I found a Breville Barista Express at Goodwill the other day for $75. It's my first machine, and happy to play with it for this price!
The included tamper is boggling my mind though, what the hell did these people do it??? The machine was filthy and some of the cleaning tools were still sealed in-bag, to give you some context…
I am just blown away by the tamper and can't get over it. Did they use it like a mortar and pestle? I just wanted to share because this is insane. Thanks for looking.
by opticalmask
32 Comments
i’d bet they banged the portafilter against it to knock out the grinds
This is actually such a fun little mystery. It looks like it was striking the same small (probably metal) point repeatedly with some bias toward the center. I genuinely can’t think of what they’d be doing to cause this. I look forward to others’ guesses, haha
Those are weird marks, like consistently hitting the edge of a nail head. What does the porta filter look like? Any matching dents of the same radius like they used the tamper to knock out the puck?
Looks like they used it as both a tamper and a hammer
Leveling the grounds
Maybe they ground the beans with it 🤣
Hey, I saw a guy on YouTube tapping the dual spout on the portafilter with the bottom of the tamper to get the spent coffee puck to drop out and into the trash after pulling the shot. Even way back then when I was a rookie, I knew that was wrong!
the prior owner worked as a barista from 1995–2010.
SOP back then was tamp once, knock the tamp against one of the portafilter’s flanges or ears, and then tamp again. We stopped doing that because it actually creates a channeling pathway around the edge of the puck (and you’d ding up your tamp something fierce)
Using the tamper as a grinder
Corporal punishment?
My toddler loves to “help” me make coffee so I let him play with the stock Breville tamper while I use my upgraded one for the real shot. I’d be willing to bet it’s got some dings..
He may have been tapping somewhere on the grinder to loosen stuck grounds.
Looks like someone needs a new grinder.
Possibly ended up in a sink garbage disposal?
Walnuts IMO
Not checking for rocks in their beans? 😀
More seriously, as others have said, the previous owner was probably whacking their portafilter with it. It’s likely a softer metal as well.
It’s those pesky rocks people keep posting out of their bags
I ruined a tamper years ago tapping the portafilter on the side to settle the grinds before tamping. I don’t do that anymore.
Breville tampers are shit anyway
Tamping flavor crystals.
I’m using Barista Express, and I bang the tamper against the portafilter.
This is because after tamping, the coffee grinds will stick to the outer rim/edge of the portafilter. tapping it with the tamper so they fall back down.
Over time, I noticed the tamper is damaged.
What the hell is even that?
Na, that’s a convenient hammer… just like everything else in the world that used for a hammer thats not hammer shaped. I once came home to my wife hammering a pin back into the stand mixer with the paddle.
People who buy tampers at thrifts are not just coffee people. Other people buy them and bang on all sorts of things—
Same as the rest of us repurposing screwdrivers to lift lids on pait cans, scissors to cut wire……tampers make great bangers for art work, metal work, putting pins into knives during restoration.
that’s the grinder not the tamper /s
Was it used to tamp the backyard?
We have Waffle Base at home
That’s brevilles new all in one grinder and tamper solution. Quite convenient
It moonlighted as a roofer’s hammer and had a summer job as a Judges gavel!
Grind finer
That’s actually the new normcore laser microtexturized force tamper. The small and randomly distributed peaks and valleys on the face of the tamper form a normal distribution where the edges have less texture than the center. This creates a very tiny and controlled amount of channeling or flow increase towards the center to match the type of flow that the edges of the basket receive. This makes an overall more even and consistent extraction.
Using the tamper to muddle whole beans