Vietnamese Coffee

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Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. ~ Turkish Proverb It is cold and rainy today. I did not sleep too well last night and as such it's a great time for coffee to keep me awake. Suanne made me Vietnamese Coffee which is also known as Cafe Sua Nong. Vietnamese Coffee is normally served in ice but I like it warm on a cold day like today.

Vietnames coffee can be made simply by mixing black coffee with a lot of condensed milk. It is traditionally made by brewing the coffee with a small drip percolator into a cup containing condensed milk. We bought the percolator some time back from the T&T Supermarket. We can't recall exactly how much it costs but it's pretty cheap ... something like $5 or so.

We use whole coffee beans and like to grind it just before we use it to ensure freshness. Coffee once ground deteriorates fast. Ignore the Folgers can on the picture below ... we just used the can to store our coffee beans.

This is how we made our Vietnamese Coffee:

Normally, Vietnamese uses a lot more condensed milk (from 1/4 cup to half a cup!). That is too much for me. Suanne used two tablespoon instead.

Suanne placed the perculator on the glass and the fine ground coffee in it. She then packs it in slightly and screws on the metal lid to compress the coffee further. This will give the coffee the thick tar-like drips.

Suanne then pours hot, boiling water and set it aside.

The tighter the metal lid is screwed the slower the drip goes resulting in thick drips. It takes quite a while for the coffee to drip through.

This is how it looks like. We normally fills the perculator after the first round drips through ... two rounds of drip will fill the glass we use.

So, here it is ... a cup of warm, black, strong and sweet coffee. Just what I needed for this blog. Enjoy!