I have loved using the Kamira stove top espresso machine for five plus years now, but here is one interesting thing I learned I did not know about until now.

What is coffee soup?

I might be making this term up, but this is what comes to mind if I cannot get any coffee to drip out of my Kamira Espresso stove top machine and after giving up, finding that there is a pool of coffee water in the filter holder. See video below.

If you experience this coffee soup phenomenon, one possible reason is that the grind might be too fine. And the following may help you to still use your coffee.

First, what grind has had the best results for me so far?

I have tried a few brands but Lavazza just seems to produce the best results so far, at least for the Kamira. I cannot speak for other espresso machines.

If this Lavazza grind also does not work for you, then you might actually have a pressure leak and you may need to replace your safety valve, especially if it sounds like a suspiciously excessive amount of steam is escaping from your pressuer valve. After replacing my safety valve for the second time recently, I could not believe how much the crema production improved instantaneously.

But if that Lavazza works well for you

But you happen to have some coffee that has a finer grind that is not working, then the next section might help.

How to make use of the grind that is “finer” than usual?

I recently had a finer than usual grind I got as a gift from my mom (thanks mom!) and I experienced the coffee soup. However randomly I thought to put less coffee into my filter holder and thought to not perform any “tamping”. Tamping is the act of pressing the grinds in your filter holder, making them packed a bit more tightly. Actually the Kamira website, and the Kamira videos on youtube, recommend not tamping at all, but instead they recommend hitting the filter holder against asurface slightly.

But this time, I decided to keep that coffee extremely loose

So I did not touch it at all. And that worked ! After producing the coffee, here is what it looked like, below. Notice, there is way less coffee, but no more coffee soup!