Brewing a pot of Turkish coffee

Turkish coffee is quite simple to do. You need a Turkish coffee pot (džezva, cezve, zezwa, jazzwe, briki, ibric, ibrik, raqwa, kanaka, turka, ghallaye or however your culture calls it - I'm gonna use turkish coffee pot for clarity in this article). It can either be a traditional copper one with a very narrow top, or one of the modern versions made of enamel or stainless steel. Saucepans and regular pots will work too - but for best results, top of the pot should be at least slightly narrower than bottom.

Next, you need coffee. Freshly ground to powdery consistence is best... but is rarely used actually. These days most Turkish coffee is sold preground, as few people have grinders at home. Franck jubilarna kava is a common Croatian brand. It's a "standard", best-selling coffee around here (and rather cheap). It's somewhat of an acquired taste - there are people hating it and people swearing it's the best coffee in the world. Heck, you can get it on Amazon.

But I'd still recommend freshly-ground stuff any time. It's incomparable. Turkish coffee here often gets bad rap and it's looked down upon - but when done well, with top of the line coffee used, it can hold its' own against any gourmet method. You should grind it to the finest setting - finer than espresso, as fine as your grinder goes. It must be powdery like flour, powdered sugar or cocoa powder.

Another Croatian tradition: a jar of mystery coffee! To keep it traditional (aka with what most people have at their homes, without any special gear), that's what's gonna be used in this tutorial.

Step 1: Pour water in your pot. Leave some head space.

Step 2: Put coffee on top, and turn heat to medium.

It's best if you have a gas stove, but if you don't use what you have.

Minutes pass. Coffee will slowly sink down.

More minutes pass. Crema starts to appear. It's almost done.

Just a few seconds more, get ready...

Step 3: Remove from stove.

Step 4: Remove some crema from the top (it will contain some fine grounds) and spoon it in your cups. If you don't want the crema (why???), stir it in instead. Don't touch your coffee pot for a minute - grounds will drop to the bottom.

Step 5: Pour in some coffee, from sides so that crema floats on top. Wait a bit for the grounds to settle at the bottom and enjoy. Obviously, don't drink it bottoms up since there will be a layer of grounds at the bottom.

According to many, milk is sacrilege - but a lot of people drink it with milk. You might try some. Most people who drink milk add cold milk. If you want hot, foamed milk with a Turkish coffee, make sure you like the results, and a mix of foam, crema and fine grounds.

This is just one of the methods of making Turkish coffee. I mentioned two others in one of my first posts. If you use the quick method (with separately heating the water and pouring over the grounds), it will be done much faster (in about a quarter of the time), but you will get much less crema and the pot should be left alone for longer time to brew/settle properly. The method depicted in this article will get you better results though, both visually and taste-wise - and it's probably simplest to do. It only requires some time and patience.

If you wish to sweeten the coffee with sugar, the best way to do it is during brewing. Add sugar before coffee (since after putting coffee in you're no longer stirring) and proceed as normal. Some cultures like to add some spices too (cinnamon, cardamom etc.), so if you feel like experimenting you might try that too.

I took a Home Barista course "Brewlution". Here's how it went...

While exploring the local coffee scene I discovered the Teneo Coffee Shop, one of the few "new wave" coffee places in Zagreb. They were offering a three-hour Home Barista course called Brewlution.

The course was rather affordable, costing 100 kn (about $15 for you international readers). It also said it included 200g of one of their single origin coffees, which they usually price at 39 kn. So I figured it was worth a shot.

Since I live some distance from the shop, I arrived a bit early as the shop was closing for regular customers. The shop is a small kiosk. The inside is full of coffee photos, chalkboard-style menu and info about current coffee and courses, and shelves full of coffee gear. This sort of styling, although perhaps popular in some places, is very different from usual cafes in Croatia.

There was total four of us taking the course, plus the coffee shop's owner, a guy named Christian. He prepared some of the gear we were going to use, and then - as we started the course - he started talking about the coffee: its' history, legends and myths, how it's cultivated, grown, processed etc. The whole story. We had questions, they got answered. To be honest, I already knew most of that since I spent a lot of time reading stuff about coffee (including the stuff he posted), but there were new informations. He also included some criticisms about most local cafes, and why the coffee they serve is far from optimal.

This took about an hour and a half, and then we moved to the practical part. First was the espresso machine - how to pull a good shot of espresso using the coffee shop's Gaggia machine. All of us tried filling the portafilter, tamping and pulling a shot. Of course, we would drink our coffee. Mine ended up slightly too runny, but still better than I got served in most bars - although I would primarily attribute that to the well-cleaned machine and good coffee. Perhaps important to note: this was purely an espresso lesson, we didn't touch the milk, steam wand or the maintenance of the espresso machine beyond portafilter cleaning (that's part of another course).

We didn't try to make other types of coffee - instead, we would just observe how Christian made them, and all of them were made using the same beans - the blend that was currently sold in the shop. Second coffee that was demonstrated was Turkish coffee, the default home-made coffee around these parts. We prepared it using the traditional gear (that few people here have and use). It was prepared slightly differently than I usually do it, and as a result was somewhat stronger and creamier-tasting.

The third method was pretty much unknown in these parts: Hario V60 pour-over (manual filter coffee). Making a coffee in it looked interesting, but a bit technical (pouring in circles using a gooseneck kettle), but the end result was delicious and tea-like clear. Since the only filter coffee I had previously was from machines, this was an amazing improvement.

