Mexican clay-pot coffee (café de olla)
Café de olla, Mexican pot coffee, is boiled with cinnamon and raw cane sugar in a clay pot, then served strained through a sieve into small clay pots. It is a sweet, spiced decoction, meant to be shared, and the vessel gave it its name.
What happens in the pot of Mexican coffee?
Start the scene or choose a stage. The animation simplifies the mechanism; what follows gives the details and the available references.
The water boils in the clay pot. Nothing is extracted yet; the clay of the pot heats along with the water.
Read the stages without animation
- The water at a boilThe water boils in the clay pot. Nothing is extracted yet; the clay of the pot heats along with the water.
- The sugar and the cinnamonRaw cane sugar, sold in loaves, and the cinnamon stick go into the water. The sugar melts, the spice steeps: the water is already sweet and fragrant.
- The coffee plunges inThe ground coffee is added to the boiling water. At this temperature, extraction is fast and also pulls out bitterness.
- The restOff the heat, the coffee is left to release its flavor. The grounds begin to settle; some of the aromas have already left with the steam.
- The sieveIt is poured through a sieve into the small clay pots. The sieve stops the large particles; fines and oils pass into the cup.
To remember: Boiling extracts fast and pulls out bitterness; raw sugar and cinnamon cover it, and the sieve holds back only the large particles.
In history: No established date of origin; coffee has been grown in Mexico since the late 18th century.
Read the full article and its sources ↓History
Coffee arrived late in Mexico. Ukers dates the start of its cultivation to 1790, from seeds that came from the Antilles, and reports elsewhere that the dates diverge: a Spaniard is said to have planted a few trees as a trial around 1800, the Veracruz customs house records exports in 1802, 1803 and 1805, and the coffee trees of Coatepec are planted around 1808 (source 1, ch. II and XX). Any pre-Columbian origin of the drink is therefore ruled out, as the magazine México Desconocido also points out (source 2).
In 1922, Ukers describes three Mexican ways of making coffee, and none bears the name of the pot. Popular practice pounds the roasted bean in a cloth bag, which is dipped into a pot of boiling water and milk. The vaquero, the herdsman, pours boiling water over the powder at the bottom of his cup and sweetens it with a stick of brown sugar. The well-to-do classes coat the hot bean with butter, sugar and brandy, let it cool for an hour under a cloth, grind it, scald it, filter it through a flannel bag and keep the extract in a stoneware jar (source 1, ch. XXXV).
Boiling coffee with spices is nothing peculiar to Mexico. In 1691, Rambaldi already proposes adding cardamom, clove, nutmeg or cinnamon, and in New Amsterdam coffee is boiled with sugar or honey and spices (source 1, ch. XXXVI).
The most repeated origin is a story: café de olla supposedly was born during the Mexican Revolution, when the soldaderas, the women who followed the troops, prepared it for the fighters around campfires. México Desconocido introduces it with “it is thought that” and cites no source (source 2). No document of the period was found to support it.
The motion
Café de olla, that is, pot coffee, calls for water, coffee, cinnamon and piloncillo, the raw cane sugar sold in loaves, or failing that sugar. The water is brought to a boil, the ingredients go in, the coffee is left to “release its flavor,” then it is served through a sieve. The clay pot is the tradition, the small clay pots the serving, but other materials are common today (source 2).
The sieve holds back only the particles it can stop: the grind must be coarse enough for that, and what passes stays suspended in the cup. No quantified recipe of scholarly origin was found: the amounts of coffee, cinnamon and sugar vary from house to house.
The settings
- GrindNot documented; coarse enough to be held back by a sieve (deduction).
- DoseNot documented in a scholarly source.
- Brew ratioNot documented.
- TemperatureBoiling (source 2).
- TimeNot documented; the coffee is left to “release its flavor” before straining (source 2).
- PressureAtmospheric.
What it has going for it
- A pot, a fire and a sieve are enough, with no paper or consumable.
- The sugar and the cinnamon are cooked with the coffee and not added afterward: the drink comes out of the pot ready to serve (source 2).
- The cinnamon and the sugar cover the bitterness that boiling pulls out of the coffee, which makes the method forgiving for an ordinary coffee (deduction, from source 1, ch. XVII).
