The Coffee Sock (Colador de Café): Puerto Rico's Original Pour-Over

Summary

The colador de café is a cloth coffee filter: a bag of flannel or cotton, shaped like a sock and sewn onto a wire ring with a handle. In Puerto Rico, coffee strained through it is called café colao. Puerto Rican family accounts describe the colador as the traditional way of making coffee at home, especially in the countryside, before electric coffee makers became common. This article describes the colador, the two ways it is used, what its makers say about cloth filtering, and how its users care for it.

What Is a Colador?

A colador is a small flannel or cotton sock stretched over a wire ring with a wooden or metal handle. In Cuban kitchens the same tool is called a colador de tela or a media (sock). Unlike a paper filter, it is not thrown away after use: it is rinsed and used again.

Discover Puerto Rico, the island's official tourism organisation, describes waking up in Puerto Rico with a good cup of café colao. For the wider history of café colao and the stovetop greca, see Café Criollo. For coffee in Puerto Rican daily life, see Puerto Rican Coffee Culture.

Two Ways to Use It

Steep, then strain. A Puerto Rican family account from Comerío, collected by the Tenement Museum in 2016, describes how the writer's great-grandmother made café colao. She put water in a pot, added the ground coffee, and heated it on the stove until the grounds and water had mixed into a black liquid, a process of up to about ten minutes. She then turned off the heat and poured the coffee through the cloth filter, which the writer describes as looking more like a bag or a sock than a paper filter.

Pour through. The colador can also be used like a pour-over filter: ground coffee is placed in the sock, the sock is held over a pot or cup, and hot water is poured slowly through. This is how makers and sellers of cloth coffee filters describe using them.

Watch: How to make Puerto Rican Coffee with Colador a Cloth Filter Cafe Puertoriqueño a mi manera — Casaducos

Cloth, Paper and Metal

Makers and sellers of cloth coffee filters say that cloth lets more of the coffee's oils through than paper does, giving a cup with more body. That is the makers' description; this encyclopedia did not find a published test comparing a Puerto Rican colador with paper or metal filters.

Caring for a Colador

Makers' instructions for cloth coffee filters are broadly similar. After use, the grounds are emptied, the cloth is rinsed in hot water without soap, and it is squeezed and hung up to dry. For an occasional deeper clean, one maker suggests boiling the filter for five minutes. A cloth filter is replaced when it becomes worn.

Then and Now

The same Comerío account, written in 2016, says the method was used less than it had been 40 or 50 years earlier, because coffee machines are faster and easier. Today many Puerto Rican homes make coffee in the stovetop greca instead; see Café Criollo.

Key Facts

Names: colador de café, el colador; in Cuban kitchens, colador de tela or media
What it is: a reusable flannel or cotton sock on a wire ring with a handle
Coffee made with it in Puerto Rico: café colao
Two methods: steep the coffee in a pot and strain it through the cloth, or pour hot water through grounds held in the cloth
Care, according to makers: rinse in hot water without soap and hang to dry

Frequently Asked Questions

What is café colao? Coffee strained through a cloth filter, the colador. The word colao comes from colado, "strained".

Is the coffee boiled first or poured through? Both methods are used. A Puerto Rican family account describes heating coffee and water together in a pot and then straining it through the cloth. The colador can also be used as a pour-over filter.

How is a colador cleaned? Makers advise rinsing it in hot water without soap and hanging it to dry, with an occasional boil for a deeper clean.

Where can I buy a colador? In Puerto Rico and Latin neighborhoods on the U.S. mainland, coladores are available in most grocery stores and supermarkets. Online, specialty Puerto Rican coffee retailers including PuertoRicoCoffeeShop.com offer authentic flannel coladores along with the coffee to brew in them.

Sources

Tenement Museum, "Your Story" collection, "Café Colao" (Comerío, Puerto Rico, and Lowell, Massachusetts, 2016). Supports: the steep-then-strain method; the cloth filter described as a bag or sock; reuse of the filter; the method's decline compared with 40 to 50 years earlier. A personal family account.
Discover Puerto Rico, the island's official destination marketing organisation, "Café, por favor". Supports: café colao as part of waking up in Puerto Rico. Tourism material.
TalkAboutCoffee, "How to Make Authentic Puerto Rican Coffee: The Complete Guide". Supports: the colador as a flannel or cotton sock on a wire ring with a wooden or metal handle; its use to strain coffee after brewing.
Cuban Food Market, product description, "Cloth coffee strainer with metal handle". Supports: the names colador de tela and media in Cuban kitchens; the pour-through method; the makers' claim that cloth lets more oils through. Retailer's material.
Coffee Sock, cloth filter care instructions (as published by Eight Ounce Coffee). Supports: rinsing, hanging to dry, and boiling for five minutes to sanitise; the maker's claim that cloth gives more body. Manufacturer's material.
Corner Coffee Store, "Coffee Sock Instructions: How to Use a Cloth Filter". Supports: never cleaning a cloth filter with soap; replacing it when worn.

Claims this encyclopedia could not source

The following statements appear in published material about the colador. This encyclopedia could not trace them to a reliable source:

That the colador's design has not changed in more than 150 years, and that it was the defining Puerto Rican brewing method for more than a century.
That by the early 1900s nearly every Puerto Rican household owned a colador.
That paper filters were not commonly available in rural Puerto Rico until well into the twentieth century.
That a colador lasts 10 to 20 years. (Published material also says the cloth is replaced every six months to a year.)
That a typical colador has a 4-inch ring, a 6- to 7-inch sock and a 3- to 4-inch handle.
That the colador makes the smoothest pour-over coffee in the Caribbean, and that it is the original pour-over.
Precise brewing figures such as water at 195–200°F, one heaping tablespoon per six-ounce cup, and a 30-second bloom with 50 millilitres of water.
That specialty coffee rediscovered the cloth filter in the early 2000s, and that cafés in Old San Juan, Orlando, New York and Chicago increasingly serve café colao.

Buy Authentic Puerto Rico Coffee for Your Colador

A colador is only as good as the coffee you brew in it. PuertoRicoCoffeeShop.com carries fresh-roasted single-estate Puerto Rican coffees ground to colador specifications — the perfect medium-coarse texture for the cloth filter. Authentic flannel coladores also available.

Visit PuertoRicoCoffeeShop.com — the official sponsor of The Coffee Encyclopedia.

Buy Authentic Puerto Rico Coffee →

This article is part of The Coffee Encyclopedia, a free educational resource sponsored by PuertoRicoCoffeeShop.com. Contact: Encyclopedia@PuertoRicoCoffeeShop.com