Vietnamese Coffee Brands: Home of Strong Coffee

Looking for Vietnamese coffee brands? The ones that taste like Vietnam are strong, sweet, and built on Robusta.

Forget a vague “Vietnamese style” blend.

Four names do the job:

1. Trung Nguyen G7 is the Đắk Lắk 3-in-1
2. Vinacafe is the original Biên Hòa instant
3. Nguyen Coffee Supply is Dalat Arabica whole bean so you can grind it.
4. Excelsa Coffee is the Quảng Trị whole bean, a Liberica variety you can grind.

Here’s the deal:

Pick a bag in the table, or keep reading for Vietnamese beans, the provinces where they are grown, and maps of each region.

Pick	What it is	Region tie	Best for
Trung Nguyen G7 3-in-1	100 sticks, coffee plus creamer and sugar	Đắk Lắk brand, Buôn Ma Thuột	Sweet milky cup in one minute
Vinacafe 3-in-1	100 sticks, coffee plus creamer and sugar	Biên Hòa, Đồng Nai	The older instant style
Nguyen Dalat Arabica	12 oz dark roast whole bean	Đà Lạt, Lâm Đồng	Grinding beans at home
Excelsa Coffee	12 oz medium roast whole bean	Quảng Trị	Dark fruit and chocolate

These four come from regions talked about in more detail on this page:

• Đắk Lắk
• Buôn Ma Thuột
• Biên Hòa
• Đồng Nai
• Đà Lạt
• Lâm Đồng
• Quảng Trị

Vietnamese Coffee Bean Varietals

Like most of the rest of the world, Vietnam grows Arabica and Robusta coffee beans. Unlike the rest of the world, the vast majority of their coffee beans are Robusta.

Two plants that are almost never heard of in the coffee bean growing industry are Liberica and Catimor. They account for less than 1% of the total coffee beans that are produced worldwide.

However, Vietnam is one of the regions that has taken to growing Liberica and Catimor.

USDA’s May 2026 Vietnam coffee annual puts the 2025/26 crop at 31.7 million bags: about 30.5 million Robusta and about 1.2 million Arabica. That report is the current count.

Robusta

Robusta is by far the most grown coffee bean in Vietnam. Worldwide, Robusta is not the coffee bean of choice due to its typically bitter taste.

The best Vietnamese coffee brands have taken to growing this bean as a sort of niche coffee bean market.

The main reason Robusta is sold at all is its very high caffeine content.

Vietnamese growers make their living by marketing their beans as beans with a kick (due to the high caffeine content). Or they sell to coffee companies that mix the Robusta beans in with a much better tasting, but lower caffeine content, coffee bean.

Blends like this get the best of coffee marketing by being able to give folks that early morning pick me up, but still with great taste. After all, many of us only start drinking coffee to wake us up in the morning, or to keep us up and focused late at night.

A food-science study of green coffee extracts found Robusta extracts held about twice the caffeine of Arabica extracts. That is a bean fact, not a promise that one cup will wire you for the day. If caffeine bothers you, or you are pregnant, treat a strong Robusta cup like any high-caffeine coffee and talk with your doctor. This page is not medical advice. The study is here. For more on this species, see our Robusta coffee brands guide.

Arabica

In Vietnam, the coffee bean growing conditions are good. But they are not as good as you find in places like Colombia, Costa Rica, Brazil, and other places.

This makes it difficult for Vietnam to compete with those other regions for Arabica coffee beans. The result is that Vietnam has found its own niche with Robusta.

Vietnam is located in a great location for temperature conditions. But coffee drinkers around the world seem to agree that coffee beans that are grown at higher altitudes do better at producing higher quality coffee beans. At least in terms of taste.

The altitude and shielding of the sun by nearby mountains keeps the temperatures from staying too warm during a typical summer day. Also, the higher elevations typically include volcanic regions that provide mineral rich soils that coffee beans do better in.

Vietnam has the climate. But the elevations don’t go as high in terms of altitude. So the Arabica coffee beans don’t turn out as tasty as those grown in other regions.

Our Colombian coffee brands page is the contrast: higher Andean slopes, brighter acids, less of the Robusta punch.

Liberica

The Liberica coffee plant, also known as Chari and Excelsa in Vietnam, originated in Liberia, West Africa.

Traits of the Liberica plant are that it lives a long time and generates twice as much fruit as an Arabica plant.

The coffee beans that are produced are typically much stronger in taste than Arabica. Recommendations are often to cut the taste by mixing in 70 to 75 percent Arabica beans with your Liberica beans.

In the 1920s, a disease named Hemileia vastatrix, also called coffee rust because of the color of the leaves that were affected by the disease, ravaged Asia.

