Vietnamese Coffee Calories: Roughly 120 a Glass

Calories by drink

Every figure below is calculated from USDA composition data and the builds on this site’s recipe pages. None of it is measured from a glass, and the pour is the variable that moves it most.

Drink	What is in the glass	Calories	Total sugars
Cà phê đen đá (black iced coffee)	22 g coffee, 120 ml water	Under 5	0 g
The same, with 2 tsp sugar	Plus 8.4 g sugar	35	8 g
Cà phê sữa đá (iced coffee with condensed milk)	20 g coffee, 100 ml water, 30 ml condensed milk	120	21 g
Cà phê sữa nóng (hot, with condensed milk)	20 g coffee, 80 ml water, 25 ml condensed milk	103	17 g
Cà phê trứng (egg coffee)	2 egg yolks, 30 ml condensed milk, 18 g coffee	233	21 g
Bạc xỉu (milk-forward, southern)	12 g coffee, 40 ml condensed milk, 80 ml evaporated milk	277	36 g
Cà phê muối (salt coffee, from Huế)	60 ml whipping cream, 20 ml condensed milk, 20 g coffee	285	16 g
Cà phê dừa (coconut coffee)	120 ml tinned coconut milk, 30 ml condensed milk, 20 g coffee	346	21 g and up

Every number is an ESTIMATE from composition tables rather than a measurement of a finished drink. The coconut row counts only the condensed milk in its sugar column, because the USDA entry for tinned coconut milk reports no total-sugars figure.

An instant 3-in-1 sachet is a different calculation and sits on the instant coffee page, where the one sachet with an ingredients statement filed with the USDA is broken down line by line.

Why the beans make no difference

USDA puts brewed coffee at 0.42 kcal per 100 g, which makes the 100 ml of liquid that drips out of a phin worth less than half a calorie. That entry describes ordinary brewed coffee, and a phin runs at about 1:5 against a filter brew’s 1:16, so there are roughly three times the dissolved solids in the cup. Under 5 calories is the safer ceiling.

So the levers that dominate every other question about this drink do nothing here. Robusta against arabica, a dark roast against a light one, 15 g of coffee against 25 g: the calorie figure does not move. That is the opposite of what the same choices do to caffeine, where the dose and the species swing the answer several-fold.

The condensed milk, by the spoonful

Sweetened condensed milk is dense. USDA gives 38.2 g per US fluid ounce, which works out at about 1.28 g per ml, so a 30 ml spoonful weighs around 38 g rather than 30.

Condensed milk	Weighs	Calories	Total sugars
1 tbsp (15 ml)	19 g	61	10 g
1½ tbsp (25 ml)	32 g	102	17 g
2 tbsp (30 ml)	38 g	123	21 g
2½ tbsp (40 ml)	51 g	164	28 g
3 tbsp (45 ml)	57 g	184	31 g

Pick a row and you have the answer, because nothing else in the glass contributes a figure worth adding to it.

The arithmetic, shown

Step	Value	Where it comes from
Brewed coffee, 100 ml	0.4 kcal	USDA SR Legacy, brewed coffee at 0.42 kcal per 100 g
Condensed milk, 30 ml	38 g	USDA gives 38.2 g per US fluid ounce
Energy in that milk	123 kcal	38 g at 321 kcal per 100 g
Total sugars in that milk	21 g	38 g at 54.4 g per 100 g
Ice	0 kcal
The glass	ESTIMATE: about 120 kcal, 21 g of sugars

Change the one input that matters and the whole thing recalculates: 45 ml of condensed milk instead of 30 gives 184 kcal and 31 g of sugars, which is a different drink by any measure except the name on the menu.

What 54.4% does not tell you

USDA reports sweetened condensed milk at 54.4 g of total sugars per 100 g. Total sugars counts the sucrose added to the tin together with the lactose the milk brought with it, and the SR Legacy entry does not split them.

That matters for one comparison people reach for. The FDA’s Daily Value of 50 g is for added sugars, so 21 g of total sugars in a glass cannot be converted into a percentage of it. The added-sugar share is lower than 21 g by an amount this entry cannot tell us. For scale, the FDA uses 2,000 calories a day as its general reference on the Nutrition Facts label.

What any of these figures means for a particular person is a question for a dietitian.

What moves the number

If you	Calories
Use one spoon of condensed milk instead of two	Falls by about 60
Drink it black	Falls to under 5
Swap the tin for 40 ml evaporated milk plus 2 tsp sugar	Falls to about 89, with 13 g of sugars
Add more ice	No change
Use a taller glass and more water	No change
Brew arabica instead of robusta	No change
Roast darker	No change
Order a bạc xỉu instead	Rises by about 160

The middle rows are the useful ones. A cà phê sữa đá poured long over a full glass of ice looks like a bigger drink than a small cà phê đen đá, and the ice is the only difference in volume. Water and ice add nothing, which is also why the caffeine stays where it is.

What these figures do not include

A café’s pour. The builds here are this site’s recipes. Southern Vietnamese cafés generally sweeten more than northern ones, and a glass poured with three tablespoons carries 184 calories from the milk before anything else goes in.

The brand of tin. USDA’s entry describes a generic US sweetened condensed milk. Vietnamese tins are commonly described as thicker and sweeter, which would raise the figure, and we have not found published composition for a specific Vietnamese brand. Which tin to buy, and how much of it to use, is on the condensed milk page.

Sữa chua cà phê (yogurt coffee). Vietnamese sữa chua is itself made with condensed milk, so a generic plain-yogurt figure would describe a different drink. It is left out rather than guessed at.

Anything measured. No glass of this was analysed in a laboratory. These are composition tables multiplied by recipe quantities, and a tin with a different formulation or a pour with a different spoon will land somewhere else.