Coffee Brewing Methods: How to Make Viennese Coffee

Cream is a food of rich texture, offering silky smoothness and a thick consistency in one ingredient. Eaten by itself it can feel overly sweet and rich, which makes it ideal for pairing with other foods to balance the palate, coffee among them.

In the world of coffee, the word "cream" comes up often. In tasting, it describes a texture as smooth as cream, or the sweet fragrance left after eating cream. In prepared drinks, cream sometimes plays the companion that lifts a beverage's flavor and other times the decoration that improves its appearance, and it has inspired plenty of creative specialty drinks on the market.

If we want to trace the earliest history of cream in coffee, we cannot linger only on these modern, fancy beverages. We have to look for stories handed down over hundreds of years.

Ancient "Cream Coffee"

Through research, FrontStreet Coffee found that the earliest record of adding cream to coffee comes from Austria. In 1684, a Pole named Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki was rewarded with a generous bounty and a large quantity of coffee beans left behind by the defeated Turks for rescuing the besieged city of Vienna. When the war ended, he opened a Blue Bottle Coffee House in Vienna.

Kulczycki's Blue Bottle Coffee House.

At first he served drinks following the Turkish method of making coffee: the beans were ground into powder, boiled with water twice, then poured straight into the cup with the grounds and drunk as is. The Austrians found this completely unacceptable. So, to suit local tastes, he switched to filtering out the grounds with a cloth bag, then added cream, honey, spices, and other seasonings. Before long this "first-generation cream coffee" had become a favorite among the Viennese.

At the time, cream coffee like this was usually served in a small glass cup. Because cream and coffee turn a beautiful reddish-brown when mixed, very close to the color of the robes worn by the Capuchin Friars Minor, the Viennese called it "Kapuziner," phonetically rendered as "Capuchin."

When it reached Italy alongside the arrival of the espresso machine, Italians turned to espresso crowned with golden crema, while the original cream was replaced by steamed, frothed milk, and the drink took its Italian name: Cappuccino. In other words, the cappuccino we know today has its roots in cream coffee.

Although "Kapuziner" later gave rise to many versions of fancy coffee, the original "cream coffee" never disappeared. It lives on in coffee houses under the names Viennese Coffee and Espresso Con Panna.

How to Make Traditional "Cream Coffee"

Translated literally, Espresso Con Panna means "espresso with cream." From that you can see how simple the structure is: just add two to three swirls of whipped fresh cream on top of a freshly pulled espresso.

Unlike other fancy coffees, Espresso Con Panna needs no stirring. You drink it straight. The cold cream lends a cotton-candy-like texture to the bitter, rich coffee, adding a denser, richer layer to the mouthfeel. Even so, most people still see it as an extremely heavy-tasting coffee, which is why its audience stays small.

Beyond Espresso Con Panna, the widely loved Viennese Coffee also uses strong coffee and cream as its main ingredients. The original purpose differs from that of the earlier fancy coffees, though: the Austrian version was meant to give coachmen energy on cold nights, so more high-calorie foods were added to the coffee. It is a drink that refreshes, satisfies, warms, and fills you up all at once.

FrontStreet Coffee found that making traditional Viennese coffee is not complicated. It is generally served in a tall handled glass, with a teaspoon of white sugar placed at the bottom first, then about half a glass of strong coffee, topped with fluffy whipped cream, and finished with cinnamon powder, chocolate crumbs, and biscuit crumbs.

Modern "Cream Coffee"

Compared with an era of material shortages, today's cream coffee comes in diverse varieties and forms, and it has been given eye-catching names of its own.

Starbucks, for example, has a secret-menu item, "all-ice Americano with light cream," derived from the old Viennese coffee. The whole drink has just three components, ice, coffee, and light cream, making the steps as simple as putting an elephant in a refrigerator.

Cream coffee made this way, with ice as its backdrop, lets the unwhipped, viscous cream first float on the surface and then slowly sink and blend with the espresso, creating beautiful layers while letting you feel the sweet, rich interplay of cream coffee on the palate as you drink in big gulps.

Cream has also been reworked into many playful forms by the skilled hands of baristas. In Korean cafes, for instance, an improved "Viennese Coffee" continues to thrive on social platforms like Instagram thanks to its distinctive cream presentation and highly photogenic looks.

Here the cream needs pre-treatment: whip it to a thick, yogurt-like consistency, then layer it into the coffee. With the raw materials ready, the method is not complicated, and FrontStreet Coffee will now recreate a cup.

Ingredients: Light cream, vanilla syrup, espresso, milk, ice cubes

First, find a convenient container for whipping. Pour in 80 grams of light cream, then add 15 grams of vanilla-flavored syrup.

Then whip the cream evenly with a mixer until it reaches a semi-solid, yogurt-like consistency. As we do at FrontStreet Coffee, it is ready once it forms peaks that do not collapse quickly.

Prepare a small cup of your choosing, add 50 grams of ice cubes, pour in milk to about six-tenths full, layer in the vanilla cream you just whipped, then pull a double espresso and pour it over the top.

Finally, scoop 1-3 dollops of vanilla cream onto the coffee with a spoon and dust with cocoa powder to taste. The internet-famous "Viennese Coffee" is ready.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Every version of cream coffee, from Espresso Con Panna to a layered Viennese Coffee, depends on a rich, sweet espresso base that can stand up to cream and milk. For that role FrontStreet Coffee recommends the FrontStreet Classic Blend, an espresso built in the traditional Mamba style with a rich, golden crema that extracts beautifully even on an entry-level home machine, delivering butter, nuts, spice, dark chocolate, and toasted bread notes. If you want an even thicker, more golden crema for lattes, cappuccinos, and Dirty-style layers, the FrontStreet Commercial Blend adds a small proportion of Robusta for a bolder, heavier body. Both come from the FrontStreet espresso lineup of blends and single-origin SOE beans.