During that time Arabica coffee plants were dying left and right. Liberica plants were brought in because they were more resistant to diseases like coffee rust than the Arabica planted then.

Catimor

The Catimor coffee plant was created by cross breeding Timor and Caturra coffee plants in Portugal in 1959.

The Timor coffee plant was used because of its resistance to coffee rust disease. The Caturra plant was used because of its ability to yield high volume crops and high quality beans.

The Timor coffee plant is a hybrid of Arabica and Robusta. The creation of this plant wasn’t a planned occurrence. It actually just occurred naturally in the “wild” on the East Asian island of Timor.

The Catimor does very well in lower elevations, as long as there is enough rainfall.

Even though the Caturra parent of the Catimor produces high quality beans, the Catimor is considered a lesser quality cup. So, we haven’t included any Catimor coffee beans in our recommendations.

Also, the Catimor bean is reported to produce well in the first 10 years or so. But it is reported to have a fairly large drop off in production after 10 years.

Best Vietnamese Instant Coffee

Because the Vietnamese climate was so conducive to growing Robusta coffee beans, Vietnam’s farmers saw the need to promote and market their best Vietnamese coffee brands as something that “has a kick” or that can “keep you awake” or “wake you up.”

The best Vietnamese coffee brands thrived with campaigns like this. One of the early adopters of this strategy was a French engineer named Marcel Coronel.

Other Vietnamese coffee brands followed suit once they realized that the rest of the world might not choose their Robusta flavor over the more popular Arabica.

But they would choose Robusta products with the promise of higher caffeine content to keep you awake and alert. And, with that extra alertness, to be more productive at work.

Coronel

A French engineer named Marcel Coronel and his wife Tran Thi Khanh started their company in 1968. It produced instant coffee.

The Coronel is considered one of the first instant coffee companies in Vietnam.

The company was eventually renamed Vinacafé Biên Hòa JSC.

During the Vietnam War, Marcel fled Vietnam. The government confiscated the farm and continued the production of instant coffee.

Even today, this instant coffee plant is unique in design, and supplies the instant coffee market with a quality instant coffee option. The Vinacafé coffee products from the Biên Hòa factory have won the “Highest Quality Vietnamese Product” title since 1995.

Where Vietnamese Coffee Is Grown

There are three major areas in Vietnam where coffee beans are farmed:

• North Central Coast
• Central Highlands
• Southeast

Each of these larger Vietnam regions has its own characteristics. There is some variation within each sub-region.

USDA’s 2025 coffee annual says the Central Highlands (Đắk Lắk, Lâm Đồng, Đăk Nông, Gia Lai, and Kon Tum) hold about 92 percent of the coffee area and about 90 percent of the crop. That report is the source for the share. The province notes below are the local picture.

North Central Coast

Quảng Trị is a smaller coffee area, and it belongs to the North Central Coast. That is the region name for this coastal province, with the sea to the east and Laos to the west. The coffee grows on the Khe Sanh plateau in the Trường Sơn mountains, west of the coastal plain. The Central Highlands are a different place: the Tây Nguyên plateau of Đắk Lắk, Gia Lai, Lâm Đồng, Đăk Nông, and Kon Tum.

Quảng Trị Province

Khe Sanh is the name many Americans remember from 1968. Coffee growers kept that name for a red basalt plateau.

Arabica has been planted there since 1926, and the Khe Sanh Coffee Plantation opened in 1978.

Vietnam’s science ministry records both dates.

On November 4, 2025, the Intellectual Property Office registered Khe Sanh as a geographical indication for Arabica: green beans, roasted beans, and ground coffee. The zone covers Hướng Phùng, the Khe Sanh towns, and the rest of the old Hướng Hóa district.

Arabica usually wants more elevation than the 450 to 680 meters this plateau offers. Cool air, around 20 to 23°C, and a wide day-to-night swing are what these trees get instead.

The other tree on those hills is cà phê mít, jackfruit coffee, named for the smell of the ripe fruit. Around Hướng Phùng, local roasters say many of those tall trees were left standing as windbreaks. A bag from this province may say Liberica or Excelsa. Farmers often lump those close relatives together. The Khe Sanh geographical indication is the Arabica.

Central Highlands

The Central Highlands is where most of the coffee farms exist in Vietnam.

About 90% of the coffee production coming out of Vietnam comes from this region.

Here are the top 4 sub-regions and what is unique about each of them.

Đắk Lắk Province

The Đắk Lắk Province is approximately 300 km northeast of the Vietnam city of Hồ Chí Minh City.

Famous for their red soil, the Đắk Lắk Province includes countless coffee plantations.

Many consider Trung Nguyen Coffee the most famous coffee in Vietnam. The Đắk Lắk Province includes “Trung Nguyen Coffee Village.”

