Recipe
Cà phê sữa đá
Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk
Roughly: ka fe SOO-uh DAH
Strong robusta, sweetened condensed milk, ice. The coffee is brewed at 1:5 so that it still tastes of coffee after the milk and the melting ice have had their turn.
How to make cà phê sữa đá
IngredientsFor 1 glass
- Dark-roast Vietnamese robusta, ground medium-coarse20 gabout 3 tbsp
Pre-ground Vietnamese coffee is usually already the right grind.
- Water, just off the boil (90–96 °C)100 mlabout 7 tbsp
- Sweetened condensed milk30 ml2 tbsp
Start here. Vietnamese cafés often use more; you can always add.
- Icea full glass
Roughly 160 ml of coffee needs a 300 ml glass packed with cubes.
Equipment
- A phin (120 ml is the standard single-serve size)
- A heatproof glass that the phin sits on without wobbling
- A second tall glass for the ice
- A kettle
- A long spoon
Method
- 1
Milk in the glass first
Spoon the condensed milk into the bottom of the heatproof glass. It goes in before the coffee because the hot coffee dripping onto it starts dissolving it, and that is the only thing that makes it stir in easily later.
Look for: A thick pale layer about 1 cm deep.
- 2
Load the phin
Set the phin on the glass. Add the coffee to the chamber and shake it flat. Do not tamp it. Lower the press plate on top and turn it down until it just touches the bed. Finger-tight, then stop.
Look for: The bed is level and the press sits flat, not tilted.
- 3
Bloom
Pour about 20 ml of hot water over the grounds, just enough to wet them. Wait 30–45 seconds. The bed will swell and push up against the press, which is what seals it and slows everything that follows.
Look for: The grounds dome up slightly and smell sharply of coffee.
- 4
The main pour
Fill the chamber with the remaining 80 ml, put the lid on, and leave it alone. Do not stir it, do not press it down, do not lift the lid to check.
Look for: A steady drip you can count, roughly one drop a second and slowing as it goes.
- 5
Wait 4 to 6 minutes
When the drip becomes occasional rather than steady, it is done. Lift the phin off and rest it on the inverted lid so it does not drip on the table.
Look for: About 80–90 ml of very dark coffee sitting on the milk.
- 6
Stir
Stir hard until the colour is completely even, with no pale streaks at the bottom. This takes longer than you expect, maybe 20 seconds.
Look for: A uniform caramel brown, the colour of milky toffee.
- 7
Over ice
Pour into a tall glass packed with ice. Pour it over the ice rather than into a bare glass. The dilution as it chills is part of the drink.
Look for: The glass frosts almost immediately.
If it goes wrong
| What happened | Why | What to change |
|---|---|---|
| The water ran straight through in under two minutes. | Grind too coarse, press too loose, or not enough coffee for the chamber. | Add 2–3 g more coffee, turn the press down a little further, or grind one step finer. Change one thing at a time. |
| Nothing came out, or it took fifteen minutes. | Grind too fine, or the press screwed down hard. | Back the press off until it is barely touching. If it still stalls, the grind is espresso-fine, so go coarser. |
| It tastes thin and sour. | Under-extracted — usually a fast drip. | Slow the drip down (see above). A phin that finishes in two minutes has not brewed, it has rinsed. |
| It tastes harsh and ashy, not just bitter. | Over-extraction, or a very dark roast pushed too far. | Speed the drip up slightly, or drop the water to 90 °C. Some traditional Vietnamese roasts are scorched, and no technique fixes that. Try a different bag. |
| The milk sits in a stubborn layer at the bottom. | The coffee cooled before you stirred it. | Stir while it is still hot. Cold condensed milk is close to solid. |
What cà phê sữa đá is
Cà phê sữa đá (Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk) has four ingredients: dark-roasted Vietnamese robusta, water, sweetened condensed milk and ice.
The coffee is brewed in a phin, a small metal drip filter that sits on top of the glass and takes four to six minutes to run through. It drips onto condensed milk already waiting at the bottom. You stir the two together while the coffee is still hot, then pour the lot over a full glass of ice.
The name is the recipe. Cà phê is coffee, sữa is milk (condensed milk, unless someone says otherwise) and đá is ice.
Nothing is flavoured or brewed in advance. The sweetness comes out of a tin, and a café in Vietnam builds each glass while you sit there.
The short version
Twenty grams of dark robusta, a hundred millilitres of hot water, two tablespoons of condensed milk in the glass before you start, and four to six minutes of doing nothing. Stir hard, pour over ice.
The rest of the page is why those numbers, and what to change when it goes wrong.
What it tastes like
Bitter and sweet at once, with a body heavy enough to coat the mouth. The coffee underneath is commonly described as cocoa, dark chocolate and roasted grain, the standard description for dark-roasted robusta rather than something particular to Vietnam. Condensed milk covers the bitterness without thinning the drink, which is why it tastes different from coffee with fresh milk and sugar in it.
It is sweet. Sweetened condensed milk carries 54.4 g of sugar per 100 g, and a 30 ml serving weighs about 38 g, so a standard glass holds roughly 21 g of sugar, about five teaspoons. Southern cafés generally pour more than that and northern ones less. One tablespoon instead of two still works, and lets more of the coffee through.
Why the coffee is this strong
A phin brewed at 1:5 produces something closer to a long espresso than to filter coffee. Tasted on its own it is thick, deeply bitter and almost syrupy.
It has to be, because it has two things to survive: sweetened condensed milk, which is about 54% sugar by weight and coats the tongue, and a glass of ice melting into it. Brew it at a normal filter strength and by the time you reach the bottom of the glass you are drinking sweet water.
