Coffee in Vietnam

I had some amazing coffee experiences in Vietnam during a family holiday. When I’m on holiday I just can’t stay away from coffee. Let me share a few stories with you.

The standard Vietnamese Robusta coffee is very difficult to drink black. I only drink black coffee ….but in Vietnam I really struggled. The black coffee wasn’t only bitter. It had a very strange taste. It was almost rancid. I could barely drink it at all, and I definitely couldn’t enjoy it …so condensed milk to the rescue. Condensed milk changed everything. It made the Vietnamese coffee super sweet (of course) but the strong coffee still cut right through the sweetness. I really enjoyed this Vietnamese Robusta coffee.

I did find some amazing small coffee farms up in the mountains, near Dalat. These were Arabica coffee farms and they where runs by passionate coffee enthusiasts.

A day at Kho Coffee was a real highlight. Founder, Rolan Co Lieng, treated me to a tasting session and surprised me with some of the sweetest and cleanest coffee I have experienced. A highlight was a bean processed with Koja fermentation, a process that uses a microscopic fungus called Aspergillus Oryzae. Following the tasting session we headed off to a processing facility to see small batch processing in action.

It was great to meet Mat Luce from Cisterna Coffee. Mat was in Vietnam on a quest for great beans for his business in the United States. We had a really great chat.

Another amazing farm was Son Pacamara. The owner gave us a tour of the farm and shared their passion for coffee from beans, to plants, to processing, to the cup.

I brought back lots of great Vietnamese coffee beans to enjoy at home with my friends, and at my shop with my lucky customers. Yum.