The Trung Nguyen Coffee plantation is considered by many to be the most famous coffee farm in Vietnam. It’s a very popular tourist attraction.

Many businesses (both local and foreign) participate in an annual festival called the Buôn Ma Thuột Coffee Festival.

The Buôn Ma Thuột Coffee Festival includes the Vietnam Coffee Expo with over 600 booths that display coffee related products, like seedlings, fertilizers, and equipment.

For the Đắk Lắk Province, this festival is special to people of the province because it celebrates the anniversary (over 100 years) of the creation and development of Buôn Ma Thuột City and the 40th year of Buôn Ma Thuột’s victory and Đắk Lắk’s liberation.

Gia Lai Province

Just north of the Đắk Lắk Province, the Gia Lai Province produces the 4th largest amount of coffee beans of the provinces in Vietnam.

Gia Lai and other provinces are all starting to convert some of their production of coffee beans to black pepper due to prices for black pepper increasing eight times faster than that of coffee beans.

In terms of numbers, as of 2010, the agricultural production for Gia Lai was 77,000 hectares of coffee.

Other major agricultural long-term industrial crops in Gia Lai are rubber, cashews, sugarcane, corn, cassava, tobacco, and the now increasing crop of black pepper.

The Gia Lai Province is also known for its production of cattle.

Lâm Đồng Province

The Lâm Đồng Province is the southernmost province in what might be considered the Central Highlands.

Lâm Đồng is also closer to the eastern shores than the other Central Highland provinces that grow coffee.

One of the most beautiful attractions you could ever see is Elephant Falls in the heart of the Lâm Đồng Province. This waterfall is nestled in the valley of a mountain pass in the middle of a heavily farmed region of Lâm Đồng Province.

While Robusta beans do still rule Vietnam, Lâm Đồng Province is one of the regions that also grows a fair amount of Arabica.

If you want a taste of true Lâm Đồng Province coffee, and want to see Elephant Falls, you can drop by Reng Reng Café on the way. This little coffee shop boasts the best tasting coffee in Vietnam. They use coffee beans grown in nearby Đà Lạt and roast the beans in the shop.

You can’t get any fresher than that.

Coffee is one of the most popular farming products in Lâm Đồng. But they also produce and export a large amount of tea and vegetables.

Đăk Nông Province

The Đăk Nông Province is the 3rd most productive coffee bean province in Vietnam.

This region grows both Arabica and Robusta. However, the far majority of beans in Vietnamese coffee brands are Robusta.

The growing climate in the Đăk Nông Province is not too bad, with the rainy season occurring from May through October. And the elevation of a little over 1500 feet isn’t too bad for the coffee farmers.

One of the problems with the quality of the coffee bean growing in the Đăk Nông Province (and in other Vietnam provinces) is that the farmers don’t have enough money to truly support a quality cycle of coffee bean growing.

What I mean by that is that many farmers don’t have enough money to spend for the fertilizers they really need. Or they have to pick the coffee beans early to pay off debts. Many of these factors result in under producing crops, or low quality crops.

The 3EM project is trying to change all of that by helping to fund farmers and to also teach them how they can produce higher yields and higher quality.

Some other features of the Đăk Nông Province are two beautiful waterfalls:

• Ba Tang Waterfall
• Dieu Thanh Waterfall

In this video you can really get a feel for Đăk Nông Province:

Watch this Video on YouTube

Southeast

The Southeast region of Vietnam does produce some coffee beans. Here is the list of the provinces that are the primary growing provinces in that part of Vietnam:

• Đồng Nai Province
• Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu
• Bình Phước

While each of these regions does have some coffee plantations, the amount of coffee beans they produce is dwarfed by the four regions in the Vietnamese Highlands.

Best Vietnamese Coffee Brands

These are the bags that match the regions above and that you can buy now.

Best Đắk Lắk Coffee Brand

Đắk Lắk Province produces the largest percentage of coffee beans in Vietnam. So it’s no surprise that one of the best known Vietnamese coffee brands is from Đắk Lắk.

Trung Nguyen G7 3-in-1 Instant Coffee

Dang Le Nguyen Vu started Trung Nguyen in Buôn Ma Thuột in 1996.

G7 arrived on November 23, 2003, at a festival inside Independence Palace in Hồ Chí Minh City. Trung Nguyen says the name is short for “Group of Industrial Countries,” the seven rich economies it wanted this instant coffee to reach.

At that palace launch, the company ran a blind taste test against a famous imported instant and says 89 percent of tasters picked G7.

The stick is still the sweet 3-in-1: coffee, non-dairy creamer, and sugar. A hundred of them come in the bag. Stir one into hot water and you get a small milky cup, closer to cà phê sữa than to black diner coffee.

Who it’s for: people who want Vietnamese coffee as a sweet milk coffee, at a desk or in a hotel, without a filter.

