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Permalink Reply by N. Freeman on July 4, 2009 at 10:58am

Louise, I spent some time in Istanbul and Samsun Turkey and tried a few times to enjoy Turkish coffee, but I just don't like coffee syrup. I would think Ethiopian coffee would be like most coffees from the Easter Mediterranean, but instead of making a powder like the turkish coffee, I read the Ethiopians crush the fresh roasted bean and then strain the brewed coffee through a sift to remove the grounds. The Turkish coffee I tried in Turkey used sugar in the making and I don't know if the Ethiopians use sugar in the process.

I did buy two brass Turkish coffee grinders while in Turkey, one of them made in Greece. Both grinders have conical steel grinding plates. I use one for a pepper grinder for whole tellicherry black pepper and the other for grinding Sarawak black pepper.

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Permalink Reply by Alun Evans on July 5, 2009 at 1:42am

Most of the Arabic methods of brewing coffee probably originated from Abysinia or Ethiopia. Therefore there are some similarities in the Ethiopian and the Turkish method. Most Arabic methods of brewing coffee (ie Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian which I have tried) involve in some form boiling the coffee grinds several times- often with cardamon or other spices. Funnily enough, a lot of the roasted coffee you get in Turkey these days comes from...Australia. Roasted there then shipped up to places such as Istanbul. Turkish coffee, traditionally, may have been arabica. However much of the coffee you find in markets these days is robusta. In Ethiopia (I suspect as I have never visited there) most likely you would be drinking Arabica. It is true what N.Freeman mentions about Turkish coffee. Often, like traditional coffees drunk in Greece and indeed in Indonesia, most often the coffee will be strong and very sweet. The coffee preperation devices, while similar looking (again Turkey adopting coffee hundreds of years after the Ethiopians) are different. The Turkish brewer is generally taller, made of brass. The Ethiopean pots are made of clay.

I would recommend you try and get hold of the "Black Coffee" video made by the Canadian broadcasting corp. It ws shown on National Geographic channel a few years back in Indonesia. I think you should be able to get a copy from Ratu Plaza or Mangga DuaI think one episde has a bit about the Turkish method, another quite anextended section on the Ethiopian Coffee ceremony

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Permalink Reply by Turkish Coffee World on October 2, 2009 at 8:28pm

First of all there is no Ethiopian method of making coffee. It is true that coffee was first used in Ethiopia, but only as food a supplement (they would mix it with animal fats and eat it). When the coffee reached Yemen, they started to use it as a beverage by boiling the beans and drinking it. Today this method is still used and known as "mira" or Arabic coffee. It has nothing to do with the Turkish method.

Turkish method evolved in the Ottoman Topkapi palace in Istanbul, where there were 40-50 full time coffee baristas/makers. Here, they started to experiment with different roasting techniques and then grind the coffee beans in flour mills. Soon everyone heard about this brew and started to make it in their homes. Then coffee houses started to open up all over Istanbul. First coffee house was the Kiva Han, which opened in 1554.

Unlike the Arabic coffee method, Turkish coffee is never boiled. This is because, coffee is actually roasted for the second time while making the brew. This is why it has to be cooked slowly over low heat. It is absolutely amazing to me when I read articles or comments on "how to make Turkish coffee" talk about having the brew come to a "boil". Let me put it this way, if your Turkish coffee ever comes to a boil, you need to just dump it down the sink. Because that's a burnt coffee. It won't have a foam either because it would have evaporated (foaming occurs at a much lower temperature than the boiling point) - and drinking Turkish coffee without the foam would be unthinkable!

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Permalink Reply by Brady on October 4, 2009 at 6:58am

Good discussion... guess I missed it when it came up originally.

As I understand it (though my knowledge here is extremely limited), Ethiopians do drink coffee. The Ethiopian "ceremony" that I observed involves starting with green coffee, pan roasting it by hand, then immediately grinding the still-hot coffee beans and brewing in a tall clay vessel in a way much like Turkish - full immersion and pouring off unfiltered.

I am not Ethiopian. I have not been to Ethiopia, and was not in Ethiopia to observe this, it was done by some first-generation Ethiopian restaurant owners living here in the US. So I would love to hear a little more discussion about the myths and truth behind this.

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Permalink Reply by Brady on October 4, 2009 at 7:14am

Here's a picture of the Ethiopian coffee brewer that I saw in use. It matches Alun's description.

She emphasized the importance of pouring from way above the cups to cool the brew. Not sure if she boiled or not, though it looks extremely hot in these pics.

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Permalink Reply by Fraser Jamieson on October 4, 2009 at 10:25am

They say you learn something every day. I just did. This is great information.
OK, stupid question: Is Greek style and Turkish style coffee the same or different???

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Permalink Reply by Turkish Coffee World on October 8, 2009 at 9:55pm

Brady, I was talking about coffee as beverage in the beginning....from everything that I have read, Ethiopians did not use the coffee as a beverage at first..the story goes that a goat herders saw the animals eat the berries and observed their energetic behavior after they ate the plants...and decided to to try it...they smashed the berries and wrapped it with animal fat and ate it...later when the coffee spread as a beverage, off course like everyone else, they also started to drink it...in the picture you show, it looks like the coffee was made like the Arabic mira method (i.e., made by boiling the coffee beans for a long time) but the cups looks like and are, Turkish "fincans" ...by the way, today in Sudan, next door to Ethiopia, they refer to their brew as Turkish coffee..I think it is important to understand the Ottoman influence in the region for hundreds of years...

Brady said:

Here's a picture of the Ethiopian coffee brewer that I saw in use. It matches Alun's description.

She emphasized the importance of pouring from way above the cups to cool the brew. Not sure if she boiled or not, though it looks extremely hot in these pics.

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Permalink Reply by Turkish Coffee World on October 8, 2009 at 10:11pm

Turkish and Greek coffee are the same thing...People in Greece, until the 1974, were calling it Turkish coffee (and most still do), but the junta that took over the government at the time, issued a decree banning the use of the word "Turkish" when referring to things like Turkish delight, baklava, port etc. because of the anti-Turkish hysteria about Cyprus. Once I read a comment by a Greek in a forum who wrote " to insist on calling Turkish coffee as Greek coffee is a form of racism". I think I agree with him.


Fraser Jamieson said:

They say you learn something every day. I just did. This is great information.
OK, stupid question: Is Greek style and Turkish style coffee the same or different???

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