Video Overview | Clockwork Espresso PUSH Adjustable Tamper

Transcript

Hey, it's Steve with Prima Coffee here. Today we're taking a look at the PUSH Tamper by Clockwork Espresso. This is a puck-style tamper, and you've probably actually seen it, because it was probably one of the first to really make it to... not necessarily make it to the market, but make it to the public eye. It caught a lot of attention when it was used in a barista competition. That's sort of where it made its debut, at the 2015 World Barista Championship. But it works just the same way as a lot of the other adjustable depth puck tampers do. It's a very nice design. It's got a you know, clean, simple look. We have an aluminum sort of casing up top, and a steel piston and that's pretty much it, no extra pieces. We do have a grub or set screw here, which is used to kind of lock the piston in place at your desired depth. So, you do need to use a little hex wrench, which is included, to unlock that in order to be able to adjust your depth.

PUSH Adjustable Depth Tamper

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Easy-to-read adjustment markings, one revolution equals one millimeter of adjustment

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Now, this sets from about 4 millimeters to a little more than 15 millimeters, you probably don't need to go much past 15 millimeters in most cases. And we have a lot of convenient markings that really help figure out where you are and make finding the same exact depth setting very easy to do. So, for one, you'll notice all these little radial markings that count from .0 all the way around to, again, .0. So, basically, every full rotation of the piston is a difference of one millimeter in depth. And you can use the sort of inscribed depth markings here as your guide for how far you've rotated. The inscriptions here are in millimeters as well, so you can see by measuring them up against the sort of handle or base here, you can see how deep this piston is actually set. So, that's some really nice design in terms of helping you figure out where your settings are, what settings you're using, especially if you're a cafe and you need to figure out how deep you want to set your tamper base for a given dose, and again, very repeatedly, just by you know, looking at the numbers.

So, in order to set a depth, we'll you know, twist it, extend it or retract it, and then set the set screw just by using a little tool, and that's set firmly in place. So, the design of this tamper is you know, it's pretty unique if you're used to traditional tampers with a handle. So, what we have is our base down at the bottom and then we have this sort of puck style handle, I guess. And it's designed instead to kind of be pushed with the flat of the palm of your hand rather than contorting your wrist, and elbow, and all that. So, that's really great for a professional barista because that's going to reduce a lot of wrist strain. Of course, you don't want to press your wrist in funky ways, but you also don't need to push with that much pressure. You can just sort of lay your hand on, lean into it a little bit and that should be sufficient for tamping. The base design has this little lip here, which is intended to help reduce the vacuum when pulling the piston back out of the basket.

This is a 58.5 millimeter base. So, that can be a little snug in a lot of baskets, and it's intended to be snug, so this is going to be best used with precision baskets like VST baskets, Pullman, La Marzocco's precision baskets, that sort of thing, which have a fairly set size and inner diameter and it's going to do a pretty good job of tamping pretty much edge to edge across the basket. So, you get a really good, even tamp all throughout the coffee surface and you get nice, clean sidewalls so you don't have to worry about knocking loose grounds around. It's a really, really nice product and a really great tamper. I'm going to show you real quick how to use it, and how to adjust the depth. So, I'm going to start by grinding some coffee. All right. So, I've got a little bit of coffee here, I've purposely underdosed because I'm going to show you how to set the depth for your first use and for subsequent uses. So, I just loosened the grub screw here, I'm going to extend the base a bunch further than I know I need, and I'll just lightly lock it in place just for convenience. So, what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to compress my basket and you'll notice that the rim of the handle here is actually not touching the basket rim right now. So, what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to lightly twist that until it makes contact with the basket.

So, at this point, my handle is touching the rim of the basket, which means that my subsequent tamps after this are going to be even and level with the basket rim from here on out. And I've only rotated enough just that my coffee is fully compacted right now, so if I were to dose the same amount of coffee next time and tamp with this setting, I will get the exact same level and consistent depth with this tamper. So, that is, essentially, the ideal case for using it, especially in a shop. You have different baristas, you have a fairly static dose and you are using the same baskets across all of your portafilters. You can eliminate a little bit of a variable in tamping by saying, "Let's all tamp to the same depth, and let's all tamp nice and level with the basket." So, that's going to give you more consistent extractions, serving better coffee to your customers. Really, really great product, super easy to use, to set and sort of and you know, forget it a little. But really, really fantastic kind of new take on tamping, that is the PUSH Tamper. Thanks for watching.