Cuban coffee comes in four main drinks: the café cubano (cafecito), cortadito, colada and café con leche. A café cubano is a small, sweetened shot with no milk. A cortadito adds a little steamed milk. A colada is several shots in one cup, for sharing. A café con leche has the most milk.
Safety: take the moka pot off the heat before you pour anything out of it. A moka pot builds pressure while it sits on a heat source: Bialetti’s leaflet for the Moka Express says the pot “develops pressure inside” and that failing to follow the instructions “may cause the risk of burn or the coffee maker burst”. Its last brewing step is “When the upper unit (6) is full of coffee, remove the coffee maker from the heat source.” Do that, then whip your sugar with a splash of the finished coffee (step 5 below). The leaflet doesn’t mention taking coffee out mid-brew, so calling that a hazard is our reading, not a manufacturer rule.
Table of Contents
Cuban coffee names: the four types and what each one is
Three guides split the Cuban coffee menu the same way: the Greater Miami visitor bureau lists “four classic ways you can order a Cuban coffee”, The Kitchn’s guide is headed “4 Cuban Coffee Drinks to Know”, and Barista Magazine’s guide lists “the four types of Café Cubano”.
| Drink | Also called | What sets it apart | Served in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Café cubano | Cafecito, Cuban espresso, Cuban coffee | Strong coffee sweetened as it is made: sugar whipped with a little of the coffee into a creamy foam (espuma or espumita). No milk. | A tacita, a tiny cup |
| Cortadito | “little cortado” | A café cubano with a little steamed milk. Already sweet before the milk goes in. The amount of milk varies by source. | A small, shot-glass-sized cup |
| Colada | Sometimes used for the café cubano itself | Several shots of café cubano in one larger cup, made for sharing. No milk. | A Styrofoam cup with a stack of small plastic cups |
| Café con leche | “coffee with milk” | A café cubano with much more milk than a cortadito, closer to a latte. The traditional Cuban breakfast drink. | One cup, or the coffee and hot milk in two cups |
Cafecito vs colada
Same coffee, two sizes. Barista Magazine calls the cafecito “the mini-me of the colada”. The colada is the shared version, and the counts differ: Wikipedia and Perfect Daily Grind say three to six shots, the visitor bureau four to six. OnCuba News says a colada “da para unas cuatro o cinco personas” (it’s enough for about four or five people; our translation), and Barista Magazine says six.
“Colada” can also mean the café cubano itself. Wikipedia lists it among that drink’s other names, and a Perfect Daily Grind guide to Miami coffee culture says “The Colada is also known as the Café Cubano or Cuban espresso.” The other sources use the word for the shared cup, as this page does.
Café cubano vs cortadito
A cortadito is a café cubano with milk, so it is already sweet before the milk goes in. That is what separates it from the Spanish cortado, which isn’t pre-sweetened. On the milk, the sources disagree: the visitor bureau says “just a splash”, while Barista Magazine describes the cortado’s defining characteristic, “the same in Miami as it is in other locales”, as “an equal balance of milk and espresso”. Our page on what a cortadito is sets the sources side by side, so this page doesn’t repeat them.
What makes Cuban coffee different from regular coffee?
The sugar goes in during the brew, not after. A little of the coffee is whipped with sugar into a creamy foam, the espuma or espumita, which sits on top of the finished cup. Barista Magazine calls the technique one “that belongs distinctively to Café Cubano”, and the visitor bureau says ordering it “sin azúcar” (without sugar) and adding your own “definitely won’t give the same effect”.
The coffee is dark and concentrated. Perfect Daily Grind says the café cubano is “typically made with dark roasts, sweetened with heaps of sugar, and generally made with concentrated coffee brewed in a moka pot, rather than espresso”. The visitor bureau instead calls it “basically an espresso shot sweetened with sugar”.
It is small and social. The Kitchn’s guide says “drinking a café cubano is a social activity”, and the small cup is covered below.
Why is Cuban coffee so strong?
It depends what “strong” means. Perfect Daily Grind’s article on the word says: “Some people use the term to describe a concentrated beverage, while others associate it with high caffeine content or a darker roast.”
Concentrated and dark-roasted. Perfect Daily Grind reports Martin Mayorga, founder of Mayorga Organics, as saying the cubano “combines concentrated coffee with lots of sugar to create a syrupy, full-bodied drink”. Café Bustelo’s FAQ says of its own coffee: “Our traditional Café Bustelo products are an espresso grind made from a darker roast of beans and is generally considered stronger than most regular coffees.” That is a brand describing its product, not a measurement.
