Nutation

Tilting the tamper slightly off-vertical during tamping, tracing a small cone to compress the basket edges.

Category: Extraction — Workflow & Technique

A tamping technique where you tilt the tamper slightly off-vertical at the end of the tamp, tracing a small cone around the basket edges. The goal is to compress the outer rim of the puck more firmly than the centre.

Why it matters — Nutation was popular in the 2010s for addressing side-channelling. Modern consensus is that better puck preparation (WDT, levelling distributors, well-fitted tampers) makes nutation unnecessary.

Good to know

If your tamper fits the basket well and you've used WDT, you almost certainly don't need to nutate.
A loosely fitting tamper (a 58 mm tamper in a 58.4 mm basket) is the main reason people used to nutate. Upgrade the tamper rather than the technique.