Einspänner Recipe: How to Make Viennese Coffee the Authentic Way

What an Einspänner actually is

Einspänner is German for a carriage pulled by a single horse, and the drink borrowed the name from the cab drivers of nineteenth-century Vienna. The story goes that a driver needed one hand for the reins and one for the glass, and that the cream on top acted as a lid, keeping the coffee warm on cold days. Wikipedia and Austrian coffee houses tell it the same way. Nobody can pin it to a year, so I will not either.

The formula is three things: black coffee, whipped cream, a glass. Powdered sugar comes separately, and the drink is not stirred. You sip hot coffee through a cap of cold cream that melts slowly as you go. That temperature contrast is the point; the coffee is almost secondary to it.

It belongs to a wider heritage. According to the City of Vienna, Viennese coffee house culture was added to Austria's national inventory of intangible cultural heritage in 2011, and the repertoire runs to around fifty preparations, from the Melange to the Fiaker, which is black coffee with rum.

Ingredients and equipment (one glass)

With so few components, there is nowhere to hide a weak one. For a single glass:

• 40 to 60 ml of very hot mokka or double espresso (about 18 g of ground coffee for a double)
• about 60 ml of cold full-fat liquid cream, at least 32% fat
• about half a teaspoon of powdered sugar for the cream
• extra powdered sugar to serve on the side (optional)
• a little cocoa powder to dust on top (optional)

You will also need a chilled whisk and bowl (15 minutes in the fridge is enough), or a cream whipper, an espresso machine or a moka pot, and a spoon for laying the cream on gently. Light cream at 15 or 20% fat will not whip firmly enough. Aim for 32% or above, as the Viennese reference recipes do.

The method, step by step

Order matters here. Cream goes first because it can wait in the cold; the coffee cannot wait at all.

1. Get everything cold. Chill the bowl and whisk for 15 minutes and keep the cream in the fridge until the last moment.
2. Preheat the glass. Fill the handled glass with hot water, leave it for a minute, then pour it out completely.
3. Whip the cream. Whisk about 60 ml of full-fat cream with half a teaspoon of powdered sugar until soft but stable, stopping before it turns to butter. Return it to the cold.
4. Pull the coffee. Make 40 to 60 ml of mokka or double espresso, using about 18 g of ground coffee for the double, and pour it straight into the hot glass so that one third stays empty.
5. Lay on the cream. Spoon the cream on top, or use a whipper, until it covers the whole surface without mixing into the coffee.
6. Serve at once. Serve immediately with powdered sugar on the side and drink without stirring, letting the hot coffee pass through the cold cream.

Variations and common mix-ups

A double Einspänner simply swaps the small mokka for a larger one, so you need a bigger glass and nothing else changes. The Fiaker, another Viennese classic, is black coffee with rum.

The mix-up I hear most is with the French "café viennois", which Wikipedia (French edition) defines as a light espresso under frothed milk and whipped cream, finished with cocoa powder or chocolate shavings. In Vienna itself, the everyday milky coffee is the Wiener Melange: coffee topped with a cap of frothed milk, dated to about 1830 and sometimes finished with whipped cream in traditional houses. The Einspänner has no milk, no chocolate and no milk foam.

The drink has also travelled. Coffee shops in South Korea have built on the idea with cream-topped iced coffee and even matcha versions, and those have since reached the United States. They descend from the Viennese concept; they are not the recipe.

Mistakes that spoil the glass

• Warm cream or a warm bowl. It refuses to whip, or collapses within two minutes. Everything must be cold except the coffee.
• Over-whipped cream. Whisked towards butter, it will not spread and sits on top like a plug. Stop when it holds on the whisk yet stays soft.
• A cold glass. The coffee loses heat on contact, the whole drink turns lukewarm and the contrast disappears.
• Too much sugar in the cream. The sweeter the cream, the less the bitterness of the coffee does its job. Keep powdered sugar in a small dish alongside.
• Stirring. Once mixed, an Einspänner is just a creamy coffee.
• Weak coffee. Diluted filter coffee vanishes under the cream. A mokka or double espresso from a medium to dark roast holds up.

To sharpen the coffee side, see our home espresso guide or the moka pot brew guide.

Frequently asked questions about Viennese coffee

Sources

• Wikipedia (de), Einspänner (Kaffee)
• Wikipedia (en), Einspänner
• Fabia Kaffee, Einspänner: definition, preparation, history
• Kaffeepioniere, Wiener Einspänner (quantities, cream at 32% minimum)
• Top-Kaffee, Wiener Einspänner (coffee and cream volumes)
• Wikipedia (fr), Café viennois
• Wikipedia (de), Wiener Melange
• City of Vienna, Viennese coffee culture (2011 inventory)