How to Prepare Your CoffeeSpanish Café Suau
What you need
Ingredients run from the top of the cup to the bottom; the last item is the bottom layer. Values are normalized to a true 100% stack.
- Grind
- Fine — espresso grind, brewed however the household's coffee pot allows
- Water temperature
- Coffee hot off the brew; gaseosa cold, straight from the fridge or siphon
- Total time
- 5 min
Café suau is a farmhouse drink from southern Catalonia: a small measure of coffee topped up with plain carbonated soda water, gaseosa, until it foams over into a tall glass of something closer to a soft drink than an espresso. Farm labourers took it at the café after lunch, before heading back out to the fields for the rest of the afternoon — valued for its taste, its mild stimulant lift, and how easy it was to put together. A Reus bottler, Gili, sold a branded version called Zuavo from 1928 into the 1980s, and it's that brand name, absorbed into everyday speech, that most sources trace the word suau back to. It survived long enough that a small producer in Benissanet, in the Ribera d'Ebre, still bottles an artisanal version of the base soda today. In Lleida the same glass keeps a more literal name: soldat — same coffee, same gaseosa, the other word for the same soldier the drink is named after.
Steps
Brew a small, strong coffee
The coffee is the minority ingredient here, outnumbered roughly four to one by soda, so it needs to be concentrated enough to still taste of coffee once the gaseosa goes in — a standard espresso dose, not a diluted filter cup.
Stir in the sugar, if using, while the coffee is still hot
Sugar dissolves far more easily into hot coffee than into the cold, already-carbonated glass it is about to meet — the same timing logic the region's other coffee-and-ice drinks rely on.
Pour the coffee into a tall glass over one or two ice cubes
The ice starts the drink cooling immediately, before the gaseosa is added, so the fizz doesn't have to do all the work of bringing the temperature down.
Top up slowly with cold gaseosa
Poured in gently, the carbonation and the coffee integrate into a light foam on top rather than going flat immediately; poured too fast, the glass just fizzes over.
Cup ready
Time to enjoy your Spanish Café Suau
Brewed the way they do it in Spain. What next?
Tips
- A few grains of cinnamon, a pinch of vanilla sugar, or a spoon of cocoa on top were the personal touches different families added — the coffee-and-gaseosa base stayed the same.
- Serve it at once, with a straw and no spoon — the drink is meant to be sipped through its own foam, not stirred flat.
Common mistakes
- Using a full-size mug of coffee — café suau is built on a small, concentrated dose; a large cup of coffee just makes a watery drink once the gaseosa goes in.
- Adding the sugar after the gaseosa — it won't dissolve properly once the glass is already cold and carbonated, and the last mouthful ends up grittier than the first.
FAQ
Where does the name suau come from?
Sources trace it to "Zuavo," a gaseosa brand launched around the late 1920s by a Reus or Tarragona-area bottler and named after the Zouaves, French-Algerian infantry famous for their distinctive North African-influenced uniform. As the brand's name was absorbed into everyday speech in Tarragona and the Terres de l'Ebre it softened into "suau," which also happens to mean "smooth" or "soft" in Catalan — a coincidence sources treat as having reinforced the name rather than created it. In Lleida the same drink kept the more literal "soldat" (soldier).
Is this the same drink as Zaragoza's soldao?
No, despite the overlapping soldier-themed name. Zaragoza's soldao adds a splash of Cointreau alongside the coffee and gaseosa; café suau, as documented across Catalonia and the Terres de l'Ebre, is unspirited — just coffee, soda, and optional sugar.
Can you still find it today?
Rarely, and mostly by asking rather than reading it on a menu. It faded through the 1980s as bottled cola took over, though "Suau Quim," an artisanal coffee-flavoured soda in Benissanet, in the Ribera d'Ebre, still bottles a version of the base drink the old recipe was built on.
The Atlas
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