The phin is Vietnam's national coffee brewer, a small four-piece stainless steel or aluminium filter that sits on top of a cup. It arrived in Vietnam with French colonisation in the 1850s but evolved locally into the tool most associated with cà phê sữa đá — iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk — one of Southeast Asia's most recognisable drinks.
The brewer is simple: a cup with tiny holes, a gravity press disc that sits on top of the coffee, a chamber for hot water, and a lid. It brews by slow gravity drip, usually over 4 to 6 minutes per cup, and produces a concentrated coffee that tastes between a French press and a weak espresso — heavy body, deep chocolate and dark-fruit notes, almost no acidity.
A canonical recipe: 25 g of coffee ground coarse-medium (Vietnamese tradition uses robusta or a robusta-arabica blend, which defines the flavour as much as the brewer does), the water chamber filled with 80 ml of near-boiling water, the press disc resting gently on the grounds. First bloom with 20 ml for 30 seconds, then add the rest. Drinkers outside Vietnam often swap condensed milk for oat milk or drink it neat, but the traditional serve is 2 tablespoons of condensed milk at the bottom of the cup and the brewed coffee dripping straight onto it, stirred and poured over a glass of ice.