(To Quoc) – Among countless modern coffee shops, Thai coffee, with the continuation of 4 generations, has always maintained the tradition of manual wood roasting that has existed in Hanoi for nearly 100 years, located simply on a corner of Trieu Viet Vuong street.
Nowadays, roasting coffee by machine is widely used, but roasting by firewood gives the coffee its own unique flavor, so Thai coffee has attracted coffee lovers and Hanoi lovers to the shop.
To adjust the amount of heat emitted by the firewood evenly, the roaster must always pay attention and quickly add firewood carefully. When roasting, the smoke from the firewood in the closed mortar sticks to the coffee beans, creating a delicious, rustic, characteristic flavor of Thai coffee.
Mr. Nguyen Duc Hieu (born in 1987) is the 4th generation descendant of Thai coffee. He shared: “Since my grandfather's generation, my grandfather and father have been roasting with firewood and partly because I have loved coffee since I was young, I want to continue this firewood roasting practice. Coffee can be roasted with many different fuels, but for manual roasting, firewood roasting is the most suitable because the firewood burns slowly and the heat dissipation area will be even in the roaster. The heat needed to cook the coffee is above 200 degrees. If using coal, it will be difficult to adjust because the heat is too high.”
In addition to the characteristic of wood-roasting, the coffee beans are also meticulously selected by Mr. Hieu himself, ensuring the quality of each step of the process to harvest the best coffee beans from the coffee garden that Mr. Hieu owns in Son La with Arabica, Robusta and some other coffee varieties.
“When roasting, with the first mortar, it will take about 30 minutes to heat up the mortar, so the first batch of roasting will not be even because the firewood is not stable yet, but with the following batches, when the fire is even and the mortar is hot enough, the finished product after roasting will meet the standards and will not take as much time as the first mortar roasting” – Mr. Hieu shared.
After roasting, the coffee will be cooled by machine and the coffee beans will be filtered. With Mr. Hieu's many years of experience, it is easy to know whether the beans meet the standards or not through the color and aroma of the coffee beans.
The unqualified beans will be roasted again over low heat, while the qualified beans will be kept for about 2 weeks or even 1 month before being ground and sold to customers.
Coffee beans are a hollow body, inside there are many cavities that store CO2 gas and when roasted the beans will expand making the volume of the beans larger, you can clearly see that the gap of roasted coffee beans will be larger than fresh coffee beans.
Mr. Hieu shared about the future of Thai coffee: “After 4 generations, the Thai coffee shop was sold by Mr. Den at 27 Trieu Viet Vuong since the 40s, so I will continue to preserve and continue my family's traditional shop, only maintaining the current selling location and have no intention of opening another address. During the process of promoting Thai coffee, each generation will have a job to build the shop, such as Mr. Den was the one who founded it with coffee carts, Mr. Thai was the one who shaped the style of drinking coffee with a filter, drinking coffee on the sidewalks of Hanoi, my father, Mr. Tinh, contributed to rebuild the shop so that 27 Trieu Viet Vuong has the shape it has today. My mission to contribute to Thai coffee is to do better in terms of agriculture, approaching it in depth will bring the best quality products.”
Every morning, coffee is made by staff here who have been in the profession for decades, so the flavor almost never changes each time customers come to enjoy it.
Mr. Phan Manh Tuan (a customer at Thai Coffee) shared: “I have been drinking here for more than 30 years, no matter the weather, rain or shine, I come to the shop every morning to enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning. For me, drinking coffee in the morning is like a ritual, only going to a specific place and drinking a specific drink, having a group of friends to talk to. Coffee is different in each place, my taste for enjoying morning coffee culture is Thai coffee because it is sidewalk coffee and I can feel the smoky smell in the coffee flavor.”
The wall "Come to Hanoi to make a cup of brown" was painted by Mr. Hieu himself, partly to give people who come to drink an interesting place to sit as well as a unique "check-in" spot of the shop, and partly to connect the first generation, Mr. Den, and the current generation, Nau (Mr. Hieu's son).
Toquoc.vn
Source: https://toquoc.vn/doc-dao-quan-ca-phe-rang-moc-gan-100-tuoi-o-ha-noi-20240708085137267.htm
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