Understanding cafe tinto, working-class Colombia’s favorite coffee
My first contact with South American soil was in Medellin, Colombia. There’s a sense of hustle and passion in the air, which I keenly noticed when my airport taxi driver tried to sell me cocaine.
But I get my buzz a different way, and I was set on experiencing Colombia’s world-famous coffee culture.
Coffee is a staple, and the smell is on every street corner — somehow though, I couldn’t recognize the most popular item on the menu.
Cafe tinto, I’d come to learn, has a charm all its own. Here’s a bit about the people’s coffee.
- What is cafe tinto?
- How do you make Colombian tinto coffee?
- What do Colombians put in their coffee?
- Why do Colombians call coffee tinto?
What is cafe tinto?
“Tinto” is the most popular way to serve coffee in Colombia. It’s a working-class preparation made from low-grade beans, often simply boiled in a pot and filtered before drinking.
Coffee is Colombia’s biggest export, with over 600,000 coffee farms dotting the countryside. Beans of a certain quality standard go to international markets, where they sell for prices beyond the reach of most Colombians.
But Colombians aren’t just interested in selling coffee — they also want to drink it. The result is tinto, which follows a few simple tricks to make delicious coffee accessible for everyone.
Today the drink has developed a unique culture of its own, and most Colombians will draw a distinction between tinto coffee and espresso-based preparations like an Americano or a latte. Across the country, it’s common to find street vendors hawking small cups of tinto out of thermoses for about $0.10 a pop.
How do you make Colombian tinto coffee?
Really, there’s not much separating tinto from what many would simply call “pour-over coffee.” Sometimes it’s prepared in exactly the same way, pouring hot water over coffee grounds in a cloth filter called a colador.
But the magic of tinto is in the details of preparation. To make a genuine Colombian tinto, proceed as follows:
How to Make Colombian Tinto Coffee
- You will need water, cheap coffee, and a pot. In Colombia, people traditionally use the low-grade Sello Rojo brand coffee and an iron pitcher called an olleta.
- Pour in two cups of water and bring to a rolling boil.
- Add generous coffee grounds. The rolling boil and heavy scoop of coffee are used to get maximum flavor from the low-grade beans.
- Stir gently, and boil for 3-4 minutes. Then, turn off the flame.
- Allow the grounds to sink to the bottom of the pot. For a smoother texture, you can use a spoon to skim off any remaining coffee froth floating on the surface.
- Once the grounds have sunk to the bottom (they may need some encouragement), you can carefully pour a serving of coffee out. The olleta makes this easier to do this without a filter, but it’s fine if you choose to use one.
- Enjoy!
What do Colombians put in their coffee?
A handful of secret ingredients help make Colombia’s coffee different from the rest. People often add cinnamon, clove, and other spices, and some prefer their coffee brewed with aguapanela.
Panela is a thick, unrefined brown sugar consumed across Latin America, made by boiling down and evaporating sugarcane. Dissolve it in water and you get a drink called aguapanela. It’s popular on its own, served hot or cold, with lime or herbs, but it also makes a great base for brewing a rich, thick cup of tinto.
To try this unique sweetness in your tinto, dissolve 2-3 oz of panela into the water when you boil it.
Why do Colombians call their coffee tinto?
On a literal level, the name tinto in Spanish compares the black coffee to ink. But an old joke offers some alternative insight: it’s said that those who couldn’t afford red wine (vino tinto) would instead rely on the warm, red hue of a tinto coffee!
That kind of tongue-in-cheek optimism says a lot about about Colombia. Farmers are proud of their national crop, and they deserve to sell it in markets around the world. But Colombians love coffee, and nothing’s going to stop them from enjoying it — that’s the story of cafe tinto, in a nutshell.
Photos: Earthshifting, Erik Witsoe, Geovanyme