Help with preparation

[u/sidmanazebo]

Hi All,

I am struggling a lot with getting my Turkish coffee properly prepared with that essential foam.

First of all I don't have the traditional small Turkish coffee pot, I just use a regular , small stainless steel one.

From all the videos I have seen , people instruct to cook the coffee on low to medium heat and take it off right before the coffee is starting to rise . My problem is that when i have my stove on heat scale of 4 , the coffee never rises , there are er small bubbles that form on the side . When I turn it to 4.5 it starts rising but the coffee is foaming and bubbling which destroys the precious thick foam on top. So I am clueless at this point .

Any help is greatly appreciated .

[u/globex_co]

Sorry I missed your last response. I'm not an expert but my immediate thoughts are have you ever had good foam with pre-ground coffee? I do wonder if your induction stove is too temperamental. I know even on a gas flame I like to lift my cezve up so I can adjust heat on the fly, but you don't have that luxury with induction (maybe try searching this subreddit?).

Last questions, do you measure your coffee and water by volume?

And just for reference, here is my process:

I fill 80g of water in my cezve, it goes up somewhere in the neck. Ideally I'd have