Video Overview | Pullman Breville BigStep Tamper

Pullman's BigStep Breville tamper has a 53.40 base made to fit precisely inside the baskets of Breville espresso machines. Much like its big brother, it has an aluminum handle, rubber thumb shock cover, and stainless steel base, and comes with three spacers of different sizes for adjusting the height, which is to say the way it fits inside your palm. In this video, Steve runs through the features and shows how this tamper matches up with the classic.

Transcript

Hey, it's Steve here with Prima Coffee, and today we're going to take a look at the Pullman BigStep Tamper made for Breville baskets. You will notice that this looks a lot like the original BigStep Tamper, and it is mostly going to be the same. The original, however, was made for commercial machines so it had a 58.5-millimeter diameter for that base. It fit perfectly into baskets for La Marzocco machines, Nuova Simonelli, Slayer, etc., so all of those commercial baskets. This one, however, was made to fit perfectly, so it's a precision tamper to fit perfectly into the baskets of Breville espresso machines. So this one is not 58.55, it is 53.40. You will notice is substantially smaller there than the original. However, the materials are going to be the same. We have an aluminum handle here that you can remove, just unscrew it. You have your rubber handle there, so that you have some shock when you're tamping. And the bottom is made of stainless steel. It also comes with these three aluminum spacers so that you can adjust the height, and basically the way that this tamper is going to fit into your hand so that it can be comfortable when you are tamping. If you're unfamiliar with the BigStep of the name, basically that refers to this little wedge that you're going to have here at the bottom. And you can tell it protrudes out just a little bit more. That is part of what makes it a precision tamper, so that protrusion helps it to cover every square millimeter of your coffee puck that will prevent any of those doughnut shots, which just means that, that outer perimeter extracts much more than the rest of the puck. And that's if you don't tamp the outer perimeter, of course, the water is going to exploit that area. The other reason for that little wedge is that this is going to prevent that suction effect. So after you've tamped, when you are pulling this out, if that tamper had fit perfectly into the basket, it might have a vacuum or suction effect when you pull it out. And therefore break up the puck that you just spent so much time working on. Then you'd have to re-dose, and re-tamp, basically regroom, re-prep that shot which you don't want to have to do all the time. These spacers are really easy to put on. All you're going to do is remove the handle just by unscrewing it. And then you're left with a grub screw there that you can add these to. Just as many as you need to so that it fits your hand. We'll put all three on. We have an 8-millimeter one, 5-millimeter, and then a 2-millimeter one. Put on as many as you need so that this is comfortable in your hand, and you can just screw the handle right back on. And that is your BigStep Tamper. So that is the Pullman BigStep Tamper that's made for Breville espresso machine portafilter baskets.