What are the characteristics of pour-over coffee brewing methods? Detailed explanation of Rao spin pouring technique! What is the filter cup extraction control technique?

It is well known that the pour-over coffee brewing process is highly visually appealing, as most pouring techniques combine both gentleness and force. Baristas use elegant movements while pouring powerful water streams for extraction. During this process, there's a striking contrast between the human motions and the impacted coffee bed, making it exceptionally观赏性.

However, among the countless pouring methods, some may not be as elegant as described above! For example, the "Rao Spin" we're sharing today is a brewing technique that appears rather rough!

What is Rao Spin?

Rao Spin is a brewing method shared by a coffee master named Rao, whose full name is Scott Rao. "Spin" refers to rotation or shaking! Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee prefers to call it the "Rao Shaking Method." You might not be familiar with Mr. Scott Rao, but his coffee books are quite famous! Works like "The Craft of Coffee Roasting," "The Professional Barista's Handbook," and "Everything But Espresso" are all written by him. With his multiple roles, he's often jokingly criticized: "A barista who can't write books isn't a good roaster."

Returning to the brewing method itself! Rao Spin is based on the single-pour technique, incorporating human factors like stirring and shaking. Due to the seemingly unrefined movements during preparation, it lacks much of the visual appeal compared to conventional brewing methods. However, its widespread传播 is evident, as flavor prioritization makes these unconventional drawbacks negligible. Another point worth understanding is that Mr. Scott Rao didn't invent this brewing method; he merely shared it online (he explicitly stated this in his blog). The actual inventor remains unknown, so people named it after the person who传播d and shared it—Scott Rao. This is similar to how Arabic numerals weren't invented by Arabs, and Arabica's origin isn't in Arabia.

The Rao Spin method allows people to more easily obtain a delicious cup of pour-over coffee, because behind this seemingly "frivolous" brewing technique lies a rigorous extraction logic. For beginners, this will be a very enjoyable brewing method! Next, FrontStreet Coffee will share how to operate this Rao Shaking Method!

Brewing Demonstration

Since Mr. Rao didn't specify coffee grind size or water temperature in his YouTube videos, we can understand that he uses default parameters! FrontStreet Coffee's tasting after extraction also confirmed this view. Therefore, we can directly apply the original parameters. For this brewing, FrontStreet Coffee used Catuai from Elida Estate. While we can't afford the tens of thousands of Geisha, we can still enjoy Catuai from the same estate!

Extraction parameters are as follows: Coffee amount: 20g. Water ratio: 1:15 (20g coffee, 300ml hot water). Grind setting: Ek43 setting 10, with 80% passing through a #20 sieve, fine sugar texture. Brewing water temperature: 92°C. Brewing method: Rao Spin. Dripper used: Resin V60. Regarding the dripper, it's best to use a resin dripper (preferably a size 02). Why? Because it conducts heat slowly, so when we handle it later, we won't get easily burned!

First, we pour water three times the amount of coffee into the dripper for a 45-second bloom! Because during blooming, we need to add stirring! The specific method is to gently stir the coffee grounds with a spoon, allowing the coffee grounds at the bottom to receive even extraction.

After time's up, we pour all remaining hot water in a circular motion at once until reaching the target of 300ml!

As you can see, because the pouring rate exceeds the drainage rate, the water level quickly rises.

Then we bring out the small spoon again to scrape down the coffee grounds on the dripper walls. (Just go around the circumference once)

When the liquid level drops to two-thirds, it's time for the main event! We pick up the dripper and shake it! 2-3 rotations are sufficient.

At 2 minutes and 20 seconds, all the coffee has finished dripping! As you can see, the coffee bed is very flat with no clogging现象.

Tasting and Analysis

Next is tasting time! This cup of Elida Catuai has very full flavors overall! The high sweetness of peach, the juiciness of orange, and the cleanliness of green tea are all well expressed, with no negative extraction flavors. Why? Because this is the combined effect of stirring and shaking, which make the extraction more uniform. Water has inertia, and during blooming and the final drainage stage, it tends to accumulate in areas with easy flow due to uneven coffee ground distribution, forming channeling effects. Therefore, stirring to break up the surface coffee grounds during blooming, and shaking to level the coffee grounds during final drainage are both actions that allow hot water to extract evenly. Coffee can thus achieve an appropriate extraction rate and concentration. However, this also places higher demands on the grinder! Because the force provided by human disturbance is greater than water flow, this gives fine particles more opportunities to reach the bottom. When your grinder quality is poor, resulting in excessive fine particles, this brewing method will very easily cause clogging and更容易产生过萃的现象.

Therefore, when your grinder quality is not high, it's best to avoid clogging by using coarser grinding or sieving out fine particles. This applies not only to Rao Spin but to other brewing methods as well.

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