How Colombians Brew Coffee

**This article was updated on January 25, 2021.

Colombians are famous for the coffee they grow. One of the most important coffee producing countries in the world in terms of volume and quality, coffee cultivation in Colombia goes back to the 1700s.

However, Colombians not only grow coffee, they love it. That’s not the case for all coffee-producing countries, where tea or other beverages may be among the top choices.

How do Colombians brew coffee, drink it, and share it with friends and family? We’ll review that in this article.

How Colombians drink coffee

Colombians typically start their morning with a tinto. It’s a small cup of coffee, black, and sweetened with sugar or panela, a raw sugar common in Latin America. Tintos are generally not strong, and they are usually served quite sweet. They will drink tintos all throughout the day and late into the night, since most Colombians feel that caffeine does not keep them awake. When you visit Colombia, expect to hear this question all the time. “¿Le gustaría un tinto?”

Later in the morning and with their afternoon snack, Colombians will often drink café. Don’t be fooled by the name – for people here, café isn’t just coffee, it’s coffee served a particular way. When you ask for a café, you’ll get coffee with milk. Lots of milk. And just a little bit of coffee.

Another surprise for you may be how Colombians make coffee.

In people’s homes, coffee is often made with a colador, which is a cloth filter hung on a circular wire. Water is boiled, the cloth filter gets a dose of coffee grinds in it, and water is poured over. It’s a simple method.

Sometimes coffee is made in the morning and left in an aluminum pot all day on the back of the stove, getting reheated throughout the day.

Alternatively, water is boiled in an olleta, a pot that’s especially used to prepare hot drinks, coffee grinds are thrown in and boiled for a while, and then the pot is removed from the heat. When the grinds sink to the bottom, the coffee is carefully poured off without using a filter.

Around the country people love to make coffee in agua panela, which is water with a very raw sugar (called panela) dissolved in it. Sometimes we also put spices in the coffee, like cinnamon or ginger, to fancy it up. We also like to drink aromatica (a short of herbal tea), or the agua panela I mentioned – without the coffee.

In public establishments, you’ll often see shiny, tall grecas. These resemble early designs of espresso machines, and are simply a fancy way to make tinto. Inside, you’ll often find a colador, the cloth filter that is usually part of coffee preparation techniques. These machines keep water – and coffee at a high temperature, resulting in a strong, burnt coffee that Colombians have been drinking for decades.

Brewing coffee the Colombian way

One of the best ways to understand a culture is to spend some time in local kitchens. A kitchen tells you what people value, what they do within the limitations they can’t change and how they take advantage of the good things they have.

I’ve been in a lot of Colombian kitchens, from big cities to small rural homes. And I’ve seen a lot of coffee being brewed.

I learned a lesson from a Colombian grandmother as I watched her brew coffee.

She heated water in her olleta, the aluminum pan I mentioned early. When it was fully boiling she scooped generous amounts of Sello Rojo brand coffee into the water.

As the water boiled and the coffee moved vigorously along with it, she commented, “We have to make it this way to get any flavor out of it. This coffee isn’t very good.”

And she’s right. Traditionally, coffee is an export crop for Colombians. They sold it abroad at higher prices than what people within the country could afford. That is still the case for the majority of Colombians.

So Colombians often drink what is left. It’s often the worst quality coffee, called pasilla – or even more tragic, cheaper pasilla coffee imported from other countries.

Standing in this tiny kitchen with this 80-year-old grandmother, I knew she couldn’t afford a better quality coffee. But I also knew that this resourceful lady was going to find a way to make this coffee taste good.

She stirred the grinds in the water, gazed into the pot for a bit, and then turned off the flame.

We stared at the pot together.

I wondered what we were waiting for.

She peered into the pot. “The grinds are still floating.”

They were. Proof they were dead?

So I asked, “And…?”

“We have to wait for them to settle to the bottom.”

“Oh.”

She blew on the grinds gently, and what do you know, they sunk. She carefully poured off a bit of that coffee into a very small cup (without using a filter) and held it out to me with a smile.

I smiled back. And yes, I took the cup. I sipped it. And you know what, it was so good.

Really.

The future of coffee in Colombia

Times are changing in Colombia. There is a quiet coffee revolution taking place in the cities as well as remote towns, the specialty coffee revolution. Younger generations of Colombians are realizing that coffee is way more than just a strong drink.

It’s a drink that connects them with their past and that is leading them to a different future.

It’s a drink that can have chocolate flavors or taste like caramel. But it can also be surprisingly fruity, subtly floral, or shockingly herbal.

International brewing methods can awaken these differences, and Colombian baristas are often experts at understanding the coffee grown in their country, the regional differences, and how to get the best out of the bean.

Check out our other articles on coffee, our tips on brewing Colombian coffee at home, and our Specialty Coffee Workshops to learn more.