I have a love of espresso. It is not the superior form of coffee, but suffer long enough in creating it, and it’s possible to regularly have great espresso at home. And great espresso on a regular basis is an uncommon pleasure.

Also, I have a condition which requires some help with vasoconstriction. While straight coffee tends to make things worse, coffees with some bean and coffee oil in the cup seem to make things better. So I will always choose coffee that hasn’t gone through a paper filter over coffee that has. Besides: good texture in my coffee is appreciated.

If you’ve followed along for a while, you’ll know that I believe in travel espresso. More on that another time. I think I’ve solved the travel espresso problem to my tastes, and the solution, while not light, is quite effective (hint: the 9Barista is the core part of the solution, and the espresso is as good as it gets).

But this post is not about espresso. It is about a simpler process for getting coffee concentrate and steamed milk. Suppose you, like the friend who inspired this post, like espresso milk drinks, but don’t want to add another silly and complicated hobby to your daily grind. This is a perfectly legitimate position to take. This post is for you: follow this short guide (and the links to the real experts provided) and coffee at home that should be quite close to cafe milk drinks, with minimal fuss.

Coffee for concentration / Coffee concentrate

There are a few ways to make concentrated coffee. In addition to the aforementioned espresso, we have Ethiopian coffee, the spectrum of coffee practices known by many names including Turkish, Greek, Eastern, and Arabic coffee, but also the spectrum of related practices of filter coffee in South and East Asia.

We are lucky enough to have well-documented examples available from South Indian Filter Coffee and Vietnamese coffee available in the English language. Filter coffee making in these cases contexts often doesn’t use a paper filter, but uses both a stainless steel filter and the coffee itself as the filter. In this way it bears some resemblance to espresso. But unlike espresso, it uses gravity and qualifies as an immersion brewing process, similar to French press and Aeropress. Using a stainless container, gravity, and time, both South Indian and Vietnamese coffee filters create a delicious coffee concentrate intended for milk drinks of huge variety.

I started out as a fan of South Indian coffee. But, as much as I love South Indian coffee, if I am making coffee myself, I find I prefer the Vietnamese phin, the tooling for Vietnamese coffee, mostly because of the convenience of the addition of handles, and filter types that are designed to go directly over a cup.

Here in the US, you can likely buy one of these filters at your local Asian grocery, or online from Nguyen Coffee Supply, where there are also some informative videos on how to make the coffee concentrate:

Steamed milk

Both South Indian and Vietnamese coffee making have their own respective traditions around milk preparation well worth investigation. Today, given our target is an American style coffee drink, we’ll look to milk frothers.

I know very little in this category, as I am lucky enough to have a R.E.D. steamer from Irawan Halim, but there are a lot of reviews of available for simpler-to-use, effective steamers, such as this one from NYMag.

Fin/Phin

And that’s it! Grind coffee and put in phin filter to extract. Add milk to milk frother to bring to temperature and texture. Combine and drink. The coffee coming from a phin filter or similar is different from espresso. The brewing process is slower and more robust, the quality of the brew consequently more consistent. Immersion brew coffee is just delicious, and adding it to steamed milk is truly an enjoyable experience. But, you don’t have to take my word for it. Much more experienced folks are already playing in this space: