As some of you probably know, I’m a coffee lover. Recently I came across this Vietnamese coffee Trung Nguyen and managed to secure a few packs of it from Vietnam. Prior to this, I never heard of this brand and know nothing about Vietnamese coffee. Apparently after googling around, Vietnamese coffee seems to be rather popular in all over the world. You can find so many videos in Youtube! They are famous for their much stronger taste of coffee.

Someone was kind enough to help us buy the coffee while traveling Vietnam and I bought a few packs. Unlike local Nescafe which is soluble and easy to make, Trung Nguyen is a non soluble grinded coffee bean powder that requires brewing. Just like local kopitiam, you need a filter to brew the coffee. Not good if you are the lazy type…

It comes with a little filter cup for you to brew your coffee and I guess it is pretty much associated with Vietnamese coffee because I see the same thing in some local Vietnamese restaurant.

After you put the powder into the filter, even it out, and then screw back in the top compressor. Put it on top a cup and then add boiling hot water into it.

The coffee will slowly drip from below the filter into the cup. You can add sugar or sweetened condensed milk to the cup depending on how you like it. It may takes anywhere from 4-8 minutes for all the water to drip into the cup.

After trial and error for many times, i notice the quality of the taste very much depends on how tight you apply the top compressor. If you didn’t apply enough pressure, the water will flow through too fast and it won’t extract enough coffee taste. Screw it too tight and it will results in slow flow through or even blocking the water from dipping into the cup. You have to adjust yourself the amount of pressure, water, milk and coffee powder to find the balance you like.

I like my coffee to be cold, so I added ice. Overall the taste of the coffee is not bad. It is strong and yet it has this distinctively “chocolaty” signature flavor to it. Also a bit “buttery” taste like white coffee.

It is not expensive too. One packet cost me RM8 (maybe cheaper if you ignore importer profit) and I probably could make at least 10 cups or even more if you prefer milder coffee.