Ole Blue eyes may have dedicated his song to Brazil, but a recent visit to Vietnam opened my eyes to a vibrant coffee culture in the land that has become the 2nd largest coffee exporter in the world.
In the thronging cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, it seems as if there is a coffee shop to be found every 20 metres on every street. Large chain outlets, such as Highlands Coffee, or the ubiquitous international Starbucks, appear regularly, offering their over-priced and exotic variations and mixes, related to coffee. But, it is the thousands of smaller, independent coffee outlets that declare themselves everywhere, inviting locals to take a load off, even if it is enjoyed in squatting on tiny plastic kiddie chairs on the pavements, while you chill and sip the local brews.
Unlike the usual Arabica bean found in the coffees drunk in many parts of the world, Vietnamese beans are of the Robusta strain. Robusta beans contain 2.7% caffeine, while the Arabica beans score a lower 1.5%. This is a coffee that is strong and dark-roasted, and explains the more bitter flavour of the former. On the world market, these beans sell at half the price of the Arabicas. Arabica beans contain 60% more lipids and almost twice the concentration of sugar, hence their greater popularity around the globe. However, the Robusta crop has a much higher yield, it is much easier to farm and grow, and its high caffeine content makes it more resistant to bugs and other threats to a crop. It is also often used as a filler in blends, to reduce the overall costs of the final product.
The Vietnamese drink coffee. They drink coffee. They drink an awful lot of coffee. Perhaps, this is one useful explanation for their productive work ethic. Vietnamese people work hard. They may be so wired on the caffeine lifts that they don’t realise they are working so hard! Hugely popular is their iced coffee concoction. Ca phe sua da requires no rocket-science barista, with a Star Wars machine. Instead, a compact metal filter (a ‘phin’, sold for a dollar at any street market) sits snugly over the rim of a glass. Hot water is poured over the grounds in the phin, and the coffee drips into the glass. This is lined with a shallow layer of canned, sweet condensed-milk (not much fresh dairy produce in Vietnam). You stir the brew, then pour it into a second glass containing ice cubes, stir again as the contents cool and chill, and you’re left with a delicious, non-bitter iced-coffee, refreshing and invigorating in the warm climate.
Without the milk or ice, one has a much less popular coffee noir brew, but few locals wish to wait the 4 or 5 minutes while the coffee drips, leaving the customer with a tepid drink.
Vietnamese ingenuity has also led to the creation of other, less orthodox, forms of coffee imbibing. In Hanoi, ca phe trung, egg coffee was invented decades back. A chicken egg yolk (ducks are legion in Vietnam, but a chicken egg is superior in taste) is whipped onto the coffee mix (with possible additions of condensed milk, butter and even cheese), and one can drink/eat with a spoon, either hot or cold. The hot version sits with the cup in a small dish of hot water, to keep the temperature up, and you choose how much you wish to stir and mix the whipped yolk into the liquid coffee. It’s like eating a sweet dessert, and certainly a different experience for an amateur, used only to drinking his coffee!
In addition, because there is a huge coconut yield in the country, there are many offerings of coconut coffees to drink, and the coffee bean stands at the markets are packed with a huge array of different blends of other fascinating additions to the Robusta bean.
Probably the most expensive ($3.00 a cup?) coffee drink in Vietnam is ca phe chom, made exclusively from the beans ingested by civets, after they have been extracted from the droppings of the animals. Discerning diners that these beasts are, they select and eat only the most flavoursome of the national coffee beans, so that those that pass through the animal’s anus are the best tasting.
Who said coffee aficionados aren’t weird?
You can’t visit Vietnam and not discover the most stimulating coffee culture, anywhere.
drphil