My brother brought me a gift from Vietnam: a Vietnamese style filter pot and some local Robusta beans. I followed the recipe from the bag:
- 20g coffee grounded super fine
- 10ml and 30s bloom
- 60ml of additional water (70ml with bloom water)
This yields a super concentrated 30ml cup. Not something I would drink black. The coffee flavor will come through in Vietnamese recipe involving salted cream and concentrated milk.
I pull out a phin philter now and again for fun. I never buy robusta beans, but I do still like the phin. Watching the coffee drip down into a glass cup where I can see it slowly mix with some form of cream is pleasant and relaxing.
Love Vietnamese coffee. I was particularly partial to the coconut coffee over there, which I think just trades some of the condensed milk for sweetened coconut milk? Delicious.
Vietnamese Phin Coffee – Brewing Instructions
Add 20 g of ground coffee to the phin (Vietnamese coffee filter).
Pour 10 ml of purified water at 96°C (205°F) into the filter, wetting the coffee grounds.
Wait 30 seconds for the coffee to bloom and absorb the water evenly.
Pour 60 ml of boiling water into the filter.
Allow the coffee to slowly drip for 7–8 minutes, producing approximately 20–30 ml of brewed coffee.
Oh yeah, vietnamese coffee is my favourite.
Yes please.
I’ve bought ground Vietnamese coffee and just used it with an Aeropress. With condensed milk, it’s like candy.
I do wonder what it is with the coffee, though - it tasted very chocolatey, not like I’m used to robusta tasting
Thank you for confirming that an aeropress works in lieu of the metal coffee filter! I know what my afternoon pick-me-up is gonna be…
It’s really nice, but as @KRAW writes above, it’s also bound to be different since the metal filter lets the oils through while the paper filter doesn’t.
The beans I have appear to be very oily on the surface. I am no sure why and I don’t know if this has any influence on taste.
Vietnam is influenced heavily by France. French roast is essentially a very dark roasting style. Dark roasts tend to be greasy due to the beans releasing their oils after heavy roasting.
So if anything, the coffee should be less oily?
I imagine it doesn’t matter much with my Aeropress, though, since paper filters tend to filter the oils away as well - but the traditional Vietnamese coffee filter is metal.
I’m not sure I follow what you mean by less oily. Dark roast beans are more likely to have oil on the surface. The oils are also generally something dark roast lovers try to retain in the brew, which is why a french press or a metal filter are good options for something like a french roast.
I think the oils add more body to the brew, which may affect how you perceive the flavor. This is also why people like light roasts through paper filters to achieve a more “clean” cup.
I was just thinking that if the oil was on the surface, more of it was likely to disappear for some reason, rather than if it’s on the inside of the bean. I don’t know if that makes sense, really, I doubt the oil would evaporate?
Oils generally don’t evaporate. You can change the type of filter to adjust the amount of oils in the cup. Paper filters remove much of the oil, metal filters allow oils to pass to the cup, and I think cotton filters are in a medium place.
No, I think oil evaporates/boils at very high temperatures (think of how deep-frying is done at 325+ degrees). I think the oil on the surface of the bean in facts makes an oilier cup, based on my anecdotal evidence. You could do an experiment with a greasy and non-greasy dark roast and see which roast produces an oilier/fuller brew.
the plot thickens! There are greasy and non-greasy dark roasts?
