Cà phê sữa đá — Print Recipe

A bold and intensely sweet Vietnamese iced coffee brewed using a traditional phin filter that drips slowly over a layer of sweetened condensed milk, then poured over ice for a rich, creamy, and refreshing caffeinated drink.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons Vietnamese ground coffee (dark roast, coarsely ground)
2 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk
Hot water just off the boil
Ice cubes

Instructions

1 Place two tablespoons of sweetened condensed milk in the bottom of a heatproof glass.
2 Set the Vietnamese phin filter on top of the glass, add the ground coffee, and gently press the internal filter screen down.
3 Pour a small amount of hot water to bloom the grounds for twenty seconds, then fill the phin filter to the top with hot water.
4 Wait four to five minutes for the coffee to drip completely through the filter into the condensed milk below.
5 Remove the phin filter, stir the coffee and condensed milk together thoroughly until the mixture is a uniform caramel color.
6 Pour the sweetened coffee over a tall glass filled with ice and serve immediately.

Did You Know?

Vietnam is the world's second-largest coffee producer after Brazil, and the phin filter was invented because the French colonizers brought coffee culture but the Vietnamese adapted it to local tastes, swapping fresh milk for the more shelf-stable condensed milk.