Kopi Tarik

Kopi tarik means “pulled coffee”. It’s the strong, sweet coffee of the Malaysian kopitiam, sweetened with condensed milk, then poured from one jug to another, back and forth from a height, until it wears a frothy head. It’s the coffee cousin of teh tarik, the pulled milk tea that Wikipedia calls Malaysia’s national drink, and it’s made exactly the same way. Here’s what goes into it, how to pull it, and what’s known about where it came from.

The short version

• Kopitiam coffee plus condensed milk, pulled until frothy.
• “Tarik” = pulled, from pouring it between two vessels.
• Pulling cools it, mixes it and gives it froth.
• The coffee is local kopi: robusta roasted with sugar and margarine.
• Teh tarik’s cousin: same technique, with coffee.

What’s in kopi tarik?

Wikipedia describes kopi tarik as local coffee, dark-roasted with margarine and sugar, sweetened with condensed milk and pulled to froth it up. That coffee is kopi, the Nanyang-style coffee of Malaysia and Singapore:

	What it is	Source
The bean	Traditionally robusta	Wikipedia (Kopi); Malaysia4U
The roast	Roasted with sugar and margarine; Wikipedia gives about 80% beans to 20% sugar and margarine, roasted for about 25 minutes at 180°C, with salt added halfway	Wikipedia (Kopi); Malaysia4U
The brew	Packed into a long cloth “coffee sock” and steeped in near-boiling water	Malaysia4U
The milk	Sweetened condensed milk; evaporated milk for a creamier cup	Wikipedia (Teh tarik); Nescafé; Nyonya Cooking

For the brewing, see our kopi sock guide.

How do you make kopi tarik?

Nescafé’s home version uses instant coffee, which is a fair way in if you have no sock:

1. Mix the coffee and milk: 2 sachets of instant coffee, 2 tbsp of sweetened condensed milk and 2 tbsp of evaporated milk in a glass.
2. Add about 150 ml of hot water and stir until dissolved.
3. Pull it: pour it from one glass into another and back, several times, until a foam forms.

With kopitiam coffee, brew it strong in a sock and add the condensed milk before you pull. Nyonya Cooking’s teh tarik advice works for coffee too: start with short pours to avoid spills, raise the jug gradually for more froth, and don’t pull more than about five times or it goes cold.

Pulling means pouring a very hot drink from a height. Start low, use jugs with handles, and keep it away from anyone standing nearby.

Why pull it?

Three reasons, Wikipedia says of teh tarik: pulling cools the drink to drinking temperature, mixes it thoroughly with the condensed milk, and gives it a thick frothy top; many believe it improves the flavour too. Malaysia4U says kopitiam coffee is poured between two big enamel jugs for the same reasons, to aerate and cool it. There’s showmanship as well: Wikipedia notes that Malaysian servers who can pull a long stream from far away become local celebrities, and pulling contests draw thousands of spectators.

Where does kopi tarik come from?

Nobody has written its history down. What’s documented is the history of its two halves:

The tea and the pull	The coffee
Wikipedia traces teh tarik to Indian Muslim stalls on the Malay Peninsula, which served masala chai to rubber-plantation workers as early as the 1870s	Wikipedia credits Hainanese immigrants, who opened coffeeshops in Singapore from the 1920s to the 1950s, with kopi’s roasting and brewing techniques
After the Second World War, vendors switched to cheap tea dust and added condensed milk to mask its bitterness, creating teh tarik	Kopi has Hainanese roots and dates from the British Malaya era
Singapore and Malaysia both claim teh tarik as their own	Kopi is drunk in kopitiams and hawker centres across both countries

Wikipedia adds that Milo and Nescafé drinks are also given the tarik treatment by vendors who specialise in teh tarik. In 2024, UNESCO added Malaysian breakfast culture, including teh tarik, to its list of intangible cultural heritage.

How to order kopi in a kopitiam

Kopi tarik sits inside a whole ordering code. Wikipedia and Malaysia4U agree on the basics:

Order	What you get
Kopi	Coffee with sugar and condensed milk
Kopi O	Black coffee with sugar (“O” is Hokkien for black)
Kopi C	Coffee with evaporated milk and sugar
Kopi peng	Iced (peng is Hokkien for ice)
Kopi O kosong	Black, with no sugar and no milk
Kopi cham	Coffee mixed with tea, like Hong Kong’s yuanyang

Kopi tarik vs other milk coffees

• Yuanyang: Hong Kong’s coffee mixed with milk tea.
• Café bombón: espresso layered over condensed milk.
• Oliang: Thai sock-brewed coffee, black and iced.
• Vietnamese iced coffee: phin coffee with condensed milk, over ice.

Explore every drink in the milk coffees chapter.