What it is

The Leather Tamping Mat is a flat, 245 x 180 mm piece of 4 mm hard leather that sits under your espresso workflow. It keeps the portafilter, tamper and dosing tools off a stone or wooden counter, and the firm leather gives a little cushion under the basket when you tamp. Weber calls it coffee mise en place: a fixed spot for the tools you reach for on every shot.

Two rings are pressed into the leather. Weber designed them around its Blind Shaker or Blind Tumbler and a tamper, so each tool goes back to the same place and can be centred without looking down. The Onyx version is the same mat Weber packs with the EG-1 grinder in Onyx.

Using it with your tamper

The mat is completely flat, with no stepped corner like some rubber tamping mats have. A bottomless portafilter sits flat on it. With a spouted portafilter, place the mat at the edge of the counter so the spouts can hang over it, as in Weber’s own photos. Any tamper works on it, and if you still set the pressure by hand, a spring-loaded tamper such as the Normcore V5 gives the same tamp pressure on every shot.

Natural or Onyx

Both colours use the same leather, size and thickness. Vegetable-tanned leather darkens and develops a patina with handling and light over time, which shows more on the Natural mat than on Onyx. Wipe up water and coffee grounds with a dry or lightly damp cloth rather than letting them soak in, since standing water can mark leather.

Specifications

What’s in the box

• 1 x Weber Workshops Leather Tamping Mat in Natural or Onyx

The tamper, portafilter and Blind Shaker shown in the photos are not included.