Tamping Mats and Tamping Support Stands

Tamping Mats and Tamping Support Stands

When we are preparing any of our favourite espresso based coffees, tamping is required. Coffee is ground into the Filter Basket and is loosely piled up, tamping is the process that compresses these fine particles together removing all the empty space and creating a dry dense puck ready for extracting. Once shot is commenced, the pressurised group head allows hot water to force its way through the grounds allowing it to rapidly extract sugars, oils and other compounds.

Depending on where you plan on tamping and storing your tamp mat, we have different styles to suit your needs. From leading brands like Rhinoware, Crema Pro, Cafelat and Coffee Parts, we supply both flat mats and corner edged mats. Check out our range to grab the best coffee tamping mat.

Coffee tamper mats are a great replacement for coffee tamper stands and can be used on both spouted and bottomless portafilters. The corner mat also makes it easier to use with bottomless portafilters and help with stable tamping and most importantly level tamping. They are ideal for busy barista in any food business looking to keep their work areas neater and protected. It is the perfect addition for baristas who want reliable gear that’ll wont just last but are also at a great price!

The portafilter tamp stand are designed to keep the portafilter level while tamping, and more importantly to help keep the spouts spouts clear of coffee grounds. By never touching the table top it allows the portafilter spouts to remain clean of grounds which ultimately end up rising to the top of the coffee and ruining your perfect espresso. The support stand is especially useful for when using a single spout on your portafilter or a bottomless portafilter. Be sure to check out awesome Rocket portafilter Tamping Station - an awesome product!

What is a coffee tamping mat?

Tamping mats are an easy to clean silicon or rubber tamping surface which reduces stress on your wrists from repetitive tamping. This is a must have coffee accessory for anyone that owns an espresso machine. They are made from high quality, anti slip rubber that protects your bench and portafilter from damage.

Do I need a tamp mat?

Despite the simplistic design and appearance of a tamping mat, we believe that they truly hold a valuable position within your home or commercial coffee gear. If you are not using an automatic tamper, then you are manually tamping your coffee each and every coffee. Now for those of you who aren’t using a bench or a stand to push on and are relying on your wrist to holdup against downward force each coffee. This may not seem like a big deal, however, overtime you may suffer from fatigue in your wrists or even worse, an uneven distribution of coffee being tamped, leading to a poor tasting coffee.

The cheapest and easiest solution? Buy a tamping mat or stand. For an extremely low cost, you can apply a much more effective tamp and ensure that you have an even distribution of force applied to each tamp. Simply rest your portafilter on either a silicon mat or stand and witness how much easier this is than holding it in your hands.

How to manual tamp like a pro

If you want the ideal tasting coffee, you’ll need to produce the perfect puck. This means that the coffee is compacted with even distributional forces. By doing so, water moving through the portafilter works hard to completely saturate the coffee grounds to extract oils and rich textures that create our beautiful espresso shots.

• Grind and weigh your optimal amount of coffee grounds into your portafilter
• Use a distribution tool such as the OCD ona v3 to level, distribute and groom the surface of the grounds.
• If you are going to hold and tamp, keep your wrist straight and your elbow bent at a 90-degree angle. Otherwise place your portafilter on a tamping mat or stand and ensure that the top of the portafilter is sitting perpendicular to the benchtop.
• Use a two-stage approach when apply downward force. First apply roughly 7kg of force to create the basis of the puck formation. Now apply anywhere from 9kg to 13kg of force to finish the tamping. Look into calibrated tampers to get a more accurate sense of how much force you are applying.
• Use a twisting motion as you pull the tamper away to polish the puck and leave a smooth surface.
• Finally inspect the puck to ensure there is not loose coffee on the surface and remove excess coffee around the top of the portafilter to reduce machine maintenance and cleaning.

As we know by now, there’s a little more to brewing coffee than just putting a coffee capsule into a machine and hitting a button, well for a quality cup of coffee anyway. All of our accessories are meant to complement and significantly enhance your brewing experience and ability! Usually, you’d begin your espresso process by using a Dosing tool to weigh the appropriate amount of beans with your Coffee Scales before grinding your fresh coffee!

Your coffee grounds will be put back into your dosing cup and transferred into your Portafilter Basket which may be a single, double or triple! The Distribution tool will help you to evenly distribute the grounds within the Filter Basket prior to using a coffee tamper to compress the grounds. By placing your portafilter onto a Tamping Mat you’ll prevent damage to the portafilter handle or bench, simply place 10-30kg of even pressure down on the tamper and twist to polish. Lock the portafilter into your machine, use the scales under the spout with whichever cup, glassware or reusable cup you prefer and commence brewing.

Now when texturing milk it's important to use the correctly sized milk jug for the amount of milk you require. Once you texture the milk, use a milk Thermometer to get the ideal steaming time for whatever milk you’re working with and if in a cafe you might have the option of a Milk Jug Rinser which is incredibly convenient for the post brew clean! A chocolate shaker is a must for those mocha or cappuccino lovers. When the shot is pouring, make sure to use a barista timer or your scales to measure for the perfect extraction, we recommend 23g in and 46g out at an extraction time of 25-30 seconds. Knock the puck out in either a Knock Box at home or a Standing knock tube or in bench shoot if you’re in a cafe!

Now every machine deserves a good clean, check out our range of Blind Filters, cleaning brushes, cleaning products and chemicals! Everyone loves having a few beans up your sleeve so be sure to check out our favourite Coffee Storage units for home or cafe! If you've got a passion for coffee, well there's nothing tastier than some cupping, use some of our coffee Cupping Tools, such as bowls and spoons to bring this professional experience into your own home!