Vietnam's iced coffee: dark-roasted Robusta dripped slowly through a small metal phin onto sweetened condensed milk, stirred, and poured over ice
Origin: Buôn Ma Thuột & the Central Highlands, Vietnam
From the journey of Coffee.
Cà phê sữa đá means simply coffee, milk, ice, and it is the everyday coffee of Vietnam. Dark-roasted Robusta is brewed a cup at a time in a phin, a small perforated metal filter that sits on top of the glass, and it drips slowly, over four or five minutes, onto a layer of sweetened condensed milk. The two are stirred together and poured over ice. The result is thick, strong, bitter, and very sweet at once, and it is drunk everywhere from pavement stalls with low plastic stools to office desks. Both of its defining ingredients are colonial improvisations. The phin descends from the French drip filter, and the condensed milk was a matter of necessity: fresh milk was scarce in the tropical colony and spoiled quickly, so the French and the Vietnamese alike took their coffee with tinned milk instead. The bean came later. The French first planted Arabica in the north in 1857, but coffee leaf rust appeared on the plantations in 1890, and in 1908 they brought in Coffea canephora, Robusta, which resisted it. For decades it stayed a minor crop, only a few hundred hectares in 1930. Then, after the Đổi Mới reforms of 1986 opened the economy, Robusta plantings spread across the red basalt soils of the Central Highlands at an extraordinary rate, and Vietnam became the second-largest coffee producer in the world, almost all of it Robusta. It is the strength and bitterness of Robusta that stands up to a spoonful of condensed milk and a glass of melting ice. The capital of that coffee country is Buôn Ma Thuột, in Đắk Lắk province, which grows around three-tenths of Vietnam's coffee. Trung Nguyên, now the best-known Vietnamese coffee company, was founded there in 1996, and the city holds a coffee festival that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Without the condensed milk the same drink is cà phê đen đá, black iced coffee, sweetened with sugar if you like. Served hot, without ice, the milk coffee is cà phê sữa nóng. Vietnamese Robusta is sold ready-ground for the phin in Asian groceries. A dark roast suits the drink best. A phin is inexpensive and sold in several sizes. Match the size to the glass.
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