There are only two things you need to know to make an exceptionally delicious Turkish / Greek coffee. And most importantly, you will get repeatable results with the best balance in terms of taste.
And it will work even for expensive coffee, like the Geisha variety (meaning, specialty coffee and even competition level - going to be flavorful here).
Despite the assumptions that its potential best opened using Pour Over brewers. If you’ve seen the flavors like peach, apricot, plum, cherry on a coffee bag - you finally will be able to perceive them.
Buckle up. It’ll be a life changing experience. Long read which is totally worth it.
Contents
- Difficulties of Turkish Coffee
- Turkish coffee ratio
- Turkish coffee grind size
- What coffee to use for Turkish coffee
- Sugar in Turkish coffee
- How much coffee can I make in my cezve
- How to make Turkish Coffee
- Heat application
- How to drink Turkish coffee
- How to adjust the flavor and when
Difficulties of Turkish Coffee
I’ve invested a lot of time and resources in understanding this coffee brewing method. Because once you understand the basic principles - then you can control it. After a couple of months I almost gave up.
I started to make Turkish coffee when I was a kid (around 10 years old). I wanted to serve the best cup to my parents. And continued this journey after starting making the content about coffee back in July 2020. Luckily, now I have way more knowledge about coffee, the product which turned out to be one of the most difficult on Earth.
Obviously, you can’t just add water to your coffee and expect it to be good. Though, in some cases it could work (if you use sand for heating the cezve). Oh, and right away, what is Cezve? It’s a Turkish word for a “coffee pot”. It also can be called Briki (in Greece) and Ibrik.
When we are talking about other brewing methods, there is no such thing as “unpredictable result”. Because they're well researched. But Cezve always seems too shady and unstable.
And what people mostly see is the recipes from the World Cezve/Ibrik Champions. Which never worked for me. Because they use super strict equipment and time-based recipes.
So I decided to go deep and to explain the principles of brewing rather than giving some fixed recipe. And it turned out to be extremely repeatable, predictable and stable. And very flexible (so that you can apply it for different sizes of the cezve as well as any heat source).
To the point where I understood that it's way easier to teach people to make a proper Turkish coffee rather than other methods. Which serves well to my main goal - share the hidden side of coffee - diversity and complexity of flavor.
Because it allows you to get the best possible coffee. Other methods will require way more knowledge and practice in order to achieve such a great cup.
The basics
Ratio
We are going to use a 1:10 ratio. Meaning 10 g of coffee for 100 g of water. It’ll be a concentrated, but super enjoyable beverage. Small sips of intense, but easy to drink liquid - priceless. Turkish coffee is not about the volume.
But later you’ll be able to play with the ratio a little. Use like 1:12 sometimes. But not now.
Grind size
I ended up using not the smallest one. And actually prefer to adjust it from time to time to better open the potential of the coffee. But it doesn’t matter that much for the start. The main thing here is to have it smaller than for espresso (slightly smaller - will be fine).
If you’re not into espresso - here are other references.
Coffee grinder settings:
Comandante c40 Mk4 - 2-6 clicks (as a starting point).
Kinu m47 - 0.7-1.0 (meaning one full rotation).
Sozen - almost 180 degree rotation from the “zero”.
Timemore C3 - use lowest setting for Espresso (C3, C3 esp has the same burrs).
Can I use a blade grinder? Sure, but make sure you’ve crushed it to small enough particles. For the start - it’ll be a good option.
Alternatively, if you don’t have a coffee grinder yet - get a bag of ground Turkish coffee from Mehmet Efendi (attention, I’ll get the commission if you buy it using this link). I’ve checked it - it’s working. Not the best, but good enough for the start.
Basically, the smaller the grind size the more “body” you’ll have.
What coffee to use for Turkish coffee
Freshness of a coffee: 10-14 days after roasting is fine. Up to 3 months after roasting is best. If it’s a ground coffee - the fresher the better.
As for the roast level - in Türkiye people prefer dark roast.
I personally prefer light roast or medium roasted (for espresso) specialty coffee. So it’s better to get it from the local roastery rather than from a supermarket shelf. And they probably can grind it for you. But please, get a coffee grinder with time, it’ll elevate your experience to a new level.
Coffee processing method - it’s better to start from Ethiopian Natural Processed coffee. Or Washed processed. If you're an experienced enthusiast who likes light roast - you can try Anaerobic processed. I even sent it once to one of my customers because I wanted to share this chewy plum experience.
