There’s something remarkably special about hand crafted tools for coffee and espresso. Even more so when the artisans creating them could be your very own neighbours (as an example, Reg Barber used to make his tampers on Vancouver Island, a short ferry ride from my home town of Vancouver).

I remember that singular moment when I bought a Reg Barber espresso tamper for the first time, over 20 years ago. It cost a lot — as I recall, over $60 in 1998 ($95 in today’s dollars) — and I questioned at the time spending so much on something so exotic and “specialist” for my home espresso setup. But looking back, it was a superlative purchase because it made me more in tune with the espresso making process. It made espresso very personal, very intimate. It was probably the best $60 I ever spent on anything related to espresso, outside of the grinder, machine, and coffee.

This is why there is a place for artisan tools for making coffee and espresso. The tools we are looking at in this QuickShot Review fit that category. They are the St. Anthony Industries tools, including the New Levy Tamper, the BT Wedge Distribution Tool, and the Bloc Tamping Station. Handmade in the USA, they are definitely not cheap (the entire setup cost $348 at the time of this review), but through the course of this review, we’ll be looking at all aspects of these products to determine if they’re worth your investment. We’ll take a look at the build quality, the form, and the function of these products and weigh all these aspects along with the more difficult to measure benefits of using small batch, handcrafted tools to make your home espresso better.