By this time, espressos already kicked in and most of us were starting to feel high on caffeine, energetic and elated. That's probably why I forgot to take a photo of the next method we tried - French Press. To make up for it, I wrote instructions on using it in my previous post - since I also have it and enjoy coffee from it :). The one used on course was also from Hario, and the coffee - while not as clear and presentable as from V60 - had a nice and rich taste. This was probably my favorite coffee this evening.

This was followed up by Aerobie Aeropress coffee. We had two, actually, to demonstrate various ways of brewing it. The first coffee ended up sort of similar to V60, though maybe a bit towards the result we got with French Press. The second method was with more coffee, less water, finer grind and less immersion time. The coffee from that was totally different - closer in taste and texture to espresso than to previous brew from the same device. This was quite impressive.

The final method used was the Vietnamese filter. It's a pourover device - however, the coffee we got from it was closer to the French Press than to V60. It was also a bit more bitter. Supposedly, it's typically drunk with sweet, condensed milk but we didn't have any at hand so we tried it with normal milk.

This concluded our coffee adventure, which stretched for an extra 45 minutes. It was also supposed to include moka pot lessons, but unfortunately Christian forgot to bring one. We got 200g of the same blend we used on course (not single origin as was advertised - Christian explained that the coffee shop typically has only one coffee that is fresh and used for everything, and that rotates - currently, the blend is what's fresh). At that price, I'd certainly recommend it to everyone interested.

Coffee culture in Croatia

Note: I originally posted this on Reddit's /r/Coffee. This is an edited and expanded version.

Coffee culture in Croatia would be considered rather strange by others who are not from the region. We have a mix of Italian espresso culture (specially strong on the coast), Austrian coffeehouse culture (visible in how our caffes are organized), and Turkish coffee culture (especially at home).

First of all, we have no coffee chains to speak off - the only one being McCafé, and it survives only because it's attached to McDonald's. No Starbucks. We had Costa Coffee, but it failed after a few years.

But we have an independant coffee shop on every corner. In a five-minute circle around my workplace, there's around 30 of them. No food is served there, but alcohol usually is. Similar to Italy, you can get an espresso, macchiato (small and large, with the small one being in an espresso cup), cappuccino, and "white coffee" which has much more milk. Cups are typically small, usually 1 dL or smaller. Unlike in Italy, we tend to drink our coffee very slowly (20 min - 1 h or more) and socially... we drink it with water on side (usually comes free), and usually with friends. "Let's go out for a coffee" is a typical way of saying "let's hang out and talk".

Coffee quality in a cafe can vary from awesome to horrible, depending on skilled barristas/waiters (they're typically one and the same). Some place great emphasis on the quality of their coffee, but others place way more emphasis on just being a popular place to hang out, and people still drink their coffee just because the place is trendy, well decorated or because that's where their friends go to.

There is a small artisan coffee scene, limited to a few coffee shops. Americans usually call it "third wave", but that doesn't really apply to Croatia since our coffee history is very differnt from American first and second waves as they're described. Around here, it has no official name but it's sometimes described as "new wave" or as "those who actually know stuff about proper coffee".

Take-out coffee is rare, and you usually won't find it in cafes but in bakeries or kiosks. It's rarely good, and sometimes it's instant stuff. But sometimes you can get surprized by a well-maintained Lavazza superauto that actually makes better coffee than you'll get in some of the posh cafes.

The most popular local pre-ground blend

At home, the most popular coffee is Turkish. Stores are full of pre-ground Turkish coffee - apart from instant, it's the only one which you're guaranteed to find in any store. To most people over here, the producer is more important than bean origin, and they're usually arabica/robusta mixes, dark roasts. Minas taste is very popular - that's not usually considered quality coffee, but people around here like it because it's cheap and it's what they were getting used to for the past half century or more.

The turkish coffee pot is called "džezva" around this parts (pronounced similar to Turkish word for it - "cezve"). Very few of them are fancy, tiny copper ones - most of them are larger, cheaper and more practical stainless or enameled steel ones. In a pinch (or when cooking for a large number of people, or when camping), we can also make a coffee in a large pot. This is how we usually prepare it:

• pour water
• add sugar per taste (since it can be sweetened after, if you're cooking for multiple people you always sweeten it according to the tastes of person who wants least sweet coffee - or no sugar at all, if someone prefers unsweetened)
• add a single heaping teaspoon of coffee for every cup
• put on stove and wait... don't take your eyes off it, because it will pick the moment you do to boil over :)
• when the coffee "raises" take it off and wait a minute before pouring into cups
• add any additional sugar or milk to taste (some consider milk to be sacrilege in a Turkish coffee)

I prepare it a bit differently though, I use electrical kettle to bring the water to boil. Much faster results :) Although, it's probably not best to do it that way if you have decent coffee. Then stick to the instructions.

Filter coffee (drip) is very rare. Manual stuff was never known. Machines were sort of popular back in 80's and 90's as a status symbol, but nowadays it's very rare. The novelty of drip machines wore off, filters were an extra cost and people weren't usually fans of the filter coffee taste which was often burned, badly extracted and from the bad coffee in the first place. Still, a small selection of machines are often sold, as well as a few preground coffee brands.

Instant coffee rose in popularity in the 2000s and captured a large part of the market - especially former Turkish or filter drinkers. It's more expensive than many Turkish blends, and as a result it's more of a status symbol (though highest status symbols are probably pod and espresso machines - in the eyes of the general population).

Moka pots are somewhat rare in the continental Croatia, they're more of a thing down by the coast. Everything else is virtually unknown and unused (we got a French press as a gift for Christmas and we love it - though it's pretty much unknown piece of gear around these parts).

That's basically it... hope you found it informative, if you have any questions, feel free to ask :)