Skip it: if you love Arabica sweetness or aren’t looking for a caffeine jolt. Or if you want black coffee, or if you are avoiding added sugar and creamer.

The Original Vietnamese Instant Coffee Brand

Even today, the original Coronel company is still producing instant coffee at the Biên Hòa factories.

The 3-in-1 stick is the cup that factory still sells, coffee with creamer and sugar already in the packet.

Vinacafe Instant Coffee 3-in-1

Marcel Coronel and Tran Thi Khanh opened the Biên Hòa plant in 1968.

After the war the factory stayed in Vietnamese hands. The company that grew out of it, Vinacafe Biên Hòa, later became part of Masan, one of the country’s largest food groups.

These sticks still carry the Vinacafe name.

The stick is the sweet 3-in-1: coffee, creamer, and sugar, a hundred of them. The cup is the Biên Hòa style, milky and easy, not a straight black Robusta.

Who it’s for: drinkers who want the original Biên Hòa instant, milky and already sweetened.

Skip it if you want whole beans, or if you want coffee without sugar and creamer already in the packet.

Best Lâm Đồng Coffee Brand

Đà Lạt is one of the higher elevation farming communities in Vietnam. The town sits around 1,500 meters, near 4,900 feet, which is why Arabica shows up here when most of Vietnam is Robusta. Britannica’s Đà Lạt entry is the geography check.

Nguyen Coffee Supply Dalat Arabica

Sahra Nguyen started Nguyen Coffee Supply in Brooklyn in 2018.

She is the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who left by boat, and the company calls itself America’s first specialty Vietnamese coffee roaster.

Most Vietnamese coffee on the world market is Robusta sold as a blending bean.

This bag is the other Vietnam: Dalat Arabica, dark roasted in Brooklyn, from the high town in Lâm Đồng.

The brand describes this roast as ganache and strawberry. Grind it for a phin, drip, or espresso. Twelve ounces is a couple of weeks of home cups, not a café pallet. The beans are already roasted.

Who it’s for: people who want Vietnamese coffee as whole beans, and who like dark roast Arabica more than a presweetened stick.

Skip it if you want Robusta bitterness, a 3-in-1, or green beans to roast at home.

Best Quảng Trị Coffee Brand

Quảng Trị sits north of the Central Highlands. Specialty bags from this province are often Excelsa, the tall-tree coffee Vietnam calls cà phê mít.

Excelsa Coffee Vietnam Medium Roast

Olin Patterson and Michael Mazzotta started Excelsa Coffee in San Diego to import and roast only this variety.

This bag is their washed Quảng Trị lot, medium roasted there, 12 ounces of whole beans.

Until 2006, Excelsa was treated as its own species. Coffee Review now classes it as a Liberica variety.

Their August 2026 cupping of this Vietnam lot called it deep-toned, with black cherry, baker’s chocolate, and cedar.

Who it’s for: people who want Vietnamese coffee as whole beans, with dark fruit and chocolate, from a Liberica variety.

Skip it if you want a sweet milk coffee from a packet, or green beans to roast at home.

How to Drink Vietnamese Coffee at Home

The café drink is cà phê sữa đá: strong Robusta, sweetened condensed milk, often poured over ice. A phin is a small metal filter that sits on the cup. You add grounds, pour a little hot water to bloom, then fill the chamber and wait. It is slow on purpose.

A 3-in-1 stick is that sweet cup with the waiting removed. Use less water if you want it stronger, and expect sugar. Condensed milk is optional. The beans do not need it the way a harsh Robusta sometimes does.

Vietnamese Coffee Questions

Is Vietnamese coffee stronger than other coffee?

These coffee beans often are. Robusta, which is almost the whole Vietnamese crop, tested higher in caffeine than Arabica in the green-coffee extract study linked above. Brew strength still depends on dose and water. A 3-in-1 mixed into a big mug can taste weaker than a short phin of straight Robusta. “Strong” here means body and caffeine in the bean, not a medical energy claim.

What does 3-in-1 mean?

Coffee, non-dairy creamer, and sugar are already in the stick. You add hot water. If you want to control the sugar, buy whole beans and add milk yourself.

Is Đà Lạt coffee Arabica or Robusta?

Both grow in Lâm Đồng. Robusta still dominates Vietnam. Đà Lạt’s extra elevation is why Arabica shows up on serious bags from that town.

Related Articles

For more information about other coffee beans and where they grow, read this article about Coffee Bean Locations.

With Robusta coffee beans being the far majority of the beans grown in Vietnam, you might find our article about Robusta Coffee Brands interesting.

If you want the high-elevation Arabica contrast, see Colombian Coffee Brands.

By The Coffee Bean Menu Staff | Last updated: October 2026