You don’t have go to Italy or be a highly paid Barista to make an absolutely awesome cup of coffee for yourself.     You just need to have a few ingeniously simple techniques on your side to help you amaze your friends and yourself.

We combed the entire country of Vietnam to find the tips and tricks that locals use to get the best Vietnamese Coffee (well, not actually the whole country).

Genius Simple Trick #1 (Level Albert Einstein)  – Use Filtered Water

Coffee is 99% water.  If you have crap tasting water, guess what?  You’re going to have crap tasting coffee.  At Saigon Coffee we start with the purest and freshest filtered water that just taste good.    If you want a good cup of coffee use your favorite bottled water and watch the difference.  It just might amaze you.

Use your favorite bottled water to brew your coffee

Genius Simple Trick #2 (Level Stephan W Hawking)- Add Pinch of Salt

Adding a teeny tiny pinch of salt into your coffee grind prior to brewing is the real deal.  Its actually science and it makes the flavor of your coffee more intense.  Salt will reduce the bitterness of the coffee as well allowing you to taste only the goodness and no bitter aftertaste.

Salt reduces bitterness in coffee

Genius Simple Trick #3 (Level Galileo Galilee) Use Hot as Hell Water, 200 degrees

Lukewarm water makes a blah cup of coffee.  So boring. So tasteless.  So not even worth it.   At Saigon Coffee we keep our water temperature at exactly 200 degrees at all time because that is the perfect temperature to get the most out of your coffee beans.

So what happens when you are using a lame Mr Coffee Pot when you are staying at that cheap hotel?  Run water through the coffee pot first to get the machine to heat up .  When you run the actual coffee through it will taste so much better.

Genius Simple Trick #4 (Level Charles Darwin)  Press and Drip your Coffee with A French Press or Phin

Old school Vietnamese Phin’s and French Presses might seem archaic but they do something that nobody has been able to replicate even with the fanciest machines.  Pressing and slow dripping your coffee allows the water to chemically bind with the essential oils in the coffee which results in better flavor.  Your Mr Coffee machine just floods water through the coffee grinds and gives you that “Gas Station” like quality cup of coffee.   At Saigon Coffee we only use old school Phin’s because that makes our coffee taste really good.

The Vietnamese Coffee Filter is Genius and Simple

Genius Simple Trick #5 (Level Leonardo DaVinci) Fresh Roast + Fresh Grind + Fresh Brew

The 3 F’s of a great cup of coffee (Fresh Roast, Fresh Grind and Fresh Brew)  Want better coffee?  Do what we do.  Get freshly roasted beans (check the date on the package or ask when they were roasted).  Then fresh grind your coffee (if its over 7 days old grind it’s not up to our standard).  And finally fresh brew your coffee after grinding.  Why should you do these things?  Because coffee like everything else dries out and gets stale.  You don’t want a stale cup of coffee.

Happy Coffee Brewing all you Punky Brewsters out there.