Sorry, but reading your post I just couldn't help but think of the movie "pirates of the caribbean" - the quote "they're more like guidelines really" It's what's in the cup that counts!

maybe i'm crazy, but for the past year and a half i've been using the "stock" tamper that came with my gaggia evolution, that is, a small piece of cheap black plastic that's got to be at least a centimeter too small for the 58mm PF the machine came with. what i mean is, this thing forces me to tamp all over the place, with no clear technique or "weight" that can be defined.

and i've pulled some great shots.

bottom line is: i find the only one truly consistent variable in shot quality, over all matters of tamping, temperature, amount or grind is quality and perhaps even more so, freshness of the beans.

i've never measured the temp, never weighted my coffee. i barely ever touch my grind setting. if i use cheap, usually old beans, no matter what i do, the shots will be watery, the crema pale, the taste awful. if i get freshly roasted coffee from a trusted source, using the same "technique" (or lack thereof), out will come those beautifully stripped streams that yield the kind of tasty, dark & syrupy shots of espresso which i love.

friend of mine puts target coffee into his 2000$ rancilio rig. it doesn't do any miracles.

i think some of you guys are overdoing this

The POS plastic tamper is fine. It's possible to pull great shots with ZERO tamp.

pedepy wrote:and i've pulled some great shots.

By overdoing it, we strive for 'and I rarely pull a poor shot'