You Don't Have To Go To Vietnam To Try the Coffee

Location: Vietnam and Cambodia

Storyteller: American businessman

Plot: Businessman goes to Southeast Asia and decides to travel to his next destination over the roads rather than in the air. On the way, among other adventures, he gets attacked by a chicken and is abandoned at one point on a dirt road. To keep alert for any dangers, he drinks lots of Vietnamese coffee and gets hooked.

T. Hampton Dohrman provides great background on Vietnamese coffee. He says that the French brought the coffee tradition to Vietnam, a heavy tea-drinking culture, when they attempted colonizing the area. The most popular way to drink coffee there is to drip brew it slowly through a cup-topped filter - called a Phin - after sweetened condensed milk has been first poured into the cup. The other way to prepare it is to pour the brewed coffee over ice. Either way it is sweet and strong.

If you want to prepare your own Vietnamese coffee, Dohrman recommends a French roast, coarsely ground. Or you could order it at your favorite Vietnamese restaurant. Better yet, you could order the Vietnamese brewer from ROASTe, paired with one of our Vietnamese coffees, or in one of our kits.

The condensed milk? You’ll have to pick that up at your local grocery store.

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