How to Prepare Your CoffeeVietnamese Yoghurt Coffee
What you need
Ingredients run from the top of the cup to the bottom; the last item is the bottom layer. Values are normalized to a true 100% stack.
- Grind
- Medium-fine
- Water temperature
- Hot coffee, cold yoghurt, over crushed ice
- Total time
- 6 min
Sữa chua cà phê is a phin coffee built on a glass of yoghurt: condensed milk and ice go in first, a tub of yoghurt on top, and a short, strong drip of coffee poured over the lot and stirred just before drinking. The tart yoghurt, sweet milk and bitter coffee come together into a thick, cold drink somewhere between iced coffee and dessert. It is closely tied to Hà Nội, where Cà Phê Duy Trí, a family café on Yên Phụ street since 1936, made it a speciality by freezing the yoghurt first so the coffee filters through it, and it is now made in cafés across Vietnam.
Steps
Bloom the coffee in the phin, then brew a short shot
A splash of about 10 ml of hot water is left for two to three minutes so the grounds swell and settle. The remaining 20 ml then drips through evenly. Only around 30 ml of water is used in total, so the coffee comes out strong enough to stand up to a whole tub of yoghurt.
Condensed milk first, then crushed ice
The heavy condensed milk sits at the bottom of the glass, and packing crushed ice on top of it gives the yoghurt something to rest on, so the glass builds in layers instead of mixing straight away.
Spoon the yoghurt over the ice
The yoghurt goes on top of the ice, cold and thick. The tub is roughly ten times the weight of the coffee, which makes yoghurt the body of the drink and coffee the accent.
Pour the coffee over and stir before drinking
The hot coffee runs down through the yoghurt and ice, and stirring brings the sweet milk up from the bottom. It is served layered, but drunk as one tart, sweet and bitter mix.
Cup ready
Time to enjoy your Vietnamese Yoghurt Coffee
Brewed the way they do it in Vietnam. What next?
Tips
- Freeze the yoghurt for a thicker drink — at Cà Phê Duy Trí the yoghurt is frozen beforehand and the coffee is filtered over it, which gives a texture closer to a dessert than a drink.
- Use Vietnamese-style set yoghurt — the recipes call for a tub of the sweetened yoghurt sold in Vietnam, so if yours is plain, add a little more condensed milk.
Common mistakes
- Brewing a full cup of coffee — with this much yoghurt, a long, weak brew disappears; the phin should give only a short, concentrated shot.
- Drinking it unstirred — the condensed milk sits at the bottom, so the first sips taste sour and the last ones taste cloying.
FAQ
Where does yoghurt coffee come from?
It is most closely tied to Hà Nội. One account credits Phạm Duy Trí of Cà Phê Duy Trí, a family café on Yên Phụ street since 1936, with creating it in 2012, but that date rests on a single source. The café's owner has said its version is thicker than at any other café in the city, so by then it was clearly not the only place serving it. Today barista schools and coffee producers elsewhere in Vietnam publish their own recipes for it.
The Atlas
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