Café Bustelo! A coffee with a rich history but an even richer flavor. In this article, we’re going to be talking about how to make coffee using ground coffee from Café Bustelo—what are the most popular recipes as well as the traditional ones.
But before we get right down to business, let’s talk about Café Bustelo. This is a coffee brand with a very interesting past—let’s check out the history and roots of Café Bustelo.
Café Bustelo Roots
It was the early 20th century, and a young Spaniard traveled to Cuba with a dream: to experience the New World and make a new life for himself. This was Gregorio Menéndez Bustelo. Once in Cuba, he himself established a coffee farm and, with the help of expert hands, he learned all about coffee that he needed to know.
For a few years, he ran a successful operation. He’d learned how to make great coffee from the ground up and, by Cuban standards, his coffee was one of the best around—and Cubans know their coffee!
However, after a while, he decided to expand his operation. He moved to the United States and founded Café Bustelo, a coffee company, in 1928.
At first, like everything, things moved slowly. Most of the first customers were a few interested Cubans. But once they tried it, they realized it was perfect for the coffee that they knew and loved—word of mouth did its job, and it spread like wildfire.
Café Bustelo enjoyed a steady customer base for many decades until—starting around the 80s and 90s—it enjoyed a second boom in sales and popularity among young people and avid coffee consumers who recognized the quality of Café Bustelo despite it being a relatively accessible brand. These two decades helped cement Café Bustelo as a legendary brand worthy of renown and recognition in the coffee world.
How to Make Café Bustelo?
There is always more than one way to enjoy a good thing. Café Bustelo is, in essence, ground coffee that has a very rich flavor and aroma. We are going to share with you three different recipes that go great with this particular coffee.
Cuban style
Cubans are known for liking their coffee very, very concentrated. They like small cups that contain high amounts of caffeine—but they are avid lovers of sugar. In particular, Cubans love muscovado sugar—a type of sugar that is made by melting down raw cane sugar into bricks and then making it into bricks or powder.
This sugar is one of the things that gives Cuban-style coffee its distinct flavor. Raw cane sugar has subtle flavors like caramel and cinnamon that go great with coffee.
Instructions:
- Grab a Moka pot. Fill it with water and coffee, then start brewing.
- Meanwhile, take your coffee cup and pour two teaspoons of muscovado sugar into it.
- Once the coffee’s done brewing, pour a very small amount into your cup.
- Using a teaspoon, whisk the coffee and sugar together until you get a thick, creamy substance.
- Pour the rest of the coffee.
- Enjoy!
The result is a very strong coffee with a sweet crema-like layer on top that makes for a double experience: one featuring the rich, bitter taste of coffee and another with a much sweeter but equally rich taste of the coffee+sugar mix. It is truly a masterpiece of simplicity and deliciousness.
Vietnamese style
Café Bustelo, thanks to its bold flavor and strength, is also the ideal candidate for making iced coffee—Vietnamese iced coffee, in particular. This is a type of coffee that has to be strong but also very sweet, much like it happens with Cuban coffee.
You can make this coffee using a phin filter, which would be the traditional way to brew Vietnamese coffee: it makes a very concentrated, strong coffee. But if you don’t have one on hand (they’re fairly easy to find online, though) you can brew it using a Moka pot, an espresso machine, or a similar method that brews concentrated coffee.
The reason why we need concentrated coffee is that iced coffee needs ice, obviously, which can water down the coffee. If you’re already using a brewing method that uses a lot of water, the resulting coffee will feel watery and weak in flavor.
Instructions:
- Prepare a cup of very strong coffee. Set it aside.
- Grab a tall glass.
- Pour sweetened condensed milk into the glass to taste.
- Now add the coffee.
- Add ice and enjoy!
The result is a very strong yet deliciously refreshing drink that—thanks to the condensed milk—has a great texture for sipping and sipping until suddenly there’s no more. Where’d all my coffee go?! I swear the glass was full a second ago!
Espresso
The most traditional way to prepare your Café Bustelo is doing it the way it was intended: making a smooth, strong espresso. The taste of Bustelo coffee is catered from the ground up for espresso drinkers, so it is only natural that the taste of this coffee shines brighter when made as espresso.
Café Bustelo has a very balanced taste, thanks to its combination of smoothness with a healthy dose of caffeine that is just a little higher than that of regular coffee. Why do you think Bustelo became so popular? It is the perfect coffee for waking up in the morning!
Instructions:
- For a single shot, use around 7 grams of espresso. For a double shot, 14 grams.
- Pour ground coffee into the portafilter.
- Swipe using your index finger.
- Using a tamper, firmly tamp the grounds in place to create a puck.
- Attach the portafilter to the group head.
- Start making the shot.
- Stop the shot when it’s done.
- Once done, sweeten, and enjoy!
For this type of coffee, even though we know not everybody likes sweet coffee, we have to emphasize that a big part of its flavor comes alive through sugar. You don’t have to use muscovado sugar, but simply adding a little bit of sugar turns this coffee into a delicacy!