World barista champion’s advice to Aussie espresso enthusiasts
Paul and I had the pleasure of meeting Gwilym Davies, the 2009 World Barista Champion from London, during his whirlwind tour of coffee hotspots in Australia. At Di Bella Coffee in Brisbane, a small group of like-minded espresso enthusiasts gathered last month to find out the latest tips and techniques from someone who has been judged best in their field.
Read what Gwilym had to say.
We have known for ages that there is more to making a great espresso than just having hot pressurised water flow through a cake of ground coffee beans, but new ideas and technology are pushing the boundaries of the technical aspects of extraction more than ever before.
In the 4-hour workshop and demonstration of extraction and milk techniques that won Gwilym the top barista award, we covered a lot, including software that can measure and show all sorts of things that happen during extraction. Here I will share with you what Gwilym had to say about tamping.
In a busy café, tamping is often one of the least considered of all the espresso techniques. Since it controls the way the water flows through the ground coffee beans, it is undoubtedly one of the most crucial techniques in achieving an even extraction. So first make an assessment of your current tamping technique then read on.
A technique with a strange name
We were told to watch out for a new tamping technique that will be on the lips of every keen barista soon. Seemingly it involves a few different stages in the tamping process – starting with an uneven tamp, rotating the tamp unevenly around the 360° of the filter basket, then evening the level of the tamped cake – to finally give a flat and even surface on the cake. The end result looks the same as any other good tamp but apparently this technique tamps the ground coffee beans in the filter basket more firmly at the sides and less firmly in the centre, resulting in a better flow of water through all sections of the tamped cake. Because of how water flows naturally over a tamped cake (taking the path of least resistance and running over the surface to the sides of the cake) this tamping technique is designed to slow the flow at the sides while hurrying it up in the centre resulting in more even extraction overall. It has the unfortunate name of ‘nutation’, which to me sounds more like a medical condition. You can check it out on the web like I did if you want to find out more. There are plenty of baristas who are already having something to say about it.
Other tamping tips from Gwilym
There is no need to tamp too hard – just the right way. Gwilym compared a very firmly tamped cake and a lightly tamped one in a demonstration that showed how the extraction time for each was the same. So the advice is to save your muscle and throw away the bathroom scales along with the ancient idea that you have to tamp until you reach 30 kilos – and take it easy on the tamping pressure. Go to page 88 in the Barista Bible and read the section on ‘Don’t tamp too much’ for an explanation of this.
After you have finished tamping, tip the filter basket upside down and the tamped cake should remain in the filter basket. If it doesn’t, you may have bumped the tamped cake and caused the tamped cake to detach from the filter basket sides or caused it to weaken in some way and crack in the centre. This will result in water flowing through the weak spot – between the cake and the sides of the filter basket or through the crack in the centre. Give this ‘tamping and tipping’ technique a try and you will see for yourself.