One often-overlooked ingredient to good espresso preparation at home is use of a quality tamper. In that regard, it’s hard to go past the Australian-designed and made Coffeelab, it really is a thing of beauty – the materials, design and feel of the finished object are top notch.

The crucial thing that is hard to achieve with an off-the-shelf tamper is a good fit to the basket to ensure an even tamp, and in this case Aaron was looking to improve the match of his existing base to the 54.5mm baskets of his La Spaziale. I was able to help by sourcing a new 58mm base directly from Coffeelab, and re-machining the diameter to provide an exact fit.

The result was a perfect fit, without changing the ergonomics or appearance of a design that Aaron already loved. Sweet!