of the tamper from the PF is with no suction between the tamper and the PF and nothing is left on the walls of the PF.
With the polished stainless steel surface, there is no friction on the grinds but a gentle lift is advisable to allow the air to get under the tamper.
Reiss, thanks so much for this design. Work a treat for me!
Yesterday when I had an early droplet coming from the IMS basket a few times, I switched to the standard basket coming with the L1 and it was fine, so it's very convenient to have that one as a forgiving 'refuge' -- sometimes I think the tamper is level but need to correct when I look at if from the side, so my hand technique needs to improve a bit.
dave hyde told me to make the original button tamper with a taper on the sides, but at that stage my primary goal was to offer a tamper that more or less forced people to tamp level - the original tamper being a 58.80mm which worked on our baskets and IMS, but not others, so we reduced it to 58.50mm
now that our machines are well established and i wanted to change from brass to stainless anyway, the time was right to make the change
but as you know change is never without risk, and despite me working on this revised design since the middle of last year there is never any guarantee that it is going to find favour with the customer. you make it as good as you can and then you throw it into the ocean that is the market and see if it garners any interest
the price of being able to nutate is of course making it more difficult to tamp level
but in my view nutating is the best way to get deep, vertical sided baskets to perform
thank you to everyone who has written in so far
shots after, so a bit more practice needed. I'm using a 15g vst basket.
With the original steam tip I struggled to produce any latte art, but this is the first attempt with the new tip.
Thank you for taking the time to post
Reiss