Vietnamese Coffee – Not only a drink!

Vietnamese people don’t drink a coffee just because they need more energy to work or because they are thirsty and need something to drink!

NO!!!

In Vietnam, to Vietnamese people, it’s how they enjoy their life… Vietnamese coffee is not just only a drink but enjoying a coffee cup with a Vietnamese person is an ART.

Am I blowing up the issue here? Let’s start to see how we make the coffee first…

As you know, Vietnam is a tropical country where the temperature is mostly hot. Therefore, people have to grow the coffee’s trees on high-lands, such as Long Khanh, Buon Me Thuot, Dak Lak, Gia Lai…

This is how a coffee farm looks like

After months, you can see the coffee’s flowers (I guess many of you have never seen a coffee’s tree or flowers)

The coffee’s flowers are white and taste very sweet. When I came to my wife’s hometown in Gia Lai, I saw the coffee’s flowers for real. I was very curious, because I actually have never seen coffee’s trees before. I tried to taste a flower, it’s really sweet.

At the end of the growing cycle, you will have some beautiful things like this…

Isn’t it wonderful? I love to see the coffee’s trees in this period of time.

After all, the coffee will be sent to the factories for the industrial processes before selling to us.

If there’s the reason to differentiate Vietnamese coffee to others, it’s nothing special. But what makes the taste is how we mix everything to enjoy… In Europe or America, you put coffee into a machine or buy at StarBucks, drink it while you are driving or working at the office. We do this mix in another way. We don’t use any machine.

There’s tool, called “phin” in Vietnamese to make a cup of coffee. It looks like this

In these pictures, you can see how simple a “phin” is! It’s usually made by aluminum or steel and very cheap. You can buy a “phin” in every local market.

And one more thing to make the Vietnamese coffee different is, that we usually use a glass (no matter it big or small). We put the “phin” on top of the glass (cup), put the coffee in the “phin” with pressure by the filter, fill boiled water into the “phin”, close it and wait!

It takes sometimes until you can drink your coffee, because the boiled water has to go through the filter, to the pressed coffee layer and drop slowly down into your glass.

As a culture, Vietnamese people often gather together to drink coffee. We drink coffee almost every morning to start a new day. While the “phin” works, we chit-chatting, reading newspaper, smoke a cigarette or thinking about life or whatever.

The secret of Vietnamese coffee is the “phin”. The way it works make our coffee very dark, smell & taste very good. The professional Vietnamese coffee drinkers are very strict in choosing their coffee, making their coffee, the environment to drink a cup of coffee…

You can choose how you drink your coffee (1) with or without sugar (2) with or without milk (3) with or without ice. It often takes hours to finish a cup of coffee. We drink very slowly to feel every coffee-drop.

It would be never enough until you have an opportunity to enjoy one.

Coffee shops

Some people like drinking self-made coffee at home. Some others like drinking a coffee with friends in a coffee shop. There’re many kind of coffee shops in Vietnam. You can see coffee shops everywhere in the country.

The most popular coffee shop is the simplest one.

This is this kind of coffee shop, there’s no table, no comfortable chair, no air-conditioner, nothing but a plastic chair.

It’s simply like that. Or it can be simpler with no chairs, you can sit on the ground, or you can sit on your shoes, or on your motorbike, or whatever you can sit on…

The price of a cup coffee in these coffee shop is much cheaper than in the others. However, it doesn’t mean that this kind of coffee shop is only for poor people. It’s not the matter of money anymore, it’s the matter of culture and style. Actually, this is my favorite coffee shop, unless I need to meet up with a customers or serious people.

When I sit in this kind of coffee shop in the early morning to drink your first coffee of the day, think about what you are going to do… It’s just great…

Beside that, there’re many more coffee shop. I can’t count how many coffee shops we have in my city. There are well-equipped with air-conditioners, comfortable chairs, wi-fi connection, foods… And of course, they are designed in many styles…

traditional design with bamboos, woods…

outside with gardens, sunshine…

creative with the owner’s hobbies…

These are an overview of Vietnamese coffee. There’re many style, many ways to enjoy a coffee.

But this is how do enjoy our own…

It’s typical Vietnamese!!!