Espresso Puck Prep: Distribution, Tamping, and Better Flow

Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Espresso recipes often talk as if the grinder is the whole story. Grind finer, grind coarser, pull longer, stop shorter. Those instructions are useful, but they assume something important: the puck is giving water a fair path through the coffee. When the coffee bed is clumpy, lopsided, cracked, underfilled, overfilled, or tamped at an angle, the water does not behave like the recipe imagines. It searches for weak spots. A shot can run quickly through one channel while other parts of the puck barely brew at all.

Tamping on Fondsites

Espresso Puck Prep: Distribution, Tamping, and Better Flow