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How to Use a Coffee Shower Dripper? Will Strong Water Flow Cause Blockage When Pour-Over Brewing? How to Use the Stirring Method?

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, Many novice coffee brewers, when starting to learn coffee brewing, often struggle to control the water flow, resulting in injected hot water having excessive penetrating power! Excessive penetration greatly increases turbulence effects, which easily causes fine coffee grounds to be carried to the bottom by the water flow, blocking the filter paper, ultimately causing the coffee to become over-extracted due to excessive extraction time.

Introduction

Many novice coffee enthusiasts, when first learning to brew coffee, struggle with controlling water flow, resulting in injected hot water with excessive penetrating power! Excessive penetration greatly increases turbulence effects, which can easily carry fine grounds to the bottom and clog the filter paper, ultimately causing over-extraction due to prolonged extraction time.

To reduce the impact of these unfamiliar operations on brewing, much like training wheels on a bicycle, many small brewing aids have emerged in recent years, making them very friendly to novice players. Today, FrontStreet Coffee has acquired another pour-over gadget. According to sources, this peculiar-looking device below can change the injected water flow, making extraction more uniform. But what are its actual effects?

The Shower Drip Filter

This peculiar-looking device is called a "shower drip filter." As shown in the picture, its appearance resembles a shower head with multiple water-permeable holes. During brewing, you simply pour hot water onto this "shower head," and the water will be automatically distributed and drip down in the gentlest manner possible!

The side of the shower connects to a steel handle that can be used or removed according to preference. If you don't want to hold the shower, you can detach the steel handle and attach it to a DIY mold, then place it on the filter cup for convenient brewing! For example, like this ↓

(Origami filter cup holder) Additionally, the shower comes with a transparent stirring stick. As its name suggests, it can be used for stirring during brewing. After all, when the water flow loses its impact force, the coffee grounds bed can no longer be churned by the water flow, significantly reducing extraction efficiency. At this point, we need external force to forcefully extract flavor compounds.

These are the accessories included with the shower and their uses~ Although it's very simple to use, there are still many details to pay attention to!

Important Considerations

1. Flow Rate

Other major manufacturers have also produced similar auxiliary devices, such as Hario, Timemore, etc. However, their hole counts vary, representing different water permeation speeds. More holes mean faster flow rate. This handheld shower has numerous holes - a total of 31!

This means its water permeation speed will be quite astonishing. When the injected water volume exceeds the drainage speed, the water level will rise. Without coarser grinding at this point, the entire filter cup will evolve from drip-style extraction to immersion-style extraction due to slow permeation. Although this won't cause over-extraction, it can easily make the coffee lack complexity. Therefore, we should use coarser grinding to increase permeation speed and reduce immersion time.

Through testing, FrontStreet Coffee found that fast drainage also has an advantage - it doesn't impose too many limitations on filter cup usage! When hot water is injected, it quickly permeates through the holes. Therefore, it only changes the impact force of the water flow, not fixing the water flow position. We can determine the water landing position through circular movements just like regular coffee brewing! Without this feature, it would be more suitable for use with cake filter cups!

2. Water Temperature

Since water passes through the shower before reaching the coffee grounds after leaving the kettle spout, this process will reduce the water temperature to some extent. Therefore, when using it, we need to increase the brewing temperature to compensate for the lost heat! At the same time, due to coarser grinding, some extraction efficiency is lost, so we also need to compensate through water temperature to some extent.

3. Injection Water Flow Intensity

Although we can use the shower to reduce the intensity of water flow injected into the coffee, we still need to control the water flow when injecting into the shower! Because if the injection's impact force is too high, the hot water will bounce out of the shower due to reaction force, ultimately landing outside the target or filter cup! (For example)

Brewing Guide

These are all the points to note, so now let's look at how to use this shower drip filter!

Brewing Example

For this brewing, FrontStreet Coffee used Ethiopia's Gudding Gudding, with 20g of coffee, a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, ground at Ek43 setting 10.5 (75% retention on #20 sieve), water temperature at 96°C, using an Origami filter cup. The brewing method was quite special - a five-stage process with stirring! The so-called five-stage process involves dividing the 300ml of hot water equally into five stages, with each stage being 60ml! Then stirring is added during the first stage bloom to allow water to better penetrate all coffee grounds! Alright, without further ado, let's start our brewing!

First, we pour the coffee grounds into the filter cup, and when the water temperature reaches the designated temperature, we can begin injection! Remember to press the timer button in advance, otherwise there won't be a free hand to press it later! Then we inject 60ml of hot water! After injection, take out the stirring stick to stir, allowing the coffee grounds to release carbon dioxide more quickly, so subsequent hot water will have better extraction conditions.

After the bloom time, we pick up the shower drip filter and place it above the coffee grounds bed, with the shower positioned roughly level with the filter cup rim! Then we inject 60ml of hot water in large circles (large circles within the shower ring), and after the water level drops, inject the third 60ml of hot water!

When the third stage of hot water is about to finish permeating, we inject the fourth and fifth stages of hot water in small circles, then wait for all the fifth stage hot water to permeate out, and the extraction is complete!

Results and Conclusion

The total brewing time was 2 minutes and 40 seconds. Although quite lengthy, the resulting taste was quite good! The tropical fruit flavors that Santa Veni should have, such as pineapple and citrus, were well expressed. Additionally, the extended extraction time gave the coffee more body, while the tea-like quality became more apparent, making it taste quite like pineapple-flavored green tea! The brewing method FrontStreet Coffee used above was the officially recommended Plan B. We don't have to stick strictly to this method - we can also incorporate the shower drip filter into regular brewing! For example, after completing the second hot water injection, if you notice potential clogging, you can use the shower drip filter to inject the third stage of hot water to reduce stirring and shorten the clogging time!

Overall, this shower has quite high playability, and interested friends can explore it themselves. Finally, a sudden question: the shower head for watering plants is called a "shower," so what should this shower head for watering coffee be called? - END -