Dalgona Coffee: How to Make Whipped Coffee, and Why It Holds Its Shape

Dalgona coffee is instant coffee, sugar and hot water, in equal parts, whipped into a stiff, toffee-coloured foam and spooned over a glass of milk. To make it, put two tablespoons each of instant coffee, sugar and hot water in a bowl, whip until the mixture is pale, glossy and holds soft peaks, then spoon it over cold milk with ice — or hot milk — and stir before drinking.

It looks like a café drink and takes three cupboard ingredients. It also only works with instant coffee, for reasons that explain a good deal about coffee foams in general.

The recipe

1. Put the coffee, sugar and hot water in a deep bowl or a tall jug — the volume will grow several times over.
2. Whip. An electric hand mixer or a handheld milk frother takes a few minutes; a whisk by hand takes considerably longer and a strong arm. Keep going until the mixture lightens from dark brown to a pale caramel colour and holds a soft peak when you lift the whisk.
3. Fill a glass with milk, over ice or warmed.
4. Spoon the foam on top. Stir it in before you drink; the foam on its own is intensely strong and sweet.

Why it whips — and why only instant coffee works

Whipping beats air into a liquid. Whether the bubbles survive depends on two things: what coats the bubbles, and how thick the liquid between them is.

What coats the bubbles. Coffee contains its own foam stabilisers. In their review of espresso foam, Illy and Navarini identified proteins, polysaccharides and melanoidins — the brown compounds formed during roasting — as the components that hold coffee bubbles together, and lipids as the main thing that breaks them. Instant coffee is concentrated coffee solids with almost all the oil gone: the USDA lists instant coffee powder at about 12 g of protein but only 0.5 g of fat per 100 g.

How thick the liquid is. Two tablespoons of instant coffee and two of sugar in two tablespoons of water make an extremely concentrated syrup. That thickness slows the drainage of liquid from between the bubbles — the process that makes any foam collapse — so the foam stays stiff for a long time.

Brewed coffee fails on both counts. Even espresso is only around 6–12% dissolved coffee and carries coffee oils, so it froths and then subsides. You cannot whip a filter coffee into peaks because there is too little in it to build the walls of the bubbles.

The sugar matters as much as the coffee. Without it, instant coffee and water will still froth, but the liquid between the bubbles is thinner and the foam softens and collapses sooner. High-intensity sweeteners, used in tiny amounts, add sweetness without that thickness. If you want less sugar, reduce it rather than leaving it out.

The same principle underpins the Greek frappé, in which instant coffee, sugar and a little cold water are shaken into a lighter foam and topped up with ice and water.

How strong is a dalgona coffee?

Stronger than it looks. The USDA lists instant coffee powder at about 31 mg of caffeine per gram and about 1 g per teaspoon, so two tablespoons — six teaspoons — is roughly 6 g of coffee and 190 mg of caffeine. That is about as much as three ordinary cups of instant coffee made with 2 g each, in a single glass.

The European Food Safety Authority considers single doses of up to 200 mg of caffeine safe for healthy adults, and up to 400 mg spread across the day. A full dalgona coffee sits just under that single-dose limit. Many recipes make the foam for two, and splitting it is sensible — especially in the afternoon, as the coffee and sleep guide explains.

The sugar is just as concentrated. A tablespoon of granulated sugar weighs about 12.6 g, so two tablespoons are about 25 g of sugar and 97 kcal. The World Health Organization recommends keeping free sugars below 10% of daily energy and suggests that going below about 25 g a day brings further benefits; one full dalgona coffee uses all of it. With 240 ml of whole milk (about 150 kcal), the whole glass comes to roughly 250 kcal.

Where it came from

The drink is older than its name. It is credited to Leong Kam Hon, a former shipwright who opened a small café, later called Hon Kee, in Coloane, Macau. He recalls first making it in 1997 at the request of a tourist couple, and calls it "hand-beaten coffee". It gained its first wave of fame in 2004, when the actor Chow Yun-fat visited and praised it, and visitors began asking for "Chow Yun-fat coffee".

The name came in January 2020, when the South Korean actor Jung Il-woo ordered the drink at the same café on the TV show Stars' Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant and said it tasted like dalgona, a Korean street candy made from melted sugar and baking soda that looks like honeycomb toffee. As South Koreans stayed home under social-distancing rules, they began making it themselves — it was nicknamed "quarantine coffee" — and under the hashtag #dalgonacoffeechallenge the videos spread to TikTok and around the world in March 2020.

Similar drinks exist elsewhere. Several outlets noted its resemblance to India's beaten coffee, phenti hui coffee, in which milk is poured onto the whipped coffee rather than the foam being spooned onto milk, and to the Greek frappé.

Variations

• Hot dalgona — spoon the foam over hot milk; it melts in faster.
• Mocha dalgona — whip a teaspoon of cocoa into the foam.
• Dairy-free — oat milk suits the toffee flavour; the plant milk guide compares the options.
• Half-strength — make the full amount of foam and use half per glass; it keeps in the fridge for a while.

For more about the coffee itself, see the instant coffee guide.