How to make coffee cups with Vietnamese style?
Vietnamese coffee is a traditional coffee drink brewed by filter (Vietnamese ‘phin’). The coffee is more and more popular across the world and become favorable by people loving intense and concentrated coffee. Vietnamese people usually drink coffee in small coffee cups, not in a mug like foreign countries (mug usually used to drink instant coffee). The dark cup of coffee with cold ices and little condensed milk is perfect for starting a new day.
Making Vietnamese-styled coffee cups is not too complicated. The equipment is also very simple. However, to have a perfect cup of Vietnamese coffee, you should know some tips. Here are the detailed instructions to brew a great-flavored cup of coffee.
Step 1: Preparing ground coffee powder
Vietnamese people do not directly roast and grind coffee beans at home. They buy coffee ground from local coffee producers. Moreover, the secret of having amazing coffee cups is choosing and blending coffee. You need to find the pure coffee with no other additives, so that your coffee can have purest and smoothest flavor. Blending coffee is the way you combine several types of coffee ground to create the best taste. Each type of coffee has different flavor. Even the same type of coffee but grown in different places can have different flavors. That is why you should blend plenty of coffee to take the advance of the best features of each type with the suitable ratio. For example, most of coffee used to make Vietnamese coffee is Robusta, but people usually add some more Arabica to increase the aroma for drink.
Ground coffee powder to make Vietnamese coffee cups has larger particle sizes (at around 0.7mm).
Step 2: Preparing the equipment and other materials
To make Vietnamese coffee cups, you just need a Vietnamese filter or dripper (made by aluminum), a small cup (made of ceramic or glass), boiled pure water, ice and condensed milk (if you prefer iced milk coffee). The filter and the cup need to be cleaned by hot water.
This is a Vietnam phin filter or dripper looks like. And you can buy it from Amazon at an ease.
Step 3: Brewing coffee
If you want to drink milk coffee, you pour condensed milk into the cup first before brewing coffee with hot water. This will help you brew best coffee cups of ice blended with milk.
#1. Put 20 gram of coffee ground into the filter, lightly shake to make coffee flat on surface. Screw coffee ground by a cover. Make sure that the ground has to be highly compressed.
#2. Pour a small amount of hot water (at around 95oC or 203oF) into the filter. This amount should be 10ml, aiming to steam the coffee ground to make it absorb water easier. Cover the lid to prevent heat from coming out. Leave it in 30s to 1 minute.
#3. After 1 minute, continue to pour about 80ml of hot water into filter and let water drop into the cup. Cover the lid and wait for about 5 to 10 minutes.
#4. When the last water drop falls into the cup, take of the filter, stir the coffee to condensed milk, and add ice and now you can enjoy a great cup of traditional Vietnamese coffee.
Make Vietnamese-styled coffee cups at easy steps.
Note:
- The amount of coffee ground, water and condensed milk can be changeable, depending on your own taste.
- If you do not drink iced milk coffee but still want some sweetness into coffee, you should add sugar.
- The coffee ground that was used to brew coffee the first time can be used to brew another cup. Of course, this time coffee taste will be lighter, but it is still very good.
To sum up, brewing Vietnamese styled coffee cups is not complicated although it looks a little bit manual and hand-made. Unlike automatic coffee machines which offer you coffee cups of consistent quality, coffee brewed from Vietnamese dripper will offer you a feeling of hand-made coffee or DIY coffee. It is not just coffee, it is an artwork made by yourselves.