Sugar in Turkish coffee
Regular Turkish coffee - people use sugar. Sometimes a lot. I found that it ruins the flavor, even if half a teaspoon is added. That's why we're going to avoid it. Why? Because you will not see the difference and will not learn how to adjust the flavor to have a balance. And all of the complexity and beauty of taste will be covered.
How much coffee can I make in my cezve
First of all, it’s better to measure the full volume of your Turkish coffee pot / Briki. I recommend using 70% of the volume. Let’s say my Cezve is 200 ml. 200 - 30% = 60. So I’ll use 140 g of water. And 14 g of coffee. For 120 ml cezve: 120 - 30% (120 * 30 / 100) = 36g. Meaning I’m using 80 g of water and 8 g of coffee.
How to make Turkish Coffee
Oh, finally. Sorry it took that long.
Here is my secret to success: in Turkish coffee we are controlling the flavor by the:
As for the color, it’ll change from white to pleasant caramel color and then go dark. Usually it changes from the sides (starts to go darker) and the central bright spot shrinks.
Motion - usually it starts to wrap from the sides towards inside, shrinking this central spot.
Then, it cracks and then starts to swirl (boil).
What we target - is a consistent foam color and motion. Your goal is to take it off the heat right when the motion has started and the color changed to caramel. And the central spot is almost covered from the sides. That’s the starting point. We will adjust the taste in the next brewing if needed.
What we do:
- Add coffee to the cezve
- Pour the water
- Mix well and place it on heat (doesn’t matter, but I prefer medium or medium-low)
- Mix at around one minute to get rid of a coffee crust.
The goal in step 4 is to get the white foam. We specifically need this foam for controlling the flavor. And if you’re not getting white foam - your coffee might be spilled on a stove because it’ll boil out in seconds.
If your coffee pot is bit, it may take more time to heat up to the moment when you’ll get the crust. Be sure to mix the coffee if you don’t have a white foam and particles are blocking the view. Because you will not have a foam control without the white foam.
Heat application
It doesn’t matter if you brew coffee within 2 minutes or 8 minutes - it’ll be great and balanced anyway. I prefer slower heat because that way you have more time to react. And potentially lock more aromatic compounds in the coffee, because with the slower heating it’s easier for water to retain them.
As for the water temperature - you can use 60°C, but pour it first and then add coffee and mix. It’ll be slightly harder to mix, but that way you’ll probably not need to mix it at one minute because you will not have a crust from coffee particles and will have a CO2 foam at the top right away.
I’ve tried to make coffee in a 450 ml pot - it was as good as a small one. But yes, the longer you keep it on the heat, potentially the more caffeine you’ll get in the beverage.
How to drink Turkish coffee
Let’s start from the fact that it will be a clean beverage, almost like Pour Over or Moka Pot coffee. Because all of the sediment of ground coffee particles rests at the bottom of the cup. So there are 3 layers: foam (CO2 with oils and some particles which stick to it), clean coffee and sediment.
First, we serve the coffee. Make it pretty aggressively, because we need to get rid of the particles in the foam. Especially if you grind size was close to espresso. Make it rest for around 5 minutes. Coffee particles will go down during that time. It’ll still be hot, trust me. And you’ll not perceive the flavor that well when it’s hot.
Then, make 3-4 sips. If there are a lot of coffee particles - blow on the foam or gently mix the foam with the spoon. Let it cool down a little bit more and enjoy it. I sometimes wait for it to cool down to room temperature, especially with some unique coffee.
How to adjust the flavor and when
Time to make a taste assessment.
If your coffee has delicate notes - you need to preserve them. By extracting less flavor.
If your coffee is “basic”, without interesting flavor notes - extract more. Otherwise it’ll be flat.
It’s mostly about the water temperature. The higher it is, the more flavor it will extract. I’ve checked it using the refractometer, it really works that way.
If we take coffee right when the foam only starts to wrap and the color is mostly bright except a few mm on the rim - it could be more acidic. Again, it could work for some coffee. Especially anaerobic processed.
That’s why it’s better to start somewhere in the middle - when it is wrapped enough to have a small bright spot, but not cover it completely.
After the wrap, there usually comes the crack. If you feel that the coffee is watery, weak, not intense enough - next time wait for that crack.
If you have a basic coffee - wait a little (5-10 seconds) after the crack and then serve the coffee to the cup.
Additional knowledge. How to approach brewing "basic" and "specialty" coffee.
Now you’ve mastered the Turkish coffee
Enjoy, experiment and remember - coffee could be different. Thank you for taking time and reading this.
Author: Viacheslav Druzhynin (wendstudio)
