Café Criollo: The Traditional Puerto Rican Brewing Tradition

Summary

For generations, much of the coffee made in Puerto Rican homes was café colao: coffee strained through a cloth filter called a colador. Family accounts describe the colador gradually giving way to the stovetop moka pot, known in Puerto Rico as a greca, and to electric coffee machines. This article explains the colador, the greca and the words Puerto Ricans use to order coffee, and it separates what is documented from what is family tradition.

What "Criollo" Means

In Puerto Rico, "criollo" describes what belongs to the island's own tradition. Comida criolla, for example, is everyday Puerto Rican home cooking, a blend of Spanish, African and Taíno heritage. This encyclopedia did not find "café criollo" in published sources as an established name for cloth-filtered coffee. The name that sources do document is café colao, "strained coffee".

The Colador

The colador is a cloth filter, usually flannel or cotton, shaped like a sock and stretched over a wire ring with a handle. Unlike a paper filter, it is washed and used again. For more on the tool itself, see The Coffee Sock (Colador de Café).

Tradition: methods vary from family to family. In one family account from Comerío, recorded by the Tenement Museum in 2016, water and ground coffee were heated together in a pot until the liquid turned dark, then poured through the cloth filter. The same account says the method is used much less now, because machines are faster.

Grinding at Home

Before ground coffee was sold in packets, many households ground their own roasted beans. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History holds two Puerto Rican tools for this in its Teodoro Vidal Collection: a wooden pilón, a mortar and pestle used to grind dried and roasted coffee beans, and a manual coffee grinder from the late 1800s, which the museum describes as a mechanised replacement for the mortar and pestle.

The Greca

Stovetop coffee maker at the coffee museum in Ciales, Puerto Rico

A stovetop coffee maker beneath historic coffee-sack stencils at the coffee museum in Ciales, Puerto Rico. Photo: The Eloquent Peasant / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

In Puerto Rico, the stovetop moka pot is commonly called a greca. The moka pot spread from Italy after Alfonso Bialetti's company launched its Moka Express in 1933. Accounts from Puerto Rican families, on the island and in New York, describe the greca as the everyday coffee maker of the household, used above all for café con leche.

How Puerto Ricans Order Coffee

Discover Puerto Rico, the island's official tourism organisation, lists the common ways of asking for coffee:

Café colao, strained coffee, which may be asked for as puya, cortadito, término or clarito
Cargao or oscurito: coffee with only a little milk
Prieto or negro: black coffee, without milk
Café con leche: served in a large cup, with more milk than coffee
Café bibí: a very light café con leche
Café aguao: weak coffee, what Puerto Ricans call café americano

The same source notes that a visitor to a Puerto Rican home in the early afternoon will usually be offered a cup of coffee.

On Film

The Library of Congress film below, made by Russell Oliver with a 2022 grant from the American Folklife Center, follows Puerto Rico's coffee farmers rather than home brewing.

Watch: El Motor: Coffee and the Heart of Puerto Rico — Library of Congress

Key Facts

Café colao: coffee strained through a cloth filter, the colador
Colador: a cloth sock on a wire ring with a handle; washed and reused
Greca: the Puerto Rican name for the stovetop moka pot
Moka Express: launched in Italy by Alfonso Bialetti's company in 1933
Ordering words: cargao, prieto, café con leche, bibí, aguao

Frequently Asked Questions

What is café colao? Coffee strained through a cloth filter called a colador. It is the traditional home method described in Puerto Rican family accounts.

What is a greca in Puerto Rico? The stovetop moka pot, the everyday coffee maker in many Puerto Rican homes.

Is "café criollo" the same as café colao? This encyclopedia found no published source that uses "café criollo" as an established name for cloth-filtered coffee. The documented name is café colao.

Is the sugar added while the coffee brews? Practices vary between households. This encyclopedia found no source showing one practice as the standard.

Sources

Discover Puerto Rico, the island's official destination marketing organisation, "Café, por favor". Supports: café colao; the ordering terms cargao, oscurito, prieto, negro, café con leche, bibí and aguao; afternoon coffee offered to visitors. Tourism material.
Tenement Museum, "Your Story" collection: "Café Colao" (Comerío and Lowell, Massachusetts, 2016) and "Greca" (a family from Mayagüez). Supports: the family account of café colao; the reusable cloth filter; the greca as the household's stovetop coffee maker. Personal recollections.
Od, Nadia, "How to Make Authentic Puerto Rican Coffee: The Complete Guide", TalkAboutCoffee (updated 17 September 2025). Supports: the colador as a flannel or cotton sock on a wire ring with a handle.
Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Teodoro Vidal Collection: object records "Pilón" (1997.0097.0129) and "Coffee Grinder" (1997.0097.1132). Supports: the wooden mortar and pestle used to grind coffee; the late-nineteenth-century manual grinder.
Interni magazine, "80 years of the Moka Bialetti" (2013). Supports: the Moka Express of 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti.
Afar, "Café Manolín" (a San Juan writer), and NBC News, travel report on San Juan. Support: comida criolla as everyday Puerto Rican food blending Spanish, African and Taíno heritage.
Stefano, Michelle, "Homegrown Foodways Film Premiere: El Motor: Coffee and the Heart of Puerto Rico", Folklife Today, Library of Congress (2025). Supports: the film by Russell Oliver and its 2022 American Folklife Center grant.

Claims this encyclopedia could not source

The following statements appear in published material about Puerto Rican coffee brewing. This encyclopedia could not trace them to a reliable source:

That "café criollo" is the established Puerto Rican name for coffee brewed in a cloth colador.
That the colador method was imported from Spanish colonial tradition.
That dissolving sugar in the water before brewing is the traditional Puerto Rican practice.
That traditional Puerto Rican coffee cups hold 4 to 6 ounces.
That each coffee town, such as Yauco, Adjuntas, Lares, Jayuya or Maricao, has its own brewing variations.
That specialty cafés are reviving colador brewing or selling premium coladors.
Comparisons between Puerto Rican coffee customs and those of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Haiti.

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