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Permalink Reply by mohamad denno on August 14, 2011 at 4:10am

to make things easy for you :

to major kinds of Coffee brewing in the middel east :

Turkish coffee " you will find it in Turkey -syria-lebanon-egypt-armenia-greece"

Arabic  coffee:

1-heavy roasted coarse ground beans brewed through multi pots

(90% )  with cardamon ( 10 %  ): you will find it in Syria-Iraq-lebanon-palastine-jordan

 

2-very light roasted coarse beacns brewed thorugh mutli pots ( 50 % ) with cardmon ( 50 %): you will find it in gulf states

now the difference is

turkish coffee is dark roasted very finely ground beans put in cold water then the water is heated ,,before boiling point ,,serve it, and the result is smooth coffee with strong aroma and some foam on top of the cup. and some left ground coffee in the bottom of the cup

as for arabic coffee.. Thats Hard,,!!! tell me if your interested to know how,

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Permalink Reply by Viggen Avedissian on August 14, 2011 at 8:08am

Thanks for the tips Mohamad,

Do you know the type of beans they use?

How is the Arabic coffee done?

Thanks agian,

 

mohamad denno said:

to make things easy for you :

to major kinds of Coffee brewing in the middel east :

Turkish coffee " you will find it in Turkey -syria-lebanon-egypt-armenia-greece"

Arabic  coffee:

1-heavy roasted coarse ground beans brewed through multi pots

(90% )  with cardamon ( 10 %  ): you will find it in Syria-Iraq-lebanon-palastine-jordan

 

2-very light roasted coarse beacns brewed thorugh mutli pots ( 50 % ) with cardmon ( 50 %): you will find it in gulf states

now the difference is

turkish coffee is dark roasted very finely ground beans put in cold water then the water is heated ,,before boiling point ,,serve it, and the result is smooth coffee with strong aroma and some foam on top of the cup. and some left ground coffee in the bottom of the cup

as for arabic coffee.. Thats Hard,,!!! tell me if your interested to know how,

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Permalink Reply by Alex on August 15, 2011 at 4:05am

These days it's mostly very cheap Brazilian (Which is something I plan to help try and change in Istanbul very shortly...), but if you go back, historically the coffee that would have been used would largely have either been grown in Yemen or come through Yemen from Ethiopia.

 

So, purely because of this difference alone, what you get now is very different from what you would have got 100 or even 50 years ago in many parts of the muslim world. So it's up to you how far you want to take the "traditional" quest...

 

Importing coffee to Turkey hasn't been particularly cheap for a very long time, so it's been (I think) largely an economic change.

 

Anywhere you go in the middle east you'll see big sacks of "Brasilia" beans... even nomadic Bedouin families in the middle of the Jordanian desert will have their own sack of green Brasilia!

 

Coffee in turkey will (In my experience...) usually be a fairly light roast, and it will be brewed on a per-cup (or two or three or four - there are a few different sized pots... Brewed to order anyway). Most people will have sugar, but many don't. The sugar is added while brewing. The "crema" is important in Turkey. The grounds of the coffee are poured into the cup too, and when finished they can be used to read your fortune!

 

In Syria what I mostly experienced was brewed in much larger pots - several litres sometimes, left to sit and steep all day, and with a healthy dose of cardamon added to the brew - 10% sounds about right (Thanks Tesekkur ederim Mohamad!). Everyone will have a pot of coffee sitting there! I find, probably because of the cardamon, the syrian/arabic style much cleaner. The cardamon does wonders to cutting through the bitterness of the coffee, making it far more palatable without sugar than Turkish coffee. Far fewer people will drink this coffee with sugar. This is a style of coffee I had in Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq, as well as Syria.

 

In Egypt, while staying with a family in the desert, they made me one of the more interesting traditional style coffees I've had. It started with scooping a handfull of green beans from the ever-present Brasilia sack, and then roasting them in a small sauce-pan over the campfire. When the beans were roasted they were thrown into an elongated mortar with some dried ginger, and then handed me the mortar and a pestle to grind it all together! When that was ready it was poured into a clay pot shaped a little like a gourd - big spherical bulb with a long thin straight spout at the top, water was added and then it was set in the coals of the fire to slowly brew. When it was ready, it was poured and served sans suger into small cups. The ginger was surprisingly good! 

 

In all places, however, you do find the more turkish style quite easily. I'm sorry to say, out of everywhere I've been, and all the coffee I've tried, Turkish coffee was at its best outside Turkey!

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Permalink Reply by mohamad denno on August 15, 2011 at 5:35am

wellcome alex

 

as for coffee beans :

rosting: mix of full city-light french -french

coffee beans source: (arabica)  columbia-india-ethupia

as for making arabic coffee ( the first version) give me a week until i give you precise measurements

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Permalink Reply by Viggen Avedissian on August 15, 2011 at 7:30am

Thanks again,

mohamad denno said:

wellcome alex

 

as for coffee beans :

rosting: mix of full city-light french -french

coffee beans source: (arabica)  columbia-india-ethupia

as for making arabic coffee ( the first version) give me a week until i give you precise measurements

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Viggen Avedissian on August 15, 2011 at 7:36am

Thanks Alex,

I could almost taste the coffee brewed on the desert fire.
Alex said:

These days it's mostly very cheap Brazilian (Which is something I plan to help try and change in Istanbul very shortly...), but if you go back, historically the coffee that would have been used would largely have either been grown in Yemen or come through Yemen from Ethiopia.

 

So, purely because of this difference alone, what you get now is very different from what you would have got 100 or even 50 years ago in many parts of the muslim world. So it's up to you how far you want to take the "traditional" quest...

 

Importing coffee to Turkey hasn't been particularly cheap for a very long time, so it's been (I think) largely an economic change.

 

Anywhere you go in the middle east you'll see big sacks of "Brasilia" beans... even nomadic Bedouin families in the middle of the Jordanian desert will have their own sack of green Brasilia!

 

Coffee in turkey will (In my experience...) usually be a fairly light roast, and it will be brewed on a per-cup (or two or three or four - there are a few different sized pots... Brewed to order anyway). Most people will have sugar, but many don't. The sugar is added while brewing. The "crema" is important in Turkey. The grounds of the coffee are poured into the cup too, and when finished they can be used to read your fortune!

 

In Syria what I mostly experienced was brewed in much larger pots - several litres sometimes, left to sit and steep all day, and with a healthy dose of cardamon added to the brew - 10% sounds about right (Thanks Tesekkur ederim Mohamad!). Everyone will have a pot of coffee sitting there! I find, probably because of the cardamon, the syrian/arabic style much cleaner. The cardamon does wonders to cutting through the bitterness of the coffee, making it far more palatable without sugar than Turkish coffee. Far fewer people will drink this coffee with sugar. This is a style of coffee I had in Jordan, Egypt, and Iraq, as well as Syria.

 

In Egypt, while staying with a family in the desert, they made me one of the more interesting traditional style coffees I've had. It started with scooping a handfull of green beans from the ever-present Brasilia sack, and then roasting them in a small sauce-pan over the campfire. When the beans were roasted they were thrown into an elongated mortar with some dried ginger, and then handed me the mortar and a pestle to grind it all together! When that was ready it was poured into a clay pot shaped a little like a gourd - big spherical bulb with a long thin straight spout at the top, water was added and then it was set in the coals of the fire to slowly brew. When it was ready, it was poured and served sans suger into small cups. The ginger was surprisingly good! 

 

In all places, however, you do find the more turkish style quite easily. I'm sorry to say, out of everywhere I've been, and all the coffee I've tried, Turkish coffee was at its best outside Turkey!

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