What is the difference in ingredient that makes ‘white coffee’ in Malaysia and Singapore taste different from the regular hawker centre coffee?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “what does white coffee taste like“
What is the difference in ingredient that makes ‘white coffee’ in Malaysia and Singapore taste different from the regular hawker centre coffee?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “what does white coffee taste like“
I’m flattered you think I’m an expert on coffee.
Why, just the other say, my friend asked me to order the “smallest” coffee at a Starbucks while she grabbed a table.
This was what I saw: Tall | Grande | Venti
I thought, Well, it’s obviously in descending order, because
Tall must mean tall.
Grande is obviously medium.
Venti is obviously the smallest size.
Imagine my surprise when we had to borrow a trolley to move the Venti-sized coffee to our table. Then, we needed a forklift to hoist the coffee to table level and slide it onto the surface.
What did my friend have to say about all this?
I thought I said I wanted the small.
Anyway, the secret sauce to your question is…
White coffee is a coffee drink which originated in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia. The beans are roasted with margarine, and the served with condensed milk. The beans are not actually white, but it gets its name from the light color of drink due to the condensed milk.
The vendors are probably using an instant version of Ipoh resulting in the difference in taste.
TL;DR at the end.
Allow me to answer this a little different from the rest.
Coffees in South East Asia tend to be of the Robusta variety. In the past, it was commonly recognised that Robusta cultivars were inferior to Arabica in flavour. With many specialised cultivars springing up all over SEA in the recent years, the dictum can no longer hold true.
Level of roast
Even amongst robusta drinkers in SEA, the roasting recipes differ. Commonly, for coffees in regular coffeeshops in both Singapore and Malaysia, the beans are often of the inexpensive and darker roast. Colloquially known as Nanyang Coffee . These beans are roasted with sugar and creamery butter/margarine to give it an extra caramel aroma with that mild oily finish.
Beans roasted with sugar and margarine to a dark roast
The roasted sugar attracts bees, and very frequently they form colonies of 10,000 to 30,000 bees within minutes. Dealing with bees is a weekly affair. I used to manage an industrial kitchen in the East where the top floor of the industrial kitchen were mainly filled with bees, roasters, and flour sellers. An explosive combination, literally.
White coffee in Malaysia refer to the colour of the drink rather than the commonly understood ‘White Coffee beans’ in the roaster’s parlance .
Malaysian white coffee and traditional Nanyang Kopi ‘O (black)
Malaysian white coffee differs from regular Nanyang coffee in the roasting technique which includes a more generous slab of margarine (palm oil derived) for that added buttery smoothness. Some roasters do without sugar to reduce the acrid characteristic of the Nanyang style roast.
White coffee can be found in two forms. Freshly brewed from beans (coffeeshops) or powdered recipes (certain retail chains & instant 3 in 1 coffee).
While the tastes of the two are different, both coffees include the use of powdered non-dairy coffee creamer, usually the sort that is derived specifically from palm olein .
The brewed version uses a mixture of sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk with added non-dairy creamer. The powdered form uses generous amounts of creamer and other ingredients for the froth.
TL;DR
That signature froth and smooth fatty texture of the coffee is the result of the added margarine in roasting, and the use of rich non-dairy creamers.