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Café de Olla

Name: Café de Olla
Total time: 15 min
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Mexico
Ingredients: 800ml Water; 40g Ground Coffee (dark roast); 60g Dark Brown Sugar; 1 Cinnamon Stick; 2 Cloves; 1 strip (optional) Orange Peel

Drink

⏱ 15 min

👥 Serves 4

Difficulty ⭐

Café de olla is Mexico’s traditional spiced coffee, brewed with cinnamon and dark sugar in an earthenware pot. Gently fragrant and sweet, it warms you up on cold mornings and evenings.

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📖 The Story Behind This Drink

An olla is an unglazed clay pot. Some say the drink began during the Mexican Revolution to keep soldiers going. The authentic sweetener is piloncillo, a cone of unrefined cane sugar, and it’s still brewed in clay pots in rural homes and at market stalls.

🌆 Where it’s enjoyed: On a winter morning at the market, coffee is ladled from a big steaming clay pot into earthenware cups and sold alongside tamales.

🥕 Ingredients (serves 4)

Water 800ml
Ground Coffee (dark roast) 40g
Dark Brown Sugar 60g
Cinnamon Stick 1
Cloves 2
Orange Peel 1 strip (optional)

👩‍🍳 Instructions

Put the water, sugar, cinnamon stick, cloves, and orange peel if using in a pot over medium heat.
When it boils, lower the heat and simmer 5 minutes, until the sugar dissolves and it smells of cinnamon.
Turn off the heat, add the coffee, stir once, cover, and steep 5 minutes.
Strain through a fine sieve or paper filter into cups.

💡 Tips for Success

Boiling the grounds makes coffee bitter, so always add them off the heat.
Brewing in an unglazed clay pot adds a faint earthy note, closer to the real thing.
Keep it lightly sweet and drink it with churros or pan dulce, the Mexican way.

🍽 Goes Well With

Churros

Tamales

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