Hand-beaten coffee (手打咖啡), a.k.a. dalgona coffee or whipped coffee, is a kind of hot / iced milk coffee that is created differently from other caffè lattes and offers different taste experience.
It is interesting how dalgona coffee got its present name. The beverage was created by a Macanese in Macau, at Hon Kee Cafe, and came to be known as “Chow Yun-fat coffee” after being served to Chow Yun-fat, a famous Hong Kong star actor, in 2004. The maker himself simply called the drink as “手打咖啡” (translated as “hand-beaten coffee”) and serves it in his cafe. Some 15 years later, Jung II-woo, a South Korean actor, tried the coffee and claimed that it has similar taste and appearance to dalgona, a type of Korean sugar candy. And the name “dalgona coffee” was coined. (Reference: Wikipedia)
So, despite having a Korean reference in its name, dalgona coffee has nothing to do with Korea / Korean, although the name has gained much popularity over the other names.
Unlike hot or iced cappuccino or other lattes where frothed milk is added to espresso, dalgona coffee has frothed coffee added onto milk. Yes, the coffee is whipped (hence, called “whipped coffee”) until it frothed, not the milk.
The sweetened coffee — made by adding sugar to instant coffee powder and hot water in equal parts — is whisked or whipped for around 400 times until it frothed or became a mass of small bubbles. The rich and creamy frothed coffee is then added on top of milk to form a dual-layer beverage and served.
Although dalgona coffee can be drank as it is without stirring or stirred well before drinking, the taste experiences are different. Stirring it will give more consistency in taste whereas not stirring, and drinking without using a straw, will result in taking in the gooey frothed coffee with undiluted sweetness first before the milk rush into the mouth.
If you are interested to know more about dalgona coffee or want to try making it at home, watch this YouTube video by James Hoffmann: Dalgona Coffee – Explained and Upgraded.
Or if you simply want to try the iced coffee, Ah Ma TeoChew Kuih in Johor Bahru is a nice place to taste it with traditional Teochew pastries — I have my first dalgona coffee at the cafe too and it is the only cafe in Johor Bahru to serve it (so far).
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If you are in Macau, find Hon Kee Cafe in Coloane Village to try both their hot and iced versions of the hand-beaten coffee — keep in mind that it is not called “dalgona coffee” in Macau.
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