In Colombia a cup of black coffee is a tinto, and it is offered constantly: to visitors, to workers, at the end of a meal and at every hour in between. Street sellers walk city centers with thermoses of it, and the cups are small and the coffee usually light and sweet, made to be drunk often rather than savored once. In the coffee region and the countryside, the tinto campesino, or country tinto, is brewed in a pot with panela, unrefined cane sugar, and sometimes a cinnamon stick or a clove, then strained through a cloth filter.

It is a good example of something very simple done exactly right. It also offers a gentle caffeine supply for an early morning race, served in a size that encourages refills rather than ambition.

The tinto

Ingredients

• 3 cups (720 ml) water
• 1 1/2 oz (40 g) panela
• 1 small cinnamon stick
• 2 whole cloves
• 1/3 cup (35 g) Colombian coffee

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