Caffeine. None of the sources we opened gives a caffeine measurement for a café cubano, cafecito or colada, so we give no figure. Mayorga says that “historically, the cubano has been made with a Brazilian robusta or another inexpensive coffee”, and the National Coffee Association lists robusta as having “50–60% more caffeine than arabica”. None of the brand pages we read names the species in its traditional coffee, so we can’t say how much caffeine is in any particular tin. Our page on roast levels covers caffeine by roast, and our cortadito page gives a yardstick for a small espresso-style drink.
Why is Cuban coffee served in small cups?
The small cup is the tacita, which the visitor bureau glosses as a “tiny cup”. Two magazines tie the size to rationing in Cuba. Saveur’s 2016 report from Havana says the government introduced a rations system in 1962 that covered coffee, and adds: “Because of the limited quantity of coffee, the drink is always consumed in small amounts from small cups known as tacitas.” Perfect Daily Grind’s guide to Miami coffee culture says that to make a small allowance last, “serving sizes were kept small”. Neither is a record, and we didn’t find a document that says why the tacita is the size it is. The Kitchn describes the cafecito itself as “a small shot of strong coffee with sugar”.
How to make Cuban coffee at home with a moka pot
You need a moka pot, ground coffee for it, and sugar. Bialetti’s leaflet for the Moka Express governs the pot, and if yours is another make, follow its own instructions. The Cuban part is only steps 5 and 6.
- Check the pot. Bialetti says “Before each use, make sure the coffee maker is not damaged and is complete with all its parts”, and to check that the valve, funnel, gasket and filter plate are intact and properly positioned.
- Fill the heater (the lower chamber) with cold water “up to the lower edge of the safety valve”. The leaflet adds: “Make sure the safety valve is not oriented towards the user.”
- Fill the funnel with ground coffee for moka, “without pressing it down”. Take care not to leave coffee powder on the rim. The leaflet adds: “Never press coffee into the funnel (3).” Its troubleshooting list for a venting safety valve also includes checking that the coffee is not pressed in. See the section on grounds below for the grind.
- Screw the pot together, tighten it well and heat it with the lid closed. Bialetti: “During use, close the lid (9) of the coffee maker.” On gas, “the flame must not go beyond the rim of the heater”. On an electric or ceramic plate, “do not use the highest heat, but maintain a medium setting”. And: “Do not leave the appliance unattended during operation.”
- When the upper chamber is full, take the pot off the heat. Bialetti warns: “Do not touch the hot surface of the coffee maker. The surfaces get hot, therefore use the handle (7) and the knob (8) to move the coffee maker.” Put sugar in a small cup, pour a small splash of the finished coffee onto it and beat it hard with a spoon into a creamy foam: the espuma. That is how Saveur’s report from Havana describes the home method: after the coffee brews, “a small amount is whipped with brown sugar”. Wikipedia describes the traditional version as sugar whipped “with the first and strongest drops of espresso”. We haven’t compared the two foams, so we can’t say they come out the same. The amount of sugar isn’t standardised: Barista Magazine describes “a couple of tablespoons of sugar”, and Perfect Daily Grind has Mayorga adding “plenty of sugar to a small cup”. We haven’t tested any amount, so adjust to taste.
- Add the rest of the coffee and serve it in small cups. Perfect Daily Grind describes both ways: spooning the espumita over the coffee, or pouring the coffee on so that “the espumita floats to the top of the drink”.
- Let the pot cool before you unscrew it. Bialetti: “After use, allow the coffee maker to cool down before opening it.”
For a cortadito, add a little hot steamed milk to the finished cup: from a splash to about half the drink, depending on which source you follow. For a café con leche, Wikipedia describes the coffee “poured to the desired darkness into the cup of hot milk and then stirred”.
How much coffee do you use?
A moka pot is filled, not weighed (steps 2 and 3 above), so this page gives no coffee-to-water ratio for it.
For drip brewing, this site’s reference is 55 g of coffee per 1.000 kg of water, about 1:18 by weight (SCA Standard 310-2021, Home Coffee Brewers, section 7.1.5, a copy hosted by CoffeeGeek), and our page on how much ground coffee for 12 cups works it through for a full pot.
Cuban coffee grounds: Bustelo, Pilón and La Llave
Cuban coffee in Miami names a style, not an origin. Writing about Miami’s ventanitas in 2020, OnCuba News says the café cubano there is “el estilo de colar el café, no del café que viene de la Isla (el embargo no lo permite)”: the style of brewing, not coffee from the island, because the embargo doesn’t allow it (our translation).
