A Sip of Coffee — How to Make Turkish Coffee

In Türkiye, a sip of coffee is more than a drink: it is the start of a conversation, the way a guest is welcomed, a kindness remembered for forty years.

What is Turkish coffee?

Turkish coffee is made by grinding the beans as fine as powder and brewing them with water in a cezve, a small long-handled pot. This is what sets it apart from other methods: the coffee is not filtered, but poured into the cup grounds and all. That is why its texture is so thick and its flavour so lasting.

In 2013 UNESCO added Turkish coffee culture and tradition to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — what it protects is not only the brewing method, but the tradition of conversation built around it.

How do you make it?

The measures are simple: for each cup, one cupful of cold water and one and a half to two dessertspoons of coffee. Sugar, if you want it, goes in at the start; stirring afterwards ruins the foam.

1. Pour the cold water into the cezve and add the coffee and sugar.
2. Stir well before it goes on the hob; once it has warmed up, don’t stir it again.
3. Cook it over a low heat. Rush it and you kill the foam.
4. When the foam starts to rise, take the cezve off the heat and share the foam out between the cups.
5. Put the cezve back on the heat for a moment, then slowly pour in the rest.

Boiling it is a mistake: when coffee boils, the foam breaks up and the taste turns bitter. The measure of good coffee is its foam.

Plain, medium or sweet

Since sugar isn’t added afterwards, you order your coffee the way you want it from the start: sade (plain, no sugar), az şekerli (lightly sweetened, half a spoon), orta (medium, one spoon) or şekerli (sweet, two spoons). These names come straight from the way the coffee is made.

Why does it come with water?

The water served with the coffee isn’t just for show. It cleanses the mouth and readies the palate, so that the first sip gives its full flavour. It also balances out the strength of the coffee. Traditionally, a guest who drinks the water first is letting the host know they are hungry — hospitality has a language of its own.

Coffee fortune-telling and “forty years of friendship”

Reading fortunes in the grounds left in the cup is part of coffee’s social side: as much an excuse to keep the conversation going as it is a bit of fun. The saying “a single cup of coffee is worth forty years of friendship” comes from the same place — what you are offering is not the coffee, but the time you set aside.

You’ll find our coffee recipes in the Recipes section.