Tamper Specialty Coffee offering exotic beverages in Madison

Tamper Specialty Coffee owner Jonathan Littleton says coffee is more than just a beverage and that it is also something that brings people together.

“We want our shop to be somewhere for people to come hang out, study, and meet friends,” Littleton said. “Coffee is very diverse and since we wanted to be a part of the community, we felt this shop was the way to do it.” 

For Littleton and his wife Tiffany, Tamper Specialty Coffee started as little more than a dream, and now that the shop is open and thriving, Littleton said the dream is even better now that it’s a reality. 

After signing the lease for the building in October 2022, Littleton and his wife began work on their shop in February and completed it in July. They held a soft opening on Aug. 30 with a limited selection. 

Madison Community Partners held a ribbon cutting for Tamper on Sep. 21, which served as the shop’s grand opening. Mayor Mary Hawkins-Butler and other city officials were present.  

“This is our first location,” Littleton said. “We recently moved here around 18 months ago from Dubai after living there for a number of years. There, we fell in love with specialty coffees and specifically single origin coffees.” 

The term “single origin” is a coffee category that focuses on one distinct area or region where the coffee is grown. Coffee labeled as single origin can be traced to a single farm, farmer, producer crop, or region in one county. 

The name “Tamper Speciality Coffee,” according to Littleton, was inspired by two factors: one being that the word “tamper” is a way of applying pressure to expresso beans, and the second being that opening the coffee shop had he and his wife under a lot of pressure. 

“The shop itself is made under pressure, and to tamper something is to put things under pressure to make something beautiful,” Littleton said. 

Tamper’s main staple is serving a number of these single-origin coffees and providing drinks made from three different types of expresso coffee beans from different countries, including Brazil, Ethiopia, and Honduras. They also offer a variety of smoothies, shakes, and pastries. 

“All of our beans are roasted lightly under a process called a shallow roasting, where they are roasted at a lower temperature for a longer period of time, so it’s not as dark,” Littleton said. “You can taste a lot more of the flavor profile that way. We have our beans roasted in Norway, as we’re partnered with a roaster there, to get that authentic European roast profile.”

Along with the unique taste of Tamper’s coffee, Littleton said he and his employees also use a state-of-the-art expresso machine from the Netherlands and use an Italian milk frothing method for their drinks, and pay extra attention to it under specialty coffee guidelines. 

Littleton said he felt Tamper still felt like more of a dream than a business, and although there was a lot of nervousness and anxiety starting something new, his business has been even better than he could’ve ever imagined. 

“The community has been very receptive,” he said. “We wanted this to be something to share with everyone in the community. Not just the product itself, but we also wanted to share the coffee culture of being able to meet friends with coffee and not have to spend a lot of money.” 

Tamper Specialty Coffee is located at 119 Colony Crossing Way, Suite 160, next to Sal and Mookie’s Pizza. For more information, call the shop at (601) 790-7210, or visit www.tamperspecialtycoffee.com.