Well, we want some caffeine to balance out our sugar and fat high!
Johnny, you mentioned using sweetened condensed milk (for Vietnamese coffee) - I never thought about that - my milk and sugar in the same batch. I’ll have to try it.
I make coffee that way all the time. It’s great on a hot summer afternoon. I’ve never seen a Vietnamese coffee maker. I do mine Italian style, with the little stove-top brewer, which is usually called a mocha. It does make a strong cup of coffee, but in a big glass with sweetened condensed milk and ice cubes, it’s like a dessert. Yum yum!!
Here is a picture of a Vietnamese coffee maker. The cup it is sitting on will give you some idea of the scale; but as I said, the “pot” part is about the size of an espresso cup.
(Doncha hate it when people say “expresso”? There’s actually a mini-van called the Expresso. Sheesh!)
Tedster, Johnny L.A.,
You reminded me of the coffee we’d get from the field kitchens when I was in the Army. It was always a luxury to trudge through the trailer for cold ham and eggs and hot coffee, rather than to open an MRE. I had KP one day, and got the inside scoop on the method:
Take your 5 gallon water can and dump most (about 4 gallons) into a pot. Bring it to a boil.
Dump in one pound of coffee.
Boil the coffee until it’s foamy and good-smellin’.
Take it off the burner and pour in the last gallon of water. Pour it in a circular motion, because the cold water is what makes the grounds sink.
Now pour the coffee off into a serving thermos, leaving the grounds behind.
You connoissers may not like the idea of boiling the coffee, but trust me, it’s good, especially in contrast with cold ham and eggs. 
Tedster said:
Ok, I don’t think you are snooty. But I’m interested in that comment. Could you (or anybody else for that matter) take the time to educate me as to the main differences between coffee in the U.S. and non-U.S. coffee?
Is it the beans? The strength? The preparation method? What?
Seriously, I just want to learn.
Teach me so that non-Americans don’t joke about my coffee.
Thanks,
Krispy Original
Coffee comes in a couple different varieties… “Arabica” and “Robusta” are the two that I’m aware of.
Before the various World Wars, people bought their coffee in bean form and ground it themselves at home, making for a fresh product. Military needs translated to convenience in ground, canned coffee. Price increases over the years resulted in cheaper beans and fillers. (Gotta keep those prices down, after all.)
Robusta beans have a high caffeine content, and is a little cheaper, it makes up the bulk of the American coffee blenders product.
Arabica beans have a much better flavor, in my opinion, sort of an exotic, winey flavor.
Now, it might not be just the type of coffee alone, but what you do to it before you drink it. Grinding it up and putting it in a can just about kills it.
There’s also the whole roasting aspect, which makes a big difference. Of course quality beans and careful roasting costs more. Starbucks and similar chains have made a mint exploiting the fact that good coffee was harder to find in the U.S.A…
If you can find a fresh costa rican, or can afford a genuine Jamaican Blue Mountain, … Hmm…
A couple euro blends (Jacobs, Melita, etc) are pure ambrosia too… Hope this helps.
Okay, almost forgot–
“Regular” grind or drip coffee, any of the major U.S. brands… will be outrageously bitter and nastified if you use the amounts typical of the better beans/blends. In other words, you can and probably should, make the coffee a lot stronger if you use arabica bean coffee.
If your tap water is nasty, it won’t improve in the coffee either.
I’m sure the coffee itself is more important than what kind of coffee pot is used, for the most part.
Thanks. The point seems to be that non-Americans would joke about my coffee because I use pre-ground, subpar beans.
Guilty as charged.
Goodbye Folgers…so long Maxwell House
I resolve to raise the standards of my coffee making!
I have a stovetop percolator of sorts that I use every day. I think. Im not sure because it differs from what has been described.
There is a water reservior at the bottom, a tube from the bottom of the reservoir to a chamber in the middle where the coffee sits. Above that is a strainer and a tube that leads to the top of the chamber where the finished coffee goes. Everything is heavy aluminum.
It goes on the burner. When the water is hot enough, the vapor pressure in the bottom chamber rises and forces the water up through the coffee grounds and then on up into the top chamber. It goes through the coffee exactly once. It gurgles loudly when the last bit of water is sucked up through the works.
I like it because it is quick (just a couple minutes if you start with warm water) and makes decent coffee 2 cups at a time. I find it difficult to make just one or two cups of (decent) coffee in a drip coffee maker.
The big drawback is that unlike a drip machine, you have to sit and watch it or at least be listening for it to finish. A couple times I got distracted by something and forgot. I nearly burned out the bottom of the reservoir, and had to run it several times after that to get the burned rubber scent (from nearly melted gaskets) from the pot.
No reason this couldn’t be used on a camp stove or camp fire.
My gramma used to make “cowboy coffee” when she’d come and visit. She’d boil some water and ground coffee in a cast iron skillet, then throw in a dash of cold water and some eggshells to settle the grounds. I’m convinced that stuff would grant wakefulness to the long dead if you could just get 'em to swallow some of that stuff. Gramma was so tough that she drank it black.
Mom and dad used to perk their coffee, but succumbed to the Mr. Coffee conspiracy in the mid-1970s. I myself never drank coffee voluntarily until I was in my late 20s, when my shop bought a Bunn coffeemaker. Sure, it’s a dripolator, but it made good coffee.
The first coffeemaker I purchased for myself was an old 1950s-era Sunbeam siphon brewer. It makes good coffee from crappy-out-of-a-can American coffee, and makes great coffee from the grind-it-yourself stuff I get at the store. It’s hard to clean, but it brews fast and consistently.
~~Baloo
BunnyGirl, reporting back.
An experiment was performed today in the kitchen of one Mr.and Mrs. Bunny. This test, designed to prove the efficacy of sweetened condensed milk as an acceptable substitute for cream and sugar, was held at approximately 0615 EST this morning.
Due to the uncontrolled nature of the cofee production, tests results vary. Because of the small amount of coffee actually produced (estimated at about 8 oz.), grounds of the coffee overflowed the filter and entered the receptacle. It is possible that these grounds may have tainted the taste test. Following is a description of the test:
- Coffee was produced in a drip maker. 1-1/2 tablespoons of coffee was added to the filter, with 8 oz of water placed in the water receptacle.
- The resulting coffee was very strong and had lots of grounds in suspension.
- 1-2 teaspoons of generic sweetened condensed milk was added to a 6 oz cup.
- Coffee was poured into the cup.
- The product was stirred well.
- The taste was very sweet, but because the coffee was very strong and had a distinctly crunchy flavor, it was not as “creamy” as the test subject desired.
- This test will be repeated tomorrow and as needed since the test subject has a whole can of milk to now use up.
On that note, it was good but I just made the coffee to frickin’ strong.
BunnyGirl: You can get a Vietnamese coffee maker at the link I supplied above for about $4. There are instructions there too. If I’m in a hurry, I sometimes just make espresso and add that to the sweetened condensed milk. It’s good that way, but the taste is different from the VCM method.
If you don’t want to get the VCM online, you can go down to your local “Little Saigon” area and get one for about the same price at a market. Or you could go to a Vietnamese restarant and order the cafe sua da.
BTW: It’s supposed to be strong!