This discussion, and other comments about this got me to thinking. Over the past several months, I decided "to heck with the tap, bump, shake, rattle, and roll". I tamp, spin the basket about 180 degrees in the portafilter (is this spin technique new? Can I claim it ), tamp again, polish, and wipe the thing off. Thanks to my using a naked portafilter, I have been able to see beautiful even extractions nearly every time. (Yes I could leave the portafilter in the machine during tamp, but I don't, and I cannot imagine it making a difference in the end product since I am dosing and tamping within a few seconds.) Occasionally, when still half asleep, I falter in my technique.

Where did we get the tap? I guess I got it from watching baristas in coffee shops, and even in some espresso guides I have read. Dan makes a good point about this. Tapping, bumping, or whatever does nothing to improve your extraction. It risks upsetting the good work you did up to that point. In my experience, I saw the consistency of even extractions increase dramatically when I stopped tapping. Another thing that led to this was my changing to a convex tamper.


Rich

I have reduced my tapping to one, light tap after the initial leveling tamp. My tamper and basket are a tight fit. If I don't tap, the tamper likes to lightly stick in the basket if there are any grinds riding along the side of the basket. The light tap jostles them loose giving me a clean inner edge on the basket. I must stress the 'light' phrase. I am just dislodging some errant particles, not driving nails.

I like that "driving nails" analogy. Good one.

Rich

I work in a coffee shop. I was taught to tap, but shortly after starting there my geekiness got the better of me and I started altering my tamp for my personal shots. After a short time I realized the shots that I hadn't tapped were consistently better in both time, crema and flavor. I Never tap anymore. The best thing you can do to avoid tapping is getting a tamper that fits your pf perfectly. (something I had to do for work was buy my own tamper) Though since I started using my personal 58.5mm the owner has bought one of the same size to fit for everyone else to use. Most of my fellow workers still tap. Some of them just don't care about their coffee making enough to worry about changing styles. But several have started tamping similarly to my style. The owners have also started to see that one coffee geek on the staff can shake things up.
Here's what I do. Dose, level using modified stockflecks (never got the hang of the version from the vid), light tamp (maybe 5 lbs pressure, this helps me to keep a nice level puck all the way through, may not help everyone though) , then tamp hard (this tamp I will vary some depending on the grind and what I am pulling), remove tamper, quick look at the resulting puck. depending on the look i may do a light polishing tamp. place pf in group, pull shot.
Doesn't take long to get this process down to a manageable time to produce fairly rapid shots.

Lynn

Kaffee Bitte wrote:I work in a coffee shop. I was taught to tap, but shortly after starting there my geekiness got the better of me and I started altering my tamp for my personal shots. After a short time I realized the shots that I hadn't tapped were consistently better in both time, crema and flavor. I Never tap anymore. The best thing you can do to avoid tapping is getting a tamper that fits your pf perfectly. (something I had to do for work was buy my own tamper)

Exactly the same for me. I tap the portafilter lightly on the grinder fork before distributing, because it lets me updose just a little and gives me a much more consistent extraction, but no tapping with the tamper. Besides all the obvious taste differences, I just don't want to mess up my pricey CoffeeLab tamper.

I never tap or do anything to disturb the puck after tamping:

I keep tamping pretty simple too, main success criteria:
Properly fitting tamper
Tamper nicely polished on tamping surface (for that glide). I hate grubby scratched tampers
Tamp slowly (too fast and the coffee doesn't have a chance to settle properly) and not too hard
Just tamp and slight polish...dont ^&* about too much (no staub, no nutate, no WDT, no split dose, no nothing)
Brush stray grounds from rim of portafilter basket with hand

I used to muck about a lot a long time ago....don't bother now....a sort of less is more philosophy....works for me.

Whole tamp process takes a few seconds

I voted 'other'.

I've stopped updosing, so I do not overfill the basket anymore. Since the grounds aren't coming over the top of the basket I can't really use my fingers or anyting else to level the dose.

I tap the PF against my palm a couple times on each side to get everything to settle in the basket and then I tamp lightly. This method has been working extremely well for me.

I've heard of a few folks using a technique whereby they do a really light downward thump of the entire bottomless PF assembly on the tamping mat before they tamp. I haven't had much luck with it but I've only read of it and not seen it - probably some issue with my technique.

A method that looks more interesting to me and one that I use in the shop with PF's that have been auto-tamped by the Swift is a simple inversion. I flip the entire PF assembly upside down momentarily before locking it into the machine. The little bits of loose stuff that the Swift leaves around the edge of the basket fall off. Same thing should happen with a manually tamped PF and if it was a crappy distribution and tamp the puck will fall out before you brew - which is an indicator that a change in technique is needed (or if you have a Swift it means you should be grind/dose/tamping into a wet basket).

Once tamped, I turn my portafilter upside down, place it on a tea towel (basket top to towel) and give it a little left/right twist. That cleans off any sticking granules from the gasket seating surface and makes sure the locking lugs are free from grit as well. If the puck falls out when you turn the portafilter upside down, then you did not have sufficient seal between the puck and basket walls.

I tap before tamping, just to level the grounds a bit and give them a better contact with the sides of the filter basket.