F.A.Q.

The name idroprep is put together from ‘idro’ (Italian for ‘hydro’) and ‘prep’ like preparing.

You spell it ’edroprep’.

The countries to which we can currently ship the idroprep are listed in the shop area.

Further countries will be added in the future. However, we have to clarify in each individual case whether the idroprep complies with the respective regulations and laws for tools in contact with foodstuffs. These checks are complex and take time. We hope for your understanding!

The handle is made from plastic while the ring is made from stainless steel. The gel pad consist of a gel made from polyurethane covered in a foil made from the same class of plastics.

Yes, the parts that come into contact with the coffee powder (stainless steel ring and covering foil of the pad) are approved for being in contact with the coffee powder during tamping.

In addition, we have had a certified laboratory measure that - even with highly sensitive test methods - no relevant substances can be detected that would transfer from the idroprep to the coffee powder (test method according to EU regulation).

PLEASE NOTE: We took all possible precautions to make sure that the gel in the pad is harmless, too. We have had it tested, that there is no problematic transfer of substances from the gel pad to the coffee powder even with the foil covering the gel punctured. However, in order to fully comply with the legal requirements and to exclude any possible risk the idroprep must not be used if the the foil is damaged.

In normal use, the gel pad is very durable and will provide good service for a long time; exactly how long remains to be seen. However, it can be stated that the pressure during the tamping process is well within the load limits and similar gel pads withstand hundreds of thousands of use cycles and more.

Permanently high temperatures are harmful to the gel pad. The idroprep can withstand hot splashing water and heat near the espresso espresso machine easily, but it should not be cleaned in the dishwasher or with steam.

The foil of the pad can be damaged by sharp and pointed objects. If damaged the gel pad must be replaced.

Squeeze the coffee powder as hard as you would with a conventional rigid tamper. You cannot apply too much pressure.

In general, it is better to press as hard as possible. This way, you avoid mistakes caused by a puck that is not fully compressed.

With a single dose basket and symmetrical filling you do not need any further steps. You can simply press on the idroprep and you are done.

With a double dose basket or asymmetrical filling, it can make sense to roughly distribute the ground coffee. This produces a puck that is not only uniformly dense but also uniform in thickness.

We do not recommend additional mixing (e.g. using WDT). The benefit is small and you can cause further defects in the puck.

No, the idroprep is not suited for this. This potentially damages both the gel pad and the coffee puck.

The surface of the coffee remains rough and slightly uneven after idropreping. This is a specific property of the idroprep.

The short answer is no. It is more important that the coffee puck is evenly dense than that it is evenly thick.

The long answer is a bit complicated: in general the best coffee puck is the one with even density and even thickness. This ideal, however, is not easy to achieve. Traditional tampers with stiff base in a double-dose basket will give you even thickness easily (due to the flat surface). This comes at the cost of even density, though, which baristas try to avoid by preparing the coffee grounds prior to tamping with various techniques like stirring, leveling, etc. so that the heap of coffee conforms to the limitations of the stiff tamper. Of course, this approach has severe limits, easily to recognize in case of single-dose baskets, where even density is very difficult to achieve and needs years of practice (long-time baristas can do it by adjusting the height and form of the heap of grounds in just the right way). This is also the reason why single-dosing is seen as inferior and most cafes and professional baristas almost always use double-dose baskets.

With the idroprep you trade even thickness for even density. The puck even in a flat double-dose basket won’t necessarily have even thickness everywhere but even density is easy to achieve. The same goes for single-dose baskets, where the gel-pad automatically pushes further into soft parts of the puck and will compact also the deep parts evenly. Single-dose baskets give very good results when prepared with the idroprep!

The physics of laminar flow (which is what you want to have when extracting the coffee) state that the flow or throughput depends much more on the width of the channels through which the liquid propagates than their length. For example: in the (simplified) case of a round pipe the laminar flow through said pipe depends linearly on its length but to the fourth power (!) on its diameter.

Let’s look at a coffee puck for which due to variations in the distribution of the grounds the idroprep produced a central spot with a height 5% less than the average. Water flow through this part will then be about 5% more than average. In case of a traditional stiff tamper, however, this 5% variation in initial volume would translate to something like 20% wider channels between the coffee grains (because the volume of the grains is not affected by tamping and makes for the largest part of the compressed coffee puck). Flow through these 20% wider channels would then be about double(!) the average. It is easy to see that the detrimental effect of uneven density is much more pronounced than that of uneven thickness.

The idroprep works differently than a rigid tamper and creates a coffee puck through which the water flows differently,

Therefore, it is important to experiment (especially with grind settings and coffee quantity) to find the sweet spot that work best for the idroprep, The same settings as for the rigid tamper will not produce the same coffee!

In particular, you should try to grind significantly finer. The idroprep coffee puck works best with finer ground coffee!

Even without pulling an espresso, you can already see clear changes in the puck:

• The surface of the puck is equally hard everywhere and has no soft spots as is often the case with a rigid tamper.
• The puck does not fall out of the portafilter when it is turned over. Since the coffee powder is evenly compressed everywhere, it rests better against the walls of the filter basket and does not slip out.
• The virgin puck can be carefully removed from the filter basket for examination. You can see that the ground coffee has been pressed together into an even and firm block.