How to Make Turkish Coffee: Method, Foam and Tradition

Turkish coffee is coffee ground to a fine powder, heated slowly with cold water — and sugar, if you want it — in a small long-handled pot called a cezve, until a thick foam rises. It is poured, grounds and all, into small cups, left for a moment to settle, and sipped down to the sludge at the bottom. Use about one teaspoon, roughly 6 g, of coffee for each cup.

It is one of the oldest ways of making coffee still in everyday use, and it is less a recipe than a small ritual with rules of its own.

What you need

• A cezve, also called an ibrik outside Turkey: a small pot, traditionally copper, with a long handle and a narrow neck.
• Coffee ground to a powder, finer than espresso — like flour. Connoisseurs aim for particles of about 75–125 microns. Ordinary grinders rarely go this fine, so most people use coffee sold ground for Turkish coffee or a dedicated Turkish hand grinder.
• Small cups, which you also use to measure the water.
• Sugar, if you take it.

The method

1. Measure the water with your cups. Pour one cup of cold water into the cezve for each person.
2. Add the coffee. About one teaspoon, roughly 6 g, per cup — the amount the long-established Istanbul roaster Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi gives in its own brewing guide.
3. Add sugar now, if you want it. Sugar cannot be stirred in later without disturbing the grounds.
4. Stir well, until the coffee is fully mixed in and no dry powder floats on top. After this, stop stirring.
5. Heat slowly, on low to medium heat. This is the step that matters. As the coffee warms, a dark foam forms and begins to rise up the neck of the cezve.
6. Spoon a little foam into each cup as it starts to rise.
7. Bring it up again and, just before it boils over, pour gently into the cups, letting the foam slide in on top. Mehmet Efendi's guide brings the coffee up a second time before filling the cups.
8. Serve with a glass of water, and let the cups rest for a minute so the grounds settle.

The whole process takes only a couple of minutes once you have it down.

How sweet

In Turkey the sweetness is part of the order, because it is decided at the pot:

The foam is the point

A good Turkish coffee is judged first by its foam, called köpük: it should be as thick and even as possible, covering the whole cup. The foam traps aroma and gives the coffee its velvety first sip.

Foam is why the heat has to be gentle. Heated slowly, the coffee has time to build a stable layer of fine bubbles. Brought to a hard, rolling boil, the foam breaks up and the coffee turns harsh. If your foam is thin, the usual culprits are heat that is too high, coffee that is not fine enough, or coffee that is stale.

Drinking it

Turkish coffee is served unfiltered, so the grounds come with it. Let the cup sit for a minute while they sink. Then sip slowly, and stop when you reach the thick layer at the bottom; you do not drink that. A glass of water traditionally comes alongside — to clear the palate first — often with a piece of Turkish delight.

A tradition, not just a method

The first coffeehouse in Istanbul is said to have opened in 1554, though some accounts say 1551, started by two Arab merchants, Hakem of Aleppo and Shems of Damascus. Coffee was already in use in the city by 1539. Coffeehouses became central to Ottoman social life.

In 2013, UNESCO inscribed Turkish coffee culture and tradition on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. UNESCO describes it as a symbol of hospitality, friendship, refinement and entertainment that permeates all walks of life, central to occasions such as engagements and holidays, and passed down informally within families.

It also carries a custom that outlives the drinking: once the cup is finished, it is often turned upside down onto its saucer to cool, and the patterns left by the grounds are read to tell the drinker's fortune.

A note on health

Turkish coffee is unfiltered, and that puts it among the brewing methods highest in cafestol, the compound in coffee oil that raises LDL cholesterol. In measurements of different brews, Turkish and Scandinavian boiled coffee carried the most. An occasional small cup is unlikely to matter much; if you are managing high cholesterol, the coffee and cholesterol guide explains why paper-filtered coffee is the better everyday choice.