Journal

Stories, places and research from Vietnamese coffee.

A glass of iced coffee and a dripping phin balanced on a small red plastic stool, with an empty stool beside it.

Culture

Vietnamese Coffee Culture: Why Nobody Drinks It Standing Up

The phin takes four to six minutes and cannot be hurried. Everything about how Vietnam drinks coffee follows from that.

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Stories

The people behind Vietnamese coffee

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An aged photographic view of a colonial-era French shophouse café in Vietnam, with shuttered windows and small tables outside.

Stories

The History of Coffee in Vietnam

From French missionaries in 1857 to the world's second-largest producer. How coffee reached Vietnam, why it took 130 years to matter, and what changed in 1986.

Research

Vietnamese coffee through data

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A professional coffee cupping table with a curved row of white bowls, each with a crust of wet grounds, and cupping spoons beside them.

Research

Specialty Coffee in Vietnam: From Commodity to Cup

Vietnam built a coffee industry on volume. Producers and roasters are now trying to sell by the cup instead — fine robusta, traceable lots and domestic demand.

Comparisons

What is actually different

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Two coffee branches side by side — robusta on the left with broad leathery leaves and tight cherry clusters, arabica on the right with thinner glossier leaves.

Comparisons

Robusta vs Arabica: What Actually Separates Them

Robusta has roughly twice the caffeine, half the sugar and more chlorogenic acid than arabica. What that means in the cup, and why Vietnam grows the one it does.

Culture

Habits, cities and the cup

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A narrow old Hanoi café with mismatched low wooden stools, yellowed walls and phin filters dripping on the tables.

Culture

Hanoi vs Saigon Coffee Culture

Two cities, two climates, two vocabularies for the same drink. What nâu means in Hanoi, why Saigon drinks everything iced, and where egg coffee and bạc xỉu came from.

A glass of iced coffee and a dripping phin balanced on a low red plastic stool, with a second empty stool beside it facing out toward a Vietnamese street.

Culture

Why Vietnam Drinks Coffee Slowly

The phin takes four to six minutes and cannot be hurried. The stool, the free tea, the hour spent over one glass — all of it follows from that single mechanical fact.

Coming to the Journal

Coffee Places — Café guides and city guides — where to find Vietnamese coffee, in Vietnam and everywhere the diaspora took it.