[Ducati] My New Accessory

[Brian De Groodt]

This is a 3rd request, so I'll fill you in on what I did.  Longer  
story, so apologies for the details, but they are relevant.

About 3 years ago I received as a gift a La Pavoni Europiccola  
espresso machine.  This was an upgrade from the Mr Coffee or some  
other such nonsense I had been trying to make espresso out of for  
years previous.  In any case, anyone that's familiar with this La  
Pavoni knows 2 things about it--it's beautiful and it's a real pain  
the ass to get a shot out of it, but when you do, it's great.  Kinda  
like working on your own bike--might be frustrating and you might  
feel like taking a hammer to the thing (and sometimes that's what it  
requires) but when it all works, it's great and you feel good about  
life.  So each morning for the last 3 years I rose from my sleep and  
got ready to take on the beast down in the kitchen.  It started  
getting to be some sort of weird obsession for me to get a proper  
shot out of the thing.  It also served as a barometer for how my day  
was going to go.  Perfect shot with thick crema, great day.  Running  
ounce of warm coffee--time to go back to bed before the day got worse.

Anyway, one (rainy) weekend I decided to dedicate the day to trying  
to reverse the role of slave and master and find out how to get this  
machine to work like I knew it could.  I was confident my grind was  
right and I knew I was having a "tamping issue" due to the size of my  
tamper versus the basket the machine ships with.  So I watch what  
apparently is the barista version of the Superbowl and discovered a  
company out of BC, CN that all the baristas were thanking for the  
great tamper.  The company is Reg Barber and they custom mill each  
tamper per the customer order.  They happened to have an option to  
get a custom engraving and once I saw the red handle, well I only  
know one thing that goes with red.  So I coerced a certain somebody  
to provide me with a hi-res graphic of a few Ducati logos (not sure  
I'm supposed to have these files, so he/she shall remain nameless).   
I chose the file you see in the picture, but I'm sure Reg Barber  
would be happy to do any logo just so long as it meets their size and  
resolution requirements.  All in, after the exchange rate, etc., the  
tamper worked out to an embarrassing ~$200. (My guess is if Ducati  
were making them you'd pay nearly as much at your dealer, so hey,  
what can I say?)  That said, after I was too far in to bail out, once  
I got the tamper I can't say anything about it but it's awesome and I  
understand why the baristas were giving up thanks to Reg Barber.   
It's an impressive 410g and custom fit to my portafilter, so it's  
tamps perfectly.

I'm happy to report that while the machine and I still "go at it"  
each morning, I seem to be coming out on the winning side of the  
battle far more often than in the past.  At the very least I haven't  
had any unbearable shots in weeks now.

I'm not sure how best to help the group out here.  I'd be happy to  
communicate with the very nice people at Reg Barber on behalf of  
anyone that wants a tamper and explain that it's a duplicate of the  
work I asked them for or whatever works.

BD
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