Vietnamese phin
The phin is Vietnam's little metal coffee filter: a small cup with holes in the bottom that sits right on top of your glass 🇻🇳. You add coffee, a press insert and hot water, and it slowly drips a short, strong brew straight into the cup. It's often poured over sweetened condensed milk and ice for cà phê sữa đá. Cheap, unbreakable and wonderfully relaxing to watch.
Grind: Medium-fine, like table salt
Pick your kind
Words you'll hear
- Phin
- The Vietnamese drip filter: a chamber with holes, a plate it rests on, a press insert and a lid.
- Press insert
- The perforated disc that sits on top of the coffee. Some screw down, others just rest by gravity. It controls how fast water flows.
- Bloom
- A small first pour that just wets the coffee. Fresh grounds puff up and release gas so the rest of the water flows evenly.
- Drip rate
- How fast the coffee drips out. Steady drops, about one or two a second, is a good sign.
- Ratio
- Water weight divided by coffee weight. A phin is strong: about 1:5, so 20 g of coffee to 100 g of water.
- Extraction
- How much flavor the water pulls from the grounds. Under-extracted tastes sour and thin; over-extracted tastes bitter and dry.