Transcript
Hi, I’m Chris Cardone, I bartend at the Beatrice Inn in the West Village and I’m going to show you how to do a tin spin. It’s one of the most easy moves in flair bartending, but people have trouble with it because they just don’t understand the science of their palm and their thumb getting in the way. It’s a really simple move and it’s a really basic move, but it’s something that’s important because it keeps consistency and smoothness throughout the entire sequence of moves that you’re doing behind the bar.
So the very easy concept behind a tin spin is the same thing you do with your remote when you’re watching TV and you’re kind of bored and you spin it in your hand. The concept is you take your hand, you twist it inverted to kind of like almost release it like a Frisbee, and when you bring your hand in you’re going to snap your wrist back out. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to open your hand.
Now, the problem is everybody that tries to do this when they first learn is they end up stopping it halfway, and that’s called a half spin. What we want to do is a full spin. The difference is not letting your thumb block the tin as it spins. It’s also a matter of keeping it on the ball of your palm. So you’re going to take your tin, you’re going to turn it inside, you’re going to spin it all the way around, and you’re going to open your hand as wide as you can so that upon the spin it’s not hitting your thumb and stopping to where you grab it. And it’s also rolling on the ball of your palm versus your fingertips or the bottom of your palm, so it sits right on the ball of your palm. You turn it in, you spin it around, and you catch it.
You could also do this with more rotation and get a larger spin as well. So instead of just doing 360, it now becomes a 720 spin. A little bit harder to maintain it, but it’s still the concept. I do constant tin spinning while I’m working so I can reset my tins, so maybe I take it off the bar and I just start with a half spin. Maybe I spin it all the way as I’m talking to a guest to put it back down as I’m working. But the tin spin, one of the most easy moves to learn as a flair bartender. Just watch out for that thumb and give it a nice spin. Tin spin.
