Top 10 Mistakes When Making Turkish Coffee

Turkish coffee is one of the easiest ways to prepare delicious coffee. This is a guide to help you avoid the most common mistakes when making Turkish coffee.

Using the wrong ratio

One of the most common mistakes is using the wrong ratio of coffee and water. If you use too much water or too much coffee, the result will not be drinkable! The most common rule of thumb is a small cup of water with a teaspoon of coffee. If you want your coffee strong you can use two teaspoons but don’t use more…

Using the wrong grind

To make Turkish coffee you must use very finely ground coffee. If you use coarser coffee, you will not be able to extract the delicate flavors of the coffee. You also won’t be able to create the specialty coffee foam on top, which is highly prized in many Middle Eastern and Balkan countries. This special foam resembles espresso cream and is known as kaimaki in Greece. So be sure to use very fine ground coffee.

If you want to grind your own coffee, use a high-quality burr grinder (manual or electric). You can also use a mortar and pestle.

boiling coffee

You must use a Turkish coffee pot to prepare the coffee. Stir the coffee with the sugar a little so that they mix with the water.

After turning on the heat and starting to heat the coffee in the pot, it is very important to watch carefully as the coffee slowly boils. It is essential that you do not let it boil!

If it boils, the coffee will taste bitter and flat. To make delicious Turkish coffee, you need to stop heating when the coffee mixture is ALMOST about to boil.

At this special moment, the coffee foam forms a ring at the top. This foam ring slowly increases in size, closes the gap at the top, and then the coffee begins to rise. As soon as the foam ring closes the gap at the top and begins to rise, heating should be stopped. If you don’t, it will boil and the flavor will be destroyed. So, just be careful and take it easy!

Bring to a boil more than 3 times

There are some people who prefer to bring their coffee almost to a boil more than once. I consider this to be a waste of time and can also sometimes lead to a loss of quality. Bringing coffee to near boil more than 3 times is overkill!

Add sugar after boiling

If you want your coffee to be medium sweet, add a teaspoon of sugar for every teaspoon of coffee. If you want your coffee sweet, double the amount of sugar. It is important to put the sugar before heating, to optimize the flavor. The sugar melts and becomes one with the coffee in your mouth.

Using the wrong size pot

To prepare 2 small cups of coffee, use a coffee maker (ibrik or cezve) that can hold 3 small cups of coffee. You can also measure the capacity of the pot using water. The additional cup is counted to facilitate the whole process of stirring and foaming.

Now you may ask:

“Why can’t I use a 5-cup coffee maker to make 2 cups of coffee? The bigger the better!”

Unfortunately it is not like that!

You see… if you use a much larger coffee maker, this makes creating coffee foam quite difficult. The shape of the coffee maker (conical) makes it easy to create a special oven effect that makes frothing much easier and more precise.

If you use a very large coffee maker, it will be difficult to make a good foam on top of the Turkish coffee. Try it and you will see the difference!

Use hot water to make it faster

There are many professionals who start with hot water in order to make Turkish coffee faster. They actually have big kettles and when a customer asks for a cup of Turkish coffee, they pour hot water from the kettle into their pot, put coffee and sugar in it and boil everything as fast as possible!

The result, as you might guess, is the destruction of all the delicate flavor of the coffee. This is due to basic physics and chemistry… hot water (90 degrees C or more) interacts with the coffee and then, as if that wasn’t enough, you boil it some more!

So just use cold coffee and don’t rush. Your taste buds will thank you!

Pour quickly and carelessly

When heating the coffee little by little in order to retain the foam at the top. If you do it fast, the foam can break.

Not letting the coffee sit a bit after serving

After the coffee is served, the small coffee beans float throughout the cup. Just let them sit for a couple of minutes (except if you like to drink coffee :-))

You don’t take enough time to enjoy!

This is, in my opinion, the biggest mistake of all. We live in a very fast-paced time, full of stress.

Why should you also be in a hurry when you drink your Turkish coffee? Relax! Take a small sip, sit back and enjoy! Share what you learned with your friends and offer them a cup of coffee too, right?

Enjoy!