How to Make Turkish Coffee at Home

Turkish coffee is the least forgiving common brewing method and the one with the fewest variables. There is no filter, no pressure and no timer. What there is, is a moment when the foam rises, and the entire technique is about being ready for it.

What you need

• A cezve, also called an ibrik.
• Coffee ground to a powder, finer than espresso.
• Cold water, and sugar if you want it.
• The lowest heat your hob can hold.

The method

1. Measure with the cup you will drink from. One demitasse of cold water per person, poured into the cezve. This is the traditional measure and it is more reliable than any millilitre figure, because the cups vary and the ratio is what matters.
2. Add the coffee and the sugar together. Roughly one heaped teaspoon of coffee per cup. Sugar now, not later.
3. Stir once, off the heat, until there are no dry lumps. This is the only stir of the whole process.
4. Put it on the lowest heat and leave it alone. Two to four minutes.
5. Watch for the foam. A dark ring forms at the edge, then rises toward the neck. As it climbs, take the pot off the heat.
6. Optionally return it once or twice. Let the foam settle, put it back, let it rise again. More rises means more foam and a fuller body.
7. Pour slowly, foam first, sharing it between the cups. Let it stand a minute before drinking so the grounds settle.

The mistake that ruins it

Letting it boil. The foam is built by gas coming out of solution as the temperature rises, and it collapses the instant the coffee reaches a rolling boil. A boiled Turkish coffee is flat, bitter and, in most households where it is drunk, an obvious failure.

Low heat is the defence. It gives you a wider window in which to notice the rise, and the whole difficulty of this method is noticing in time.

Grind, which is the other hard part

Turkish grind is the finest in coffee. Anything less and the grounds fail to settle cleanly, leaving grit in the mouth rather than sludge at the bottom of the cup.

Most domestic grinders will not go this fine, and those that will take a long time and heat the coffee doing it. This is one of the few cases where pre-ground is the sensible choice.

Serving

In small handleless cups, with a glass of water alongside, and often something sweet. The water is not decoration: it clears the palate first, which is the point of drinking it before the coffee rather than after.

Do not drink to the bottom. The grounds are down there, and stopping when you reach them is the whole reason the cup is left to stand. If you want to see how this is done professionally, and why sand rather than a burner, sand coffee is the same method with better heat control.

Asking for the sweetness you want

Because the sugar goes in before brewing, sweetness is ordered rather than adjusted, and there is a standard vocabulary for it.

• Sade. Plain, no sugar.
• Az sekerli. A little sugar, roughly half a teaspoon per cup.
• Orta. Medium, about one teaspoon. The most commonly ordered.
• Cok sekerli. Sweet, two teaspoons or more.

The same structure exists wherever the method is drunk, under local names. It is worth learning one of them, because being asked how you take it and answering "normal" gets you whatever the house considers normal, which in much of the region is sweeter than a British or American palate expects.

Cardamom, and other additions

A crushed green cardamom pod, or a pinch of the ground spice, added with the coffee at the start. It is common across the Levant and the Gulf and much less so in Turkey itself.

Use less than you think. Cardamom is assertive and it is easy to produce a cup that tastes of spice with coffee somewhere behind it. The tradition it belongs to most fully is Arabic coffee, which is a different drink built around the same spice.

Mastic and a drop of rosewater both appear regionally. Neither is standard, and both are additions to a finished technique rather than fixes for one that is not working.