Not long ago we were able to visit our friends and partners from Trâm Anh Kaffee in Vietnam. We would like to tell you about this exciting and incredibly beautiful trip in this and a subsequent post.
The trip to the central highlands of Vietnam is one we have been looking forward to for a long time. We were finally able to meet our partners from Tram Anh and even roast Vietnamese coffee over coffee wood using a 43-year-old, self-made roasting machine. We'll tell you more about this in the second part of our travel report.
First we would like to tell you something about the history of
The Trâm Anh founders drinking coffee
The history of Trâm Anh Coffees However, it goes back deeper into the Vietnamese past and is closely intertwined with the Anh family. Grandfather Anh had connections to the French colonial rulers.
It was the French who, since the 18th century, Arabica and later Robusta plants to their colony of Indochina. The French colonial rulers ran their own coffee plantations on the fertile volcanic soil in the central highlands of Vietnam, company owner and Trâm Anh's father, Vũ Hùng Anh, told us.
Grandfather Anh also learned to roast coffee in a French roastery. At that time, the roasting machines were still operated by hand. The French also came up with the original recipe using Bretel butter and high-quality alcohol - rum or Hennessy Cognac.
Trâm Anh coffee with Hennessy and Bretel butter according to the original French recipe – soon also in our shop!
When the French were forced to leave Vietnam in 1954 after their defeat in the Battle of Dien Bien Phủ, Grandfather Anh started his own roasting company. Vũ learned coffee roasting from Grandfather Anh and also taught it to his wife, Thị Ánh Tuyết, Trâm Anh's mother.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the family – at that time without a company name – exported their Vietnamese coffee to France despite the Iron Curtain.
The Anhs now run five of their own cafés and sell their popular coffee to other cafés all over the country. For larger orders, mother Thị is on her feet from four in the morning until eight in the evening to check everything. After all, if her daughter's name is on the packaging, the quality has to be right. To stay fit, she drinks exactly three coffees a day, she tells us, no more, no less. Vũ, on the other hand, usually only drinks two coffees a day, one hot with condensed milk in the morning and one black and iced in the evening.
One of the more modern and one slightly older roasting machines in the roasting hall of Trâm Anh.
In addition to their own coffee, the Anhs also roast coffee for small cafés and other partners in their roastery. Their special roast with rum or cognac is of course particularly popular. But the roasting machine itself also plays a big role, says Vũ. Many customers only want their coffee to be roasted in a very specific machine. That's why the roasting hall has modern roasting machines as well as well-maintained older machines. Each of these roasting machines has its own character and produces a unique coffee, he tells us. It is very difficult to imitate this unique taste on another machine.
Then Vũ and Thị want to show us a very special roasting machine in the yard. Since it is operated with an open fire, it cannot be in the hall. You will find out what this special fire roasting is all about in the next part.
