Café Real Ground Coffee 10oz (4 Pack)

The Blend

Cuban coffee is a method before it is an origin. The beans are selected each year from established growing regions across Central and South America, East Africa and Southeast Asia, and what makes the cup Cuban is what happens after: a dark espresso roast, a fine grind, sugar whipped into the first drops. Café Real is built for that method rather than adapted to it.

Arabica and Robusta are asked for different things. Arabica carries the aroma and the sweetness. Robusta carries the weight and the dense crema a colada is judged on, and on its own would turn the cup harsh. The proportion between them is the formula, and the dark roast is the other half of it.

That roast is what draws out the oils behind the body, and why the profile above sits where it does: crema and body at the top of the scale, acidity held low. There are no added flavors. The sweetness you taste is in the bean, and the roast is what brings it forward.

Brewing

Cafecito. Brew in the cafetera. Put two spoons of sugar in the serving cup, and when the first dark drops come through, pour those over the sugar and whip until it turns pale and creamy. That is the espuma. Pour the rest through it and it sits on top like crema. Skip this step and you have dark coffee, not a cafecito.

Colada. The same thing in a six or nine-cup pot, poured into one cup with thimbles stacked beside it. It is not a bigger serving. It is a coffee you hand around.

Cortadito. A cafecito cut with about the same volume of hot milk. Softer, and the one that holds up next to breakfast.

Machine and drip. Ground fine for the portafilter: an 18 g dose pulling roughly 36 g in 25 to 30 seconds. It also works in a drip machine at about 10 g per 180 ml, where the dark roast gives more body than a medium roast would.