Colada
Colada cubanako-LAH-da
A small styrofoam cup of very strong, very sweet Cuban coffee and a stack of thimble-sized cups to share it from. One colada serves four to six people, and buying one for the office is a social act as much as a caffeine run.
At a glance
- Coffee : water
- 1:7
- Active time
- 3 min
- Total time
- 9 min
- Makes
- 6 tiny cups
- Serve
- Hot, to share
- Kit
- Moka pot
Ingredients
Note: A colada is a quantity, not a recipe change. It is a café cubano made in a bigger pot and served to share.
Method
-
A bigger pot
Fill a six-cup moka pot with water and coffee and set it on a medium flame. Put the sugar in a jug that will hold all the coffee.
-
First drops onto the sugar
Pour the first tablespoon or two of coffee onto the sugar and return the pot to the heat.
-
Beat the espuma
Beat it hard with a spoon until it is a thick, pale tan paste. With four tablespoons of sugar this takes a little over a minute.
Beat 1 to 2 minutes -
Combine
Pour the rest of the coffee onto the espuma and stir gently. The foam rises to the top as a caramel layer.
-
Pour into a cup, share in thimbles
Pour it into a single cup and hand it round with tiny cups. Each person pours themselves a sip or two.
That is the colada. One cup, several people, five minutes of conversation.
Why this works
A colada is strong in two senses. It is a dark roast brewed short in a moka pot, close to espresso strength, and it carries a great deal of sugar. That combination is designed for small doses. A thimble-sized cup is around 30 ml, a mouthful or two, and that is plenty of coffee and plenty of sugar.
The espuma behaves the same in a large batch as in a single café cubano, with one practical difference. You need proportionally a little more of the first coffee to dissolve the extra sugar, and more beating, because a larger mass of sugar takes longer to turn from wet granules into a smooth paste. Rush it and the colada is grainy at the bottom.
Dark roast matters here too. The longer roast develops more bitter compounds and fewer bright acids, and bitterness is what balances that much sugar. A light roast would taste sour and syrupy at once.
The colada belongs to Miami and its Cuban community. It is sold at the ventanitas, the walk-up windows of Cuban cafés, especially mid-morning and mid-afternoon at what is sometimes called the 3:05, after the city's area code. Buying a colada for your colleagues is a favour returned by someone else another day, and the cup is passed round rather than poured out all at once. It is less a drink than a ritual of sharing a small strong thing.
Variations
- Café cubano: the single-person version, served in one small cup.
- Cortadito: a single serving cut with hot milk. See cortadito.
- Colada with evaporated milk: a splash of warm evaporated milk in each thimble, an unofficial but common tweak.
- Less sweet: three tablespoons of sugar. It will still foam.
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Questions
What is a Cuban colada?
A large serving of sweet Cuban coffee with espuma, poured into one cup and shared from tiny plastic cups. One colada serves four to six people.
How many people does a colada serve?
Usually four to six, in thimble-sized cups of around 30 ml each.
What is the difference between a colada and a café cubano?
Size and purpose. A café cubano is a single small cup for one person. A colada is the same coffee in a larger quantity, meant to be shared.
What is 3:05 in Miami?
A nickname for the mid-afternoon Cuban coffee break, taken from Miami's original area code, 305.