Less coffee, better espresso?

[chrisnotton]

Hello all,

I have been reading the: Less coffee, better espresso? Thread.

It seem to me that Alan Frew has something extremely pertinent points in his archived article about setting up and testing over 80 Silvias in a 6 week period.

See here:

http://www.coffeegeek.com/opinions/alanfrew/02-14-2003

He says:#

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Too much coffee?

The absolute best shots were those I pulled when the double filter basket had as much coffee in it as possible, 15.0g. The coffee itself was in direct contact with the showerscreen, and another 0.5 grams caused leaking around the edges of the portafilter. As it was, the screw impression left in the puck was clearly defined.

Tamp not a factor
A very well defined screw impression in the puck.
One thing that putting as much coffee in as possible did was to remove the effects of tamping as a factor in the shot quality. A light smoothing tamp to remove voids and ensure good edge contact with the filter basket was just as effective (or not) as the heaviest "grunt" tamp I could manage. To prove to myself that this situation wasn’t exclusive to the Silvia, I tried the same thing out on a 1-group La Marzocco and got the same results.
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I haven't tried it myself yet as I am still diddling with my new machine.

Pip pip

[michel]

With regards to the La Marzocco baskets, i have been using the following tamper :

http://espressoparts.zoovy.com/product/3006LM

It is apparently either made for, or by La Marzocco specifically for their ridged baskets.
It has a convex base and is turned in such a way that it will only go into the basket to a certain depth, therefore limiting the actual pressure you can tamp to, because as soon as the ridge hits the top of the portafilter all pressure is relieved.
I have found that when the portafilter is fitted to the group and then taken off there is the impression of the centre nut / blank in the coffee as it is apparently supposed to be.

Maybe this is the equivalent of a Tamper for Dummies, but it does appear to work.

Eric.

Strange tamper... and it has a curved bottom too! I remember I searched for ages to find a tamper with a flat bottom... because 'the experts' said it was best. A year or too Later, even David Schomer switched an went over to curved bottom tampers, because the experts thought it was best... (strange though that in the last post about tampers David Schomer writes he likes curved-bottom tampers best, but that at his website, the flat-bottom tampers are still sold...
http://www.espressovivace.com/ergo_packer.html )

[maurice]

The absolute best shots were those I pulled when the double filter basket had as much coffee in it as possible

...except if you try maximum packingthe basket of a Pavoni lever, when this chokes the machine off altogether!