The usual roast is dark. Barista Magazine describes dark, Italian-style roasts with “popular brands such as Pilon, Bustelo, and La Llave”, and Wikipedia names the same three. See our pages on Italian roast vs French roast and roast levels for how those labels are used and what dark roasting does to a cup.
What the brands say. Café Bustelo’s FAQ says its traditional products are “an espresso grind made from a darker roast of beans” and suggests “a stovetop espresso maker, also known as a moka pot” among its brewing methods. Café Pilón’s site says “The origins of Café Pilon coffee can be traced back to Cuba.” Café La Llave’s site tells a family story that begins in Cuba and says the coffee “is roasted and packed by” F. Gaviña Sons, Inc., at an address in Vernon, California. Those read as heritage claims rather than claims about where today’s beans are grown. Bustelo’s FAQ says its beans “are sourced from reputable suppliers in more than 20 countries around the world”, and none of the three pages we read says today’s tins hold Cuban-grown coffee.
One example of a modern blend. Perfect Daily Grind says Mayorga Organics’ cubano blend “uses organic coffee from Honduras, Peru, and Nicaragua”. Our pages on Central American coffee and South American coffee cover those regions.
Check the grind against your pot. Bustelo’s traditional grind is an espresso grind. Bialetti’s leaflet for the Moka Express says: “Use ground coffee for Moka, that is with a suitable grinding, and never use fine grinding coffee.” It also lists “COFFEE FOR PERCOLATING FILTERS OR ESPRESSO MACHINES” among the products not to use in the pot, and the first item in its troubleshooting list for a venting safety valve is “Make sure coffee used is ground coffee for Moka.” Those instructions don’t line up, and we haven’t tested either. If you own a Bialetti, follow Bialetti’s instructions. We haven’t tasted these brands and don’t rank them.
Cuban coffee history and culture
Cuba has its own coffee-growing history. UNESCO’s World Heritage listing for the first coffee plantations in the south-east of the island calls the 19th-century plantations in the Sierra Maestra foothills “unique evidence of a pioneer form of agriculture in a difficult terrain”. It says the owners were “primarily of French and Haitian origin” and that the plantations were worked by enslaved Africans.
The café cubano people order in Miami is a different thing. Perfect Daily Grind attributes the drink’s spread beyond the island largely to Cuban migration to the US after the 1959 revolution. Sources disagree on when the walk-up window, the ventanita or little window, arrived. The visitor bureau says Cuban coffee culture in Greater Miami “dates back to the 1950s, when the first wave of Cuban immigrants arrived in South Florida”. Barista Magazine says the restaurateur Felipe Valls Sr. “designed and installed the first ventanitas at his restaurants after immigrating from Cuba to Miami in the 1960s”. OnCuba News, in Spanish, says nobody knows for sure when ventanitas became popular.
Corrections to earlier versions of this page
- Taking coffee out mid-brew. An earlier version told you to “take a tablespoon of the brewing coffee” out of the pot while it was still on the stove, to whip the sugar. That was unsafe by our reading of the leaflet: take the pot off the heat first.
- Tamping. An earlier version told readers to tamp the basket, “tamping it down lightly”. That was wrong: Bialetti says to fill the funnel “without pressing it down” and “Never press coffee into the funnel (3).”
- Grind. An earlier version said you need “dark-roasted finely ground coffee” and that Bustelo, Pilón and La Llave are “ground fine for espresso and moka pots”. That was wrong as a general instruction: Bialetti’s leaflet says “never use fine grinding coffee”, and of the brand pages we read, only Bustelo’s FAQ describes an espresso grind.
- Heat. An earlier version said to brew “on medium heat”. That was wrong as a general rule: Bialetti gives a medium setting for electric or ceramic plates, and for gas the flame must stay within the rim of the heater.
- The foam “comes out the same”. An earlier version said the espuma “comes out the same” if you whip a splash of the finished coffee instead of the first drops. We haven’t tested that, so the claim is gone.
- Cortadito. An earlier version described a cortadito as “cut with steamed milk” without saying the drink is already sweet before the milk goes in, which is the difference from a Spanish cortado. The sources we read give no single amount of milk.
- Brand origins and green coffee. An earlier version said the tins “do not claim the beans came from Cuba” and that Central America is where “much of the green coffee in these blends comes from”. Neither had been checked against the brands’ own pages. The section on grounds now quotes what they say.
- FAQ block. An earlier version carried an FAQ block that repeated the four definitions. It was removed; the answers are in the table above.
