An expensive tamper won't improve your espresso, but they make the process a lot more enjoyable. Dose & grind are the variables to focus on. Tamping just keeps the coffee down out of the shower screen, seal, and the rim of the portafilter basket that faces up against the seal. When you have your grinder nicely dialled in & the espresso is good, try making a shot without tamping (still weighing the ground coffee once in the basket though). That's right, just shove the portafilter into the group with the coffee heaped up in a mound. Surprise! The espresso is just as good. We first twigged to this when we saw baristas in Spain not bothering to tamp and yet the espresso was perfectly acceptable.

So tamping is a bit of a ritual, which we are happy to go along with, but if you been told you have to tamp with 30 pounds of pressure, no more, no less, or your espresso will be doomed then you need to find a new source of guidance. It's hogwash. Beware of the cult of espresso by numbers, much espoused by the 'coffee experts' in these times! Start developing a feel for what you are doing and you will get on a lot better. No doubt there is someone somewhere refining a process document for the 'perfect espresso'. Run. A mile. 

Anyway, I digress. What was the thought process that lead to these tampers looking the way they do? We chose Reg Barber because of his reputation. We preferred to pay Reg Barber a premium rather than find ourselves involved in a discussion about what an acceptable finish on the wood was and what diameter radius was optimal on the face of the tamper to ensure it didn't bind or grab the portafilter basket, and so on. In short we thought it was best to go to someone who knew what they were doing.

Whilst we appreciate the clean, modern 'all aluminium' look that has been popularised by Apple Inc. and has subsequently been deployed on a vast array of consumer products, we have used enough tampers to know that wood is the only material to use on the handle. Whether in the depths of winter, or left in direct sunlight in the height of summer, wood is always comfortable to pick up. Try this with a black metal tamper handle sometime. The high density acrylic material that feels similar to whatever they make billiard balls out of isn't much better. Additionally, wood is very light, keeping the centre of balance very low in the tamper, which is important to help you tamp level. We have some tampers knocking around with the high density acrylic handle and a thin metal base. This results in a top heavy tamper that is really unpleasant to use. Not unusable, just unpleasant.

The shorter the tamp handle the less likely you are to tamp at an angle, simple physics. There isn't much that is important with tamping, other than the tamp being a snug fit for the basket in which it is being used, and tamping the coffee level. If the suface of the coffee puck is not level after you have tamped you will likely find more coffee comes out one spout than the other when you pull your shot. This ruled out all the tall skinny handles that seem to be in vogue at the moment. We considered the short ball handle, which is pretty good, but when we tried Reg's 'short handle' it just worked. It's odd, because to look at you might think it would be uncomfortable or difficult to hold. It isn't. When you pick it up it just feels right, and it is relatively difficult to hold 'out of plumb' which is what its all about if you want a level top on your puck when you have finished. It transpires that this handle is the original handle that Reg developed for his tampers. We think it's still the best.

A tamper that fits snuggly into the basket also prevents tamping at an angle, as does a deeper base on the tamper. This obviously costs as it means considerably more metal needs to be used in the base. That is what sets the best tampers apart from the rest.

Finally we wanted the tampers to carry the Londinium colours of black and gold. Choosing the base was easy, solid brass. Finding a wood as close to black as possible was more difficult. In the end we settled on wenge, solid, not a veneer. The Londinium Espresso logo has been engraved into the top of the handle to a very high standard, capturing far more of the detail in the fonts that we expected. The wenge handle has been sanded and finished to a very high standard.

Thanks to the team at Reg Barber for a wonderful set of tampers. We hope you enjoy using them as much as we do. They are sufficiently heavy that you just place the tamper on the coffee and 3 right-left twists of the wrist and the job is done.