How to Make Viennese Coffee? Who Invented Latte? Who is the Founder of Blue Bottle Coffee?

Vienna Coffee: A Creamy Delight Through the Ages

In the world of coffee, the dairy product "cream" is quite common. Because cream offers a rich textural experience, with both a silky, thick mouthfeel and a mellow, sweet aroma, it is frequently added to various freshly prepared coffee beverages to serve as a perfect finishing touch—balancing bitterness, embellishing the product, and adding textural layers.

Because of this, we can often find it in various coffee drinks! And today, FrontStreet Coffee is sharing about Vienna Coffee, which is the pioneering representative that first added cream to coffee.

Although the name "Vienna Coffee" contains Vienna, like most coffee products, this name doesn't appear on local café menus. However, this doesn't mean that Vienna Coffee isn't available locally—it's just that local people are more accustomed to calling it "Einspänner" (single-horse carriage/coachman coffee). In German, Einspänner refers to a "single-horse carriage," which, as the name suggests, is a lightweight carriage designed for single-person driving. From the 19th to early 20th century, single-horse carriages were a very common means of transportation in European cities (now they have become a cultural symbol in Austria). Since the single-horse carriage could only accommodate the coachman (the person driving the carriage), the term Einspänner also came to refer to the coachman (single person).

From the name, it's not difficult to discover that this coffee has an inseparable connection with coachmen. And this is indeed the case—as long as you search for Vienna Coffee online, you'll find numerous related origin stories. Although there are many versions with different reasons, the stories always revolve around the main character: the coachman. For example, the coachman added cream to coffee to create Vienna Coffee in order to stay alert and feel full during winter nights; or to prevent coffee from being too fluid and spilling out while the carriage was moving, so they chose to add cream to reduce the coffee's fluidity...

In short, this coffee with added cream is the crystallization of the coachman's wisdom, which is why it was named coachman coffee. But in reality, according to research by FrontStreet Coffee, as early as two hundred years before the coachman invented this coffee, people had already been adding cream to coffee, and this person, FrontStreet Coffee believes, won't be unfamiliar to many of you—he is Kulczycki (Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki), the founder of the "Blue Bottle House." In 1684, Kulczycki received a generous reward for rescuing Vienna during the war of siege, as well as coffee beans left behind by the Turks after their defeat. Then, with this reward and the coffee beans, Kulczycki opened the second-ever coffee shop in Vienna—the Blue Bottle House.

Kulczycki initially offered coffee in his shop made according to the Turkish coffee method—as FrontStreet Coffee often shares, by throwing water and coffee powder into a pot to boil, then pouring it all into a cup to drink. But because Austrians simply couldn't accept this bitter, sediment-filled black beverage, Kulczycki later "localized" and improved the coffee to cater to local residents' tastes.

First, he used a cloth bag to filter the coffee grounds, then added honey, milk, cream, spices, and various seasonings to balance the bitterness of the coffee. Thus, the first-generation versions of "latte coffee" and "cream coffee" were born. Coffee then successfully entered the lives of Austrians. Although the Blue Bottle House closed after Kulczycki's death, the practice of adding various "condiments" to coffee had already spread throughout Austria. For example, Café Tomaselli, which opened in Salzburg in 1703, attracted the musical prodigy Mozart with its cream coffee (he visited the café almost daily to taste cream coffee), allowing it to remain standing even after more than three hundred years, becoming the second oldest café in the world. And cream coffee thus became the must-order signature product for visitors to the shop.

In summary, we can learn that Vienna Coffee has a very long history. Alright, without further ado, let FrontStreet Coffee share how to make both traditional and modern versions of cream coffee!

Traditional Vienna Coffee

Traditional Vienna Coffee is very simple to make! According to research by FrontStreet Coffee, we only need to spread whipped cream on the surface of black coffee. If you want to be more particular, you can use a tall glass; for those who don't like bitterness, you can add sugar, sweet wine, and other ingredients to the coffee to balance the bitterness.

Since black coffee has no restrictions, whether it's pour-over coffee, or Americano made by diluting espresso with water, or Long black, all are acceptable. If you want to restore the classic to the greatest extent, then FrontStreet Coffee's suggestion is to choose some deeply roasted coffee beans with rich caramel aromas, such as FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling from the coffee list, which is an excellent choice.

The preparation sequence for traditional Vienna Coffee is: first whip a portion of cream, then make a cup of pour-over coffee/Americano, and finally spread the whipped cream on top of the coffee to complete the preparation. FrontStreet Coffee's extraction parameters are as follows (FrontStreet Coffee's Golden Mandheling brewing parameters): 15g coffee grounds, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, water temperature 88°C, grind level 11 on Ek43, 75% pass-through rate with #20 sieve, fine sugar grinding, Kono filter cup, and three-stage brewing method.

Because FrontStreet Coffee has been sharing the brewing process, we'll skip it here. When we brew the coffee, we can add an appropriate amount of sugar to reduce the coffee's bitterness, so that when we taste the cream and coffee together, the bitterness won't be amplified due to too much contrast. Finally, spread the whipped cream on top, and a traditional Vienna Coffee is ready~

When drinking, we can first use a spoon or straw to stir slightly, allowing some cream to blend with the coffee, making it more comfortable to drink~

Modern Vienna Coffee

Because resources are no longer scarce nowadays, coffee preparation has added many variations. For example, the base of Vienna Coffee no longer has to be simple black coffee—it can be milk coffee, mocha coffee, or flavored milk coffee with various flavor attributes; the cream topping also has more variations—you can add chocolate, nut crumbs, and various materials for embellishment, or create various shapes through sculpting... In short, we can be "very creative."

It's also very simple to make—we just need to add cream to any iced coffee base. For example, if making a toffee-flavored Vienna Coffee, we can use the original recipe to first make a toffee latte, then spread whipped cream on top for decoration and styling, and finally sprinkle some cocoa crumbs and nut crumbs to add layers of texture~ Very simple. It's worth mentioning that because regular cream only has a milky flavor, it might taste somewhat monotonous, so we can also add some flavored syrups during the whipping process to give the cream flavor attributes. For example, if you want the cream to have a vanilla flavor, add vanilla syrup; if you want it to have a caramel flavor, add caramel syrup... and so on! In short, as FrontStreet Coffee always says, we can use our imagination and be "very creative"~

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