Robusta brings more body, more bitterness and roughly twice the caffeine of arabica, and it holds up under dairy. For this drink it is simply the right bean.
The milk
Condensed milk kept in a tin before refrigeration, and its thickness gives the drink a weight that sugar and fresh milk together do not. If yours is thin, use a little less water or a little more milk. The history, the chemistry and the brands are on the condensed milk page.
Sữa đá, sữa nóng, đen đá: naming the variations
The names stack:
- cà phê: coffee
- sữa: milk (meaning condensed milk, unless stated otherwise)
- đen: black
- đá: ice
- nóng: hot
So cà phê sữa đá is coffee + milk + ice. Cà phê sữa nóng is the same drink hot. Cà phê đen đá is black iced coffee, no milk. Order any of them by name in Vietnam and you will get exactly what you asked for.
One southern drink on the same menu does not follow the pattern. Bạc xỉu is Cantonese rather than Vietnamese, and it is built the other way round: mostly milk, with a small dose of coffee over the top. If a glass arrives much paler than the one described here, that is what you were given, and bạc xỉu has its own page.
Getting the drip right
Almost every problem with this drink is a drip-speed problem, and the levers are grind, dose and press pressure. Aim for four to six minutes. A phin done in under two tastes thin and sour, and a press screwed down hard is the usual reason one stalls.
The troubleshooting list covers the fixes. For what the clock is measuring and why, see how long a phin should take.
Substitutions
| Instead of | Use | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Vietnamese robusta | Any dark-roast coffee | It will work, but lose the heavy body robusta gives. Arabica in particular gets buried under the milk. |
| A phin | A Moka pot or a double espresso | The closest match by strength. Use about 60 ml of espresso and cut the milk to 20 ml. |
| Condensed milk | Evaporated milk plus sugar, or oat condensed milk | Evaporated milk is thinner and needs about 2 tsp of sugar per serve. Oat versions work well and are widely sold in Vietnam now. |
Questions people ask
- What is Vietnamese iced coffee?
- Cà phê sữa đá: dark-roasted Vietnamese robusta brewed in a phin, a small metal drip filter that sits on top of the glass, dripping onto sweetened condensed milk. You stir the two together while the coffee is hot and pour it over a full glass of ice. The coffee is brewed at about 1:5, roughly three times the strength of a pour-over, because the milk and the melting ice both dilute it.
- What is in Vietnamese iced coffee?
- Coffee, water, sweetened condensed milk and ice. A standard glass is 20 g of ground robusta, 100 ml of hot water and about 30 ml of condensed milk. No syrup, no fresh milk, and no sugar beyond what is in the tin.
- What does Vietnamese iced coffee taste like?
- Sweet and frankly bitter at once, with a body heavy enough to coat the mouth. The coffee underneath is commonly described as cocoa, dark chocolate and roasted grain, which is the standard description for dark-roasted robusta rather than something particular to Vietnam.
- Is Vietnamese iced coffee sweet?
- Yes. Sweetened condensed milk carries 54.4 g of sugar per 100 g, and a 30 ml serving weighs about 38 g, so a standard glass holds roughly 21 g of sugar, about five teaspoons. Southern Vietnamese cafés generally pour more than that. One tablespoon instead of two still works and lets more of the coffee through.
- What is the correct coffee to water ratio for Vietnamese iced coffee?
- About 1:5 — 20 g of coffee to 100 ml of water. That is much stronger than a pour-over, because the drink is designed to be cut with condensed milk and then diluted again by ice.
- Can I make Vietnamese iced coffee without a phin?
- Yes. A Moka pot or a double espresso gets you close on strength. A drip machine or French press will not — they produce coffee too weak to survive the milk and the ice.
- How much condensed milk should I use?
- Start at 2 tablespoons for a 20 g dose and adjust. Vietnamese cafés vary enormously, and the south generally sweetens more than the north.
- Is Vietnamese iced coffee stronger than normal coffee?
- Considerably, and for two reasons that compound. A phin brews at about 1:5 against a pour-over's 1:16, and one study measured green robusta at 2.9% caffeine by dry weight against arabica's 1.8%. One glass is an estimated 320–490 mg of caffeine, against the 113–247 mg the FDA states for a 12 fl oz cup of brewed coffee.
Sources
Figures on this page come from the following. Where a claim is an estimate or a common description rather than a measurement, the text says so.
- Coffee Annual — Vietnam (GAIN report VM2026-0016)USDA Foreign Agricultural Service · accessed 2026-09-11Robusta's dominance in Vietnamese production, which is why dark robusta is the default bean for this drink.
- Milk, canned, condensed, sweetened (FDC ID 171275)USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy · accessed 2026-09-17Sweetened condensed milk at 54.4 g of total sugars per 100 g and 38.2 g per fluid ounce, which is where roughly 21 g of sugar in a 30 ml serving comes from.
- Reliable Discrimination of Green Coffee Beans Species: A Comparison of UV-Vis-Based Determination of Caffeine and Chlorogenic Acid with Non-Targeted Near-Infrared SpectroscopyFoods 9(6):788 (MDPI) · 2020-06 · accessed 2026-09-17Mean caffeine in green beans measured at 2.9% by dry weight for robusta against 1.8% for arabica.
- Spilling the Beans: How Much Caffeine is Too Much?US Food and Drug Administration · 2024-08 · accessed 2026-09-17113–247 mg of caffeine in a 12 fl oz serving of regular brewed coffee, which is the comparison used for the estimate on this page.
