Austria · Vienna
A Fiaker is Viennese black coffee with rum or kirsch, sugar and a cap of unsweetened whipped cream, named after the city's horse-drawn cabs. How to make one.
A Fiaker is strong black coffee with rum or kirsch, sugar, and a cap of whipped cream — an Einspänner with a spirit in it.
Fiaker is the Viennese horse-drawn cab, and the drivers are Fiaker too. Like the Einspänner — named after a one-horse carriage — the drink belongs to the same working world.
Both were, in origin, coffees a driver could hold in one hand while keeping the other on the reins, with a cream lid keeping them hot.
A double espresso or a strong long black in a handled glass. Sugar to taste, 20 to 30 ml (about 1 oz) of rum, stirred in. Thick unsweetened whipped cream spooned on top.
Drink through the cream without stirring.
The balance depends on unsweetened cream against sweetened coffee. Sugar in both makes it cloying.
Einspänner (no spirit), Franziskaner (a Melange with cream), Kapuziner (black with a little cream), Maria Theresia (with orange liqueur).
Vienna’s coffeehouses, listed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, serve coffee on a small silver tray with a glass of water, and a table can be held for hours over a single cup. The Fiaker is more often a winter order, and Viennese waiters usually bring it in a handled glass, with the rum already in the coffee.
A dark rum with some body works best. In Austria the traditional choice is Inländerrum, a spiced domestic rum flavored with vanilla and caramel, of which Stroh is the best-known brand. It is not always easy to find in the US; a dark Jamaican rum with a little vanilla sugar is close. Kirsch, a clear cherry brandy, gives a drier and more aromatic drink.
The equipment this actually requires — not a shopping list, the shortest route to doing it properly.
1.25 L · 92–96 °C (198 to 205 °F) brew · copper element · SCA certified
Hits proper brew temperature in about four minutes and holds it, which is the entire job and which almost no cheap drip machine does. Hand-built in the Netherlands, repairable indefinitely, and priced accordingly.
Best for: A household that drinks filter coffee by the pot, every day, for years.
Double-walled borosilicate that keeps a drink hot and the outside cool, and shows the layers of a latte. Cheap enough to replace when one inevitably goes.
Best for: Espresso-based milk drinks, and anyone who likes seeing them.
