🅢 = Story: Same Coffee, Different Espressions 

Robusta beans, a phin, sweetened condensed milk and poured over ice. That ritual is a core part of how I understand coffee. It’s familiar, it’s nostalgic, and it’s still one of the most loved ways we serve it at Fat Miilk.

We keep that tradition intact because it matters and clearly, people connect with it. At the same time, what excites me most is how many ways Robusta can show up because there isn’t just one way to drink it. 

For me personally, I tend to lean toward espresso. I love what happens to Robusta under pressure. The crema comes out thick, rich, and oh so smooth. It holds beautifully with milk, whether it’s a latte or anything layered with foam. It just delivers in a different way.

This doesn’t take anything away from the phin. If anything, it reinforces the idea that Robusta isn’t one-dimensional. It can be slow and traditional, or fast and dialed in. It’s just the same coffee with different expressions. 

— Lan Ho, Founder of Fat Miilk

🅘 = Insight: It Began With A Phin

At Fat Miilk, we roast to order, which gives us an intimate understanding of the beans and the process. With 10+ years in the specialty coffee industry, working in quality control, sourcing, sample roasting, and now production, I’ve never been more excited to share what we’re discovering with Robusta. — Kim Nguyen, Head of Coffee Quality and Sourcing

The slow drip, drip, drip onto a thick layer, about an inch give or take, of sweetened condensed milk in a tall glass is such a core memory for me growing up. My dad would brew cà phê sữa đá on the weekends when he wasn’t rushing off to work in the morning. It was a ritual for him and a lovely smell for me on those weekend mornings as a kid.

He would let the dark roast chicory coffee steep and drip onto the condensed milk until it was done, stir the mixture together, and top it off with ice cubes to the top of the glass. He would sip it slowly. I remember tasting it for the first time and immediately appreciating the bitter, sweet, and syrupy combination.

I was hooked, and now I’m on my own coffee journey decades in.

Phin Coffee in Vietnam

In 2011, I remember my dad taking my two sisters and me to a roadside coffee stand somewhere between Sài Gòn and Biên Hòa, with plastic stools and iced coffee brought out in glass mugs with a thick layer of condensed milk on the bottom. As the shop owner, referred to as uncle in Vietnamese, set them down, I noticed that the coffee was already starting to drip, but at the slow pace I was used to, with conversations filling in the gaps as the coffee dripped slowly.

Once the coffee had finished brewing onto the condensed milk, the dainty but tall spoons the uncle had given us did the important work of combining the sweet with the bitter. The ice was brought out on the side for us to add to our liking.

I remember taking that first sip of phin brewed coffee in Vietnam and feeling like I was home. I knew that I needed to have more, and to visit other cafes around the country to really experience the true essence of it.

Phin Coffee in Chicago

With Chicago being my current home, I’ve realized that I want to combine my past experiences with phin coffee with my current one. Through roasting and working with Vietnamese Robusta now, I am able to appreciate the updated phin brewing methods.

Batch brewing with bigger phins brings its own sense of calming ritual. The quiet mornings watching the coffee drip down while people watching through the window is comforting. But now when I brew, I use a scale to weigh my grounds and roast the coffee to the right temperature and level to provide the right amount of bitterness on the back end to complement the sweetness.

The taste of the darker roasted coffee, which I profile as a production roaster, when combined with condensed milk brings me back to the days of being a kid at home, watching my dad phin brew with his silver phin that he got for a few dollars from the Asian grocery store, without a scale and just a couple teaspoons of chicory coffee and boiling water.

In Chicago, I am still at home, but in a more mature and more professional way with my brewing equipment. The curiosity in the vast world of coffee, especially Robusta, continues to connect me to my roots, and I have my dad and his coffee ritual to thank for that.

🅟 = Pulse: Same Roots, More Formats

Vietnam is the world’s second-largest coffee producer and the largest producer of Robusta, yet in the U.S., most consumers still associate quality with Arabica. That gap isn’t about supply. It’s about exposure and format.

What’s shifting now is how people are actually drinking coffee. Milk-based drinks, cold foam, and espresso-led menus continue to dominate across cafés. These formats naturally favor coffees that can hold structure, texture, and intensity, which is where Robusta performs exceptionally well.

At the same time, Vietnamese coffee is gaining visibility beyond its traditional form. What was once seen primarily as phin with condensed milk is now showing up as espresso, shaken drinks, and modern menu applications.