The razzle dazzle big stage of the World Barista Championship is home to many innovations: vacuum sealed espresso shots, sous vide geisha beans, carbonically macerated rare coffee varieties, and on. But one piece of kit that drew the curiosity of many at the 2015 WBC was the strange, green, handle-less tamper used by United Kingdom champion Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, a three-time WBC finalist and owner of Colonna & Small’s, a quality-focused coffee bar in Bath. Turns out this tamper has a story: UK-based designer Pete Southern of Clockwork Espressoย is responsible for what he calls, simply,ย PUSHโan adjustable, hockey puck-shaped tamper that Southern claims will guarantee a level, consistent tamp every time.
Pete Southern has already welcomed quite a bit of interest in his new invention, even without an official SCAA boothโitโs just been him, some prototypes, and a few business cards in his pocket. I caught up with Southern outside the competition arenaย during WBC weekendย to ask him a few questions.
How does the PUSH tamper work?
So thereโs a little scale on the side, and you wind it in and out to set the height that you want to tamp to. And then once youโre happy with it, you just lock it in position and then thatโs itโitโs locked. It sits on top of the portafilter basket and itโs always level and exactly the same. So as long as your dose is approximately the same each time, your shots should be identical.
Can you tell me a little about yourself? How did the idea for the tamper come about?
I have a day jobโI work for a company that makes DNA analysis machines so my background is sort of in engineering and design. We have an espresso machine [at our office] and the other members of the staff kind of struggle to make decent coffee because tamping is pretty hard, and takes a lot of practice. Unless youโre going to spend hours and hours and pull hundreds of shots, itโs pretty hard to get good at it, and they used to complain that their coffee wasnโt very nice and that they preferred mine. They didnโt understand why theirs was so much different than mine.
Iโm not an amazing barista by any means, but I can tamp, and their tamping would be totally wonky and really inconsistent, so I set about trying to make something to help them make better coffee. They didnโt really have an interest in becoming amazing baristasโthey just wanted a nice cup of coffee and to go back to work. So, I came up with this.
How did Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood come to compete in the WBC with your tamper? Thatโs pretty great publicity!
I approached Maxwell, and he kind of wasnโt super keen at first because he hadnโt seen one or anythingโI was kind of just like, โHey, I have this tamper, do you want to see it?โ And he was like, โNo, Iโm a bit busy to be honest.โ But I persisted and managed to get a Skype call with him, and I showed it to him on the video, and he was like, โAh yeah, now I see, I really like it.โ So I shipped him one the next day, and he had a couple of slight tweaks that he wanted for hisโso I spent all weekend in the machine shop making him one by hand, and he said he was happy with it, so then I ordered him some proper production ones to compete with, and then I booked a ticket to come out here.
I think this was the best way to let the world know about it, and also the best way to kind of test it out, because Iโm not a champion barista, and I donโt have any plans to be. I wanted someone to tell me, โYeah, it works,โ and to test it out really thoroughly, in a really high-end environment, and thatโs what he did.
What kind of research did you do before designing the product?
We use VST baskets in our office, so these ones are made for VSTs. I guess eventually weโll work on ones that will work with other size baskets. But really, we were just trying to solve that problemโthe functionality came first, before any aspects of the design. I wanted a tamper that made tamping easier and made the drinks more consistent. I alsoโfunny enough, from a post on Sprudgeโcame across a report into the health problems of tamping, which was really interesting. I read the whole paper and Iโve actually gotten in touch with one of the authors of it, and they want to repeat the study but with this tamper, and thatโs the reason why it doesnโt have that sort of typical handle on it.
The problem is, you end up like this [mimics tamping motion], having shoulder and back problems, and if you do that hundreds of times a day, itโs going to cause you problems, whereas with PUSH, you sort of lean over it, and youโwell, you push. It hasnโt been tested on any kind of large scale yet, but we believe that itโs going to make baristas’ lives a lot better and give them less health problems.
Do you think in a few years, this is something that might be commonly found in specialty cafes all over the world?
I donโt see any reason why people wouldnโt use it because, I mean to be honest, if youโre not using this tamper, then your tamps probably arenโt as good as they could be. Youโre not going to get a better tamp with another tamper because this is always level, itโs always exactly the same. Even Maxwell has bad daysโsometimes I’m sure his tamps arenโt exactly perfect.
How can people get their hands on a tamper?
Itโs not available for sale yet, but thereโs a โRegister Interestโ part on my website where people can sign up and then theyโll get an alert when the pre-order opens. In the next few weeks, weโll be setting up distribution chains around the world. Weโve gotten offers from all sorts of different companiesโIโve already been approached by some pretty big companies whilst weโve been here.
Whatโs next for Clockwork Espresso? Do you have any other ideas in the works?
Yes, manyโbut theyโre all secret right now!
Joanna Han (@joannakarenina) is a Sprudge.com contributor based in New York City. Read moreย Joanna Han on Sprudge.ย