What is held against it
- Traditional clay pots are glazed with lead oxide: a 2026 study measures there a median concentration of 202,400 ppm of lead on the inner surface, a migration that increases with time and acidity, and rice cooked for thirty minutes in these pots exceeds the Mexican limit of 0.5 ppm, whereas lead-free glazes release almost nothing (source 3). No measurement made with coffee was found; coffee is, however, an acidic drink.
- The stake is public health: in 2018, 21.8% of children aged 1 to 4 in Mexican localities of fewer than 100,000 inhabitants had an elevated blood lead level, strongly associated with the use of lead-glazed earthenware (source 4), and artisanal vessels of this type release on average 200 µg of lead per liter into an acidic drink in experiments (source 5).
- Boiling coffee with its aromatics damages the finest things the bean has: the chemistry of 1922 already noted that boiling drives off the aromas and pulls out bitter compounds (source 1, ch. XVII).
- The sieve lets fines and oils through, hence the cholesterol-raising diterpenes, as in any unfiltered boiled coffee (source 6).
What it gives in the cup
The cup is sweet, scented with cinnamon, hot and rather cloudy. Boiling pushes extraction further than steeping and pulls bitterness out of it (source 1, ch. XVII); the raw cane sugar and the spice cover it. The coffee takes second place behind the seasoning, which makes this drink a preparation in which the origin of the bean matters little.
Measurements are missing. No analysis of concentration, cafestol or aromatic compounds specific to café de olla was found; by analogy of mechanism with Scandinavian boiled coffee, which contains 7.2 mg of cafestol per cup (source 7), a high diterpene content can be expected, but this figure was not measured on this drink.
Anecdotes
- In 1922, the Mexican herdsman sweetens his coffee with a stick of brown sugar, after pouring the boiling water over the powder at the bottom of his own cup (source 1).
- The recipe of the well-to-do Mexican classes reported by Ukers coats the still-warm bean with a spoonful of butter, one of sugar and a little brandy, before an hour of rest under a thick cloth (source 1).
- The story of the women of the Revolution who followed the troops, who supposedly prepared this coffee for the fighters around campfires, is the most widespread version of its origin; it rests on no document (source 2).
The sources for this sheet
- William H. Ukers, All About Coffee, New York, The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company, 1922 (local transcription 1922_Ukers_All_About_Coffee_UTF8.txt), ch. II and XX (introduction of coffee to Mexico), ch. XVII (chemistry of boiling), ch. XXXV (Mexican customs), ch. XXXVI (Rambaldi, New Amsterdam) · online · primary
- Rodrigo Osegueda, “El café de olla, una tradición surgida durante la Revolución Mexicana,” México Desconocido, undated (around 2020) · online · secondary · reading: yes, excerpts
- A. Cantoral et al., “Lead leaching from traditional Mexican ceramics during cooking and implications for population health risk,” Science of the Total Environment, 1050, 2026, 182224, doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2026.182224 · online · primary · reading: abstract only (PubMed)
- M. M. Téllez-Rojo et al., “Reporte nacional de niveles de plomo en sangre y uso de barro vidriado en población infantil vulnerable,” Salud Pública de México, 61 (6), 2019, p. 787-797, doi:10.21149/10555 · online · primary · reading: abstract only (PubMed)
- A. Díaz-Ruiz et al., “Glazed clay pottery and lead exposure in Mexico: Current experimental evidence,” Nutritional Neuroscience, 20 (9), 2017, p. 513-518, doi:10.1080/1028415X.2016.1193967 · online · primary · reading: abstract only (PubMed)
- R. Urgert, M. B. Katan, “The cholesterol-raising factor from coffee beans,” Annual Review of Nutrition, 17, 1997, p. 305-324, doi:10.1146/annurev.nutr.17.1.305 · online · secondary · reading: abstract only (PubMed)
- G. Gross, E. Jaccaud, A. C. Huggett, “Analysis of the content of the diterpenes cafestol and kahweol in coffee brews,” Food and Chemical Toxicology, 35 (6), 1997, p. 547-554, doi:10.1016/s0278-6915(96)00123-8 · online · primary · reading: abstract only (PubMed)