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Iced · Easy · 8 minutes

Cà phê đen đá

Vietnamese black iced coffee
Cà phê đen đá is coffee, water and ice, nothing else. There is no milk to round off the edges, so everything you do shows up in the glass: the grind, the water temperature, how hard you pressed the filter plate. Get it right and robusta gives you something dark and almost chocolatey, with a bitterness that tastes like depth rather than a mistake.
  • 25 g
    Coffee
  • 100 ml
    Water
  • 4:30
    Drip
Next time, this recipe opens like this.

Ingredients

  • Vietnamese ground coffee
    A dark-roast robusta, or a blend of robusta and arabica. Ground for a phin: a little coarser than for espresso.
    25 g
  • Hot water
    Just off the boil, around 92 to 96 °C. Boiling water scorches robusta and makes the coffee bitter.
    100 ml
  • Cane sugar (optional)
    Optional. Stir it into the hot coffee, or it will not dissolve and will sit at the bottom.
    8 g
  • Ice cubes
    Fill the glass generously. Vietnamese iced coffee is served properly cold.
    8

Equipment

Steps

  • Add the coffee

    25 g
    Put the ground coffee into the phin and give it a gentle shake so it sits level. You use a little more coffee than in the milk recipes. There is no milk here to hide anything.
    Tip
    Grind a touch coarser than for espresso. If the grind is too fine, the water will not get through.

  • Place the filter plate

    Lay the filter plate on the coffee and press down lightly. Press evenly. Press harder on one side and the water finds the looser side and rushes through there.

  • Wet the grounds

    25 ml
    Pour just enough hot water to cover the coffee. Use water just off the boil, not boiling. Robusta scorches easily, and in black coffee you taste it straight away.

  • Let it bloom

    ± 30 s
    Wait while the coffee swells and releases its gas. Skip this and the water runs through the dry patches instead of soaking all of the coffee.

  • Fill the phin

    75 ml
    Top up with the rest of the hot water and put the lid on. The lid keeps the heat in, so the coffee brews evenly from the first drop to the last.

  • Let it drip

    ± 5 min
    Now wait. A well-packed phin drips steadily, about one drop a second. Four to five minutes is right. Much faster and the coffee tastes thin. Much slower and it turns harsh.

  • Sweeten it if you like

    8 g
    Want it sweet? Stir the sugar in now, while the coffee is still hot. Plenty of people drink this black. If you do too, skip this step.

  • Pour over ice

    8 cubes
    Fill a glass with ice and pour the coffee over it. Use more ice than you think you need. Half a glass of ice melts fast, and then you are drinking coffee-flavoured water.

Flavour

Background

Where it comes from

Đen đá is what many people in Vietnam drink every day, especially in the north, where coffee is drunk with less sugar than in the south. It is also the cheapest thing on the menu at a pavement café: a glass, a phin, a small jug of iced tea beside it, and you can sit for as long as you like.
Every café, family and region in Vietnam makes coffee a little differently. Treat these amounts as a good starting point, not a rule.
These amounts are new, and we are still fine-tuning them.

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