Making Whipped Coffee at Home

Whipped coffee is the latest coffee craze to sweep a world crying out for caffeine. Move over, nitro-cold brews and unicorn frappuccinos, there’s a new sheriff in town, and it’s one that you can make at home!

Dalgona Coffee Challenge

You may be familiar with whipped coffee from the #dalgonacoffeechallenge that has recently been trending on Twitter and Tiktok, but you may not know the origin. Drinks made of coffee, sugar, and milk or cream beat into a mousse-like state are not a new creation; cultures such as India and Greece have been drinking traditional beverages similar to whipped coffee for years.

Originated in South Korea

However, the version of this sweet treat that millions of quarantined coffee drinkers have been attempting to duplicate was first popularized in South Korea before spreading online around the world. South Korean actor Jung Il-woo compared the taste of the drink to dalgona, a type of Korean toffee, and the name stuck.

It’s easy to imagine why adventurous home baristas all over the world have become enchanted with the idea of whipped coffee. From its photo-worthy texture and color to its sweet kick of caffeine and sugar, dalgona coffee is a fun way to shake up your coffee experience at home.

Whipped Coffee Recipe

Theoretically, this is an easy recipe to try: there are only three ingredients. Combine equal parts instant coffee, hot water, and sugar (the typical amount is two tablespoons, but go with your taste buds), then mix with a blender or whisk until stiff peaks form—layer over milk and voila; a tasty treat for your mouth and your Twitter feed.

Customize Your Coffee

However, two problems seem immediately evident to the discerning connoisseur of caffeine. Firstly, for those of us watching our figure, a drink consisting of sugar and milk may bring us some pause. But there is no need to sit out the creamy coffee craze because of these concerns. One of the beauties of making dalgona coffee at home is that it becomes infinitely customizable. There are sugar-free variants, oat milk variants, and even keto versions if that’s your game. Any way you like it, there is a way to make it happen.

Including a variation that solves our second problem. We know that you, as a consumer of Reveille specialty coffee, are a person of taste who enjoys coffee that not only tastes good but is ethically grown and sourced. These descriptors, unfortunately, do not describe most instant coffees. How, then, can one take part in this dalgona adventure if all you have on hand is Reveille whole bean or pre-ground specialty coffee?

Using Ethical Coffee to Make Dalgona

We here at Reveille are not only committed to fine coffees but in finding ways for our customers to participate in all of the exciting things that coffee has to offer. Therefore, we found a way that you can still enjoy your Reveille coffee but whipped to perfection. A few different people have also tried this, but this is how we made it work.

A caveat: if your goal in making whipped coffee is an Instagram-worthy photo and trying something new, it may be worth it for you to run out and grab some instant coffee for this trend. If, however, you’re committed and willing to take some time, whipped drip coffee is within your grasp.

Several Ways to Make Dalgona

Several ways are floating around the web to make dalgona with drip coffee. Using regular brewed coffee rather than the usual instant coffee and hot water combination does not work. The strength of the brew is not enough to produce the whipped texture necessary for dalgona coffee. Therefore, this experiment failed and only resulted in a kitchen splattered with sticky coffee.

However, a recipe from Simply Mama Cooks bore more fruit. Fair warning: this method is time-consuming and does produce a highly caffeinated product. We’ll go through how we did it in the rest of the post, but for a step by step video from the source, click here.

Step 1:

Start with three cups of regularly brewed drip coffee in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Emphasis on the high in medium-high; you want your coffee simmering. The coffee will begin to bubble and evaporate, which will, in turn, give you the concentrate that you’re going to need.

Step 2: Add Sugar

After fifteen minutes, add your sugar. The recipe recommends four tablespoons of sugar; however, we didn’t get results until adding seven. Start at four tablespoons and monitor closely, ensuring that the sugar doesn’t burn, and the coffee continues to reduce to a syrup-like texture. This should take about an additional fifteen minutes but use your judgment.

Step 3: Whisk

At the end of these thirty minutes, you should have a small amount of strongly concentrated coffee syrup. Using a milk frother, stand mixer, or even a whisk if you feel genuinely committed to taking your time, whip your coffee until you achieve the desired result. Usually, you’re looking for stiff peaks, but what with one thing and another, the best texture we could make was akin to a milkshake.

Step 4: Enjoy Your Coffee

Nonetheless, this recipe produced a delicious whipped coffee without having to buy instant. Try it out and see if this method will work for you! Hit us up on Instagram and let us know how it turns out.

We look forward to seeing what you can do with a little time, effort, and Reveille specialty coffee.