Coffee and piloncillo: where the tradition comes from
November 19, 2026 · 2 min read
Coffee with piloncillo brings together two things that reached Mexico centuries apart: sugar cane in colonial times, and coffee much later. In country kitchens, piloncillo was the everyday sweetener, and that is how it ended up in the cup. Today the tradition lives on in two ways: sweetening café de olla and roasting the beans with piloncillo.
Sugar cane came first
Sugar cane began to be grown in Mexico during the colonial period, and with it came the trapiches, the mills where cane is pressed. The juice is boiled down until thick and poured into cone shaped molds. Those molds, called pilones, gave piloncillo its name.
Unlike refined sugar, piloncillo keeps the cane molasses. That gives it a deep flavor, somewhere between caramel and molasses, that goes so well with coffee.
Then came coffee
By the time coffee became popular in Mexico, piloncillo was already in every kitchen. For a long time it was easier to find in small towns than white sugar. Boiling it with cinnamon and coffee in a clay pot was the natural thing to do, and that is how the café de olla we know today came about.
The other way: roasting the beans with piloncillo
There is a second, lesser known tradition: adding sugar or piloncillo to the beans during roasting. The heat caramelizes the sugar and leaves a shiny coating on the bean.
That coating was used to protect the coffee from moisture and make it last longer. The technique is known as torrefacto. It was patented in Spain in 1901, and in Mexico it is still used in regions like Veracruz and Michoacán.
The result is a darker coffee with more body and a distinctive bittersweet touch. For many people it tastes like the coffee they grew up with, or their grandparents' coffee.
How to enjoy it today
- In a pot: water, piloncillo and cinnamon on the heat, and the coffee at the end with the heat off.
- Roasted with piloncillo: brew it like any other coffee. Many people drink it unsweetened because it already has its own sweetness.
- Blended: mixed with a naturally roasted coffee, it softens the bitterness and keeps the aroma.
At Café Wadi we have coffee roasted with piloncillo in two versions: Café para velada, half natural blend and half roasted with piloncillo, and 8/2, which is 80% natural and 20% roasted with piloncillo. Whole bean or ground, always freshly roasted.
