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How you take your coffee is a deeply personal affair, and Vietnamese-style coffee lovers know that nothing hits quite the same. If you’ve never tried it before, Vietnamese coffee is strongly brewed, rich, and accessibly sweet. It’s traditionally made using robusta beans, giving the brew pronounced nutty flavor notes and a higher caffeine content. The addition of sweetened condensed milk tempers that strong, bitter brew into a satiny, smooth sip. This widely popular iced condensed latte is called “Ca Phe Sua Da,” and the hot version is called “Ca Phe Sua Nong.” It’s a punchy brew through and through, intensely aromatic, well balanced, and full-bodied.
Happily for convenience-minded novice baristas, all it takes to brew Vietnamese-style coffee at home is a Nespresso pod and some condensed milk. Any sweetened condensed milk will get the job done, but Longevity Brand full cream condensed milk works especially well for making rich, flavorful Vietnamese-style coffee. We’re also loving Borden Magnolia condensed milk for myriad uses in the kitchen.
To make it, fill your cup with one to three tablespoons of condensed milk per eight-ounce serving. Then, pop that cup under your Nespresso machine, and brew the coffee over the condensed milk. The heat from the coffee will melt and meld the mixture together as it brews. Stir and serve hot, or add a few ice cubes and stir for a chilled coffee beverage.
Grab an Intenso Vertuo Nespresso pod and a can of sweetened condensed milk
Considering Vietnamese iced coffee is characterized by an intensely dark roast, Nespresso’s Intenso pods are the best fit for the job here. The official Nespresso website describes its deep, dense Intenso Vertuo coffee as featuring “brown sugar and intense roasted notes…[a] blend of Arabica thick with a rare Nicaraguan Robusta…[for] an intense long black with a distinctly lingering aftertaste and a thick coffee crema.” Those brown sugar tones complement the nuttiness of the robusta beans and the condensed milk’s round sweetness.
Traditional Vietnamese coffee uses dark roast coffee beans roasted with chicory. In one Reddit thread, Vietnamese-style coffee lovers brainstormed ideas for recreating their favorite drink with their Nespresso machine, and several foodies recommend adding a pinch of Cafe du Monde or Hieu Trang coffee into the mix to achieve that subtle hint of chicory. A few diehard fans even suggest that the appliance brand should collab with Cafe du Monde to release a Vietnamese-style Nespresso pod (not a bad idea).
Alternatively, if you’re short on prep time, you could skip the Nespresso machine altogether and opt for a packet of instant Vietnamese-style coffee (which totally exists and rules). NesCafé’s Café Viet brand makes a knockout milky Vietnamese instant coffee dry packet — just add water to these quasi-magical, somehow-creamy packets, no condensed milk necessary. These can also be served hot or iced.
