Shop links on this page: I may earn a commission. Same price for you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
After a Brazilian lunch, including a churrasco, people drink a small cup of Brazilian coffee (cafezinho). It is a small, strong cup of filtered coffee, often sweet. Use supermarket Brazilian coffee sold in the US — Pilão, 3 Corações, or Melitta Extraforte. The meat is done. The pudim is out. Then this.
The cup
A cafezinho is about 50 to 80 ml (1.7 to 2.7 fl oz), a small demitasse or a short juice glass. Sugar goes in the cup first if you take it sweet, then the coffee. Pingado, coffee with a splash of milk, is a morning bar drink. This cup after the meat stays black.
Ingredients (4 small cups)
- 4 tablespoons (about 24 g) Brazilian roasted-and-ground coffee, the fine supermarket grind
- 2 cups (480 ml) hot water, just off the boil, about 200°F/ 93°C
- Sugar at the table, about 1 teaspoon (4 g) per cup if you drink it the usual sweet way
That is about 1 tablespoon of coffee per 120 ml of water. 3 Corações prints 4 to 5 tablespoons per liter on the bag. Stay near that. Extraforte blends (Pilão Extraforte, Melitta Extraforte) are darker and a little more bitter. Tradicional is the everyday bag.
Method
- Set a paper filter in a cone, or a cloth coador over a pot. Wet the filter. Add the coffee.
- Pour a little water to bloom 15 seconds, then the rest in a slow spiral.
- Pour the water over the grounds. Boiled coffee tastes scorched, and that is not cafezinho.
- Pour small. Serve after the meat, not beside the Brazilian tomato-onion sauce (vinagrete).
How you know it’s done
The cup is dark and clean-tasting, hot, and small. Scorched bitterness means the pot boiled.
After a churrasco
The meat is done. The pudim is out. Then this, in small cups, standing up if that is how the table went.
What to buy
Supermarket Brazilian coffee after the meat. The usual mid is the bag to open first. Paper filters #102 or #103 sit next to it.
- Low: Melitta Traditional, 500 g — Brazilian-style supermarket coffee, not a specialty bag.
- Usual mid: Café Pilão Tradicional, 500 g — the bag that opens after the meat.
- High: 3 Corações Tradicional or Pilão Extra Forte, 500 g — same supermarket shelf, darker if you want it that way.
Leave a Reply