Chubby Bunny

Vietnamese-Style Coffee

After a determined hunt at Kam Man, a supermarket on Canal Street, I found where they keep the coffee makers. Percolators, French presses? No, not for me. I made a micro splurge– a little less than four bucks got me a Vietnamese Coffee filter.

I’ve recently become a little obsessed with Vietnamese style coffee since I started buying iced coffee again in Chinatown. There’s a little, family-owned bakery on Mulberry street that I frequent the most out of any bakery, because it’s got the homestyle feel to things. It’s a Mom and Pop type store and retains not only traditional family values (it’s reflected by the way the place runs, in my opinion) but also traditional Chinese bakery goods.

Enough reflection. Time to hit the lab.

Hardware: 1 Vietnamese coffee filter, glass that is heat tempered (eg. will not shatter if you pour hot water into it!), spoon.

Software: ~2 spoonfuls of coffee grounds (either pre-ground or grind your own,) hot water (less around 200° F) and condensed milk.

(I’ve heard that these filters are available online, but if you can find them in a well-stocked supermarket, it’s probably going to cost less.) Why use it? It’s easy to clean, easy to use, makes one serving and takes up hardly any space. It requires no paper filter, so if you’re trying to make efforts in going green, this helps a bit.

Procedure:

• Boil water. Seriously.
• In the meantime, wash the coffee filter and remove excess water. Remove the lid of the coffee fliter and unscrew the inner filter.

• Add some condensed milk (depends on your taste; you can always add more later) into the empty glass.
• Add two spoons (roughly a tablespoon or so each) into the center. Then, pretend you’re making espresso with the fancy machine and replace the inner filter that you just removed. The purpose is to pack things down a bit. If it doesn’t catch the threads of the screw in the center, reduce the amount of coffee grounds inside. Screw it on and tighten a bit.
• Tighten: the purpose is to create a disk-like layer of coffee grounds. Remember liquid chromatography and packing the column back in orgo lab? Same idea; packed grounds means it takes longer for water to pass through. This results in a stronger tasting coffee. Looser grounds will yield a lighter flavor coffee.

• Litmus test: place the filter over your glass and pour hot water (eg. the water you boiled and let cool for a bit) into it. If it runs out too quickly, you probably need to tighten things more; if it takes forever, loosen it a bit.

• Let it drip. Stir. Be happy. Add ice for iced coffee.
• Save coffee grounds for repelling ants. (Yes, this really works; I’ve evicted an anthill with this method.)