Vietnamese coffee
Iced with condensed milk: cà phê sữa đá
Vietnamese coffee usually means strong, dark-roasted coffee dripped slowly through a phin — a small metal filter that sits on top of the cup — then mixed with sweetened condensed milk. Over ice it is cà phê sữa đá; black, it is cà phê đen.
Source: An Unfiltered History of Vietnamese Coffee, Barista Magazine
At a glance
- Brewer
- Phin, a small metal drip filter
- Coffee
- Mostly robusta, usually dark-roasted
- Sweetener
- Sweetened condensed milk
- To order
- cà phê đen (black), cà phê sữa (with milk), đá (iced)
What coffee is used?
Mostly robusta, because that is most of what Vietnam grows. Daily Coffee News, reporting the US Department of Agriculture’s forecast, puts the country’s 2026/27 harvest at 32.5 million 60-kilogram bags, 31.4 million of them robusta and 1.1 million arabica.
Source: Vietnam Coffee Report: Production Rising for Third Straight Year, Daily Coffee News (2026)
The traditional cup is dark-roasted, sometimes with chicory or corn in the blend, and condensed milk offsets its dark, smoky flavour.
Source: An Unfiltered History of Vietnamese Coffee, Barista Magazine
How did coffee reach Vietnam?
Under French colonial rule in the 19th century. Barista Magazine’s history starts with a French priest who brought an arabica tree to Vietnam in 1857. Condensed milk is usually explained by fresh milk being hard to find, and to keep, when coffee arrived — a reasonable account, though not one we could trace to a primary source.
Source: An Unfiltered History of Vietnamese Coffee, Barista Magazine
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