Safety correction first, because an earlier version of this page told you to do something that can burn you. Its recipe said to “take a tablespoon of the brewing coffee” out of the moka pot while the pot was on the stove and still brewing, in order to whip the sugar. Do not do this. A moka pot is a pressure vessel sitting on a lit burner; opening it mid-cycle puts your hand directly over a spout that is discharging near-boiling coffee and steam. Bialetti’s own instructions for the Moka Express are explicit that the pot is a pressure vessel and that its surfaces get hot. They do not address opening it mid-brew — their cooling instruction is scoped to after use — so treat that part as our reading of the hazard rather than a manufacturer prohibition:
- “Attention: this coffee maker requires a heat source for its operation and develops pressure inside. Failure to comply with the instructions may cause the risk of burn or the coffee maker burst.”
- “During use, close the lid (9) of the coffee maker.“
- “Do not touch the hot surface of the coffee maker. The surfaces get hot, therefore use the handle and the knob to move the coffee maker.” And: “After use, allow the coffee maker to cool down before opening it.”
The fix costs you nothing. Let the pot finish, take it off the heat, then pour a small splash of the finished coffee onto your sugar and whip that. The espuma comes out the same. The traditional instruction to catch “the first drops” is about using strong, early coffee — it is not a requirement to reach into a live pot, and no part of the drink depends on doing so.
Table of Contents
The four drinks
All four are built from the same base — a small, very strong coffee, traditionally pulled on a stovetop moka pot at home or an espresso machine in a café. What changes is the sugar, the milk and the serving format.
| Drink | What it is | Milk | Served in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Café cubano (cafecito) | The base drink. Sugar is whipped with the first, strongest coffee into a pale foam called espuma or espumita, and the rest of the coffee is poured through it. | None | A single demitasse |
| Colada | The same café cubano, made in quantity for sharing. No fixed count: published descriptions run from three to six shots. | None | A large cup with a stack of small plastic thimbles |
| Cortadito | Café cubano “cut” with steamed milk. Already sweet, because the sugar went in at the espuma stage. | Coffee-led. Anything from a splash to an equal part — no body defines it | A small glass or cup |
| Café con leche | The coffee served alongside, or poured into, a cup of hot milk. Milk-dominant. | Most of the cup | A large cup, usually at breakfast |
The dividing line people get wrong is café cubano versus cortadito. Café cubano is black — sweet, but no milk. A cortadito is the same coffee cut with milk. The Spanish cortado is a third thing again: also espresso cut with milk, but without the whipped sugar, so it is not sweet. How much milk goes into a cortadito is not fixed by anyone — no standards body defines the drink — so treat any single ratio you are quoted as one person’s house style. Our page on what a cortadito is goes into that drink in detail; this page will not duplicate it.
The other line worth drawing is cafecito versus colada. They are the same drink. A colada is a format — a takeaway cup meant to be split between however many people are standing at the window — not a different recipe. How many shots go into one is not standardised; general reference descriptions put it at three to six, served “in a Styrofoam cup along with small, plastic demitasses”. In Miami the ventanita, the walk-up window at a Cuban café, is where most coladas are bought and shared.
Making café cubano at home
You need a moka pot, dark-roasted finely ground coffee, sugar, and a small cup or jug to whip in. Bialetti’s own instructions govern the pot; the Cuban part is only steps 5 and 6.
- Check the pot before you fill it. Bialetti tells you to confirm the safety valve, funnel, gasket and filter plate are all present, undamaged and correctly seated. A perished gasket or a blocked valve is what turns a moka pot into a hazard.
- Fill the boiler with cold water, below the safety valve. Never above it. Point the valve away from where you will be standing — the manual says to “make sure the safety valve is not oriented towards the user”.
- Fill the funnel with ground coffee level, “without pressing it down”. That is Bialetti’s wording, and it matters: tamping a moka basket the way you would tamp espresso restricts flow and raises pressure. Brush any stray grounds off the rim so the seal is clean.
- Screw it together firmly and brew with the lid closed, on medium heat. On gas, “the flame must not go” beyond the edge of the boiler. Do not leave it unattended.
- When it finishes, take it off the heat. Then pour a spoonful or two of the coffee onto the sugar in your cup or jug and beat it hard with a spoon until it turns pale and thick. That is the espuma. Cuban coffee is properly very sweet, so start with more sugar than feels reasonable and adjust down over the next few pots.
- Pour the rest of the coffee slowly through the espuma and stir once. A light brown foam should sit on top. Serve immediately, in small cups.
For a cortadito, stop after step 6 and cut the finished cup with hot steamed milk — a splash up to about an equal part, to taste. For café con leche, pour the finished coffee into a larger cup of hot milk instead, so the milk leads.
How much coffee to use
A moka pot doses itself: you fill the funnel level and that is the dose the pot is built for. There is no ratio to calculate, which is why this page gives none — and why the sugar quantities above are the only spoon measures on it.
For everything brewed by filter or immersion, this site uses one reference figure: 55 g of coffee per 1.000 kg of water — about 1:18 by weight — which is the standard brew ratio in SCA Standard 310-2021, Home Coffee Brewers, section 7.1.5. A coffee “cup” in that arithmetic is 6 fl oz, not 8, and stronger always means more coffee rather than less. Espresso is a different method again, brewed at roughly 1:2. Those are different techniques, not competing answers. If you want the drip version worked out for a full pot, see how much ground coffee for 12 cups.
The coffee itself
Supermarket Cuban-style coffee — Bustelo, Pilón, La Llave and similar — is dark-roasted and ground fine for espresso and moka pots. These are Cuban-style coffees: the name describes a roast level and a grind, not a growing origin, and the tins do not claim the beans came from Cuba. That is worth knowing before you pay a premium for the word on the label. Our page on coffee roast levels explains what dark roasting does to the cup, and Central American coffee covers the region much of the green coffee in these blends comes from.
This site has not tasted these brands side by side and will not rank them. What is worth saying is that the espuma technique works because sugar and hot coffee whip into a stable foam, and it works with any strong dark coffee — the brand on the tin is the least important variable in the recipe.
Other things the earlier version of this page got wrong
- It described the espuma step as taking coffee “while your coffee is brewing”, which is the hazard corrected at the top of this page.
- Its instructions had you tamp the basket — “tamping it down lightly”. Bialetti says to fill the funnel “without pressing it down”.
- It described a cortadito as being “cut with steamed milk” without ever saying that the drink is already sweet before the milk arrives — which is the actual difference between a cortadito and a Spanish cortado. It is also worth saying plainly that no standards body defines the milk ratio, so any page quoting one exact figure has chosen it.
- It carried a FAQ block restating the same four definitions a second time. That has been removed; the answers are in the table above.
One thing the old page had right, and worth keeping: the espuma is the whole point. Cuban coffee is not simply espresso with sugar stirred in. Whipping the sugar with a little hot coffee first is what produces the pale, dense foam, and it is the step that distinguishes a café cubano from a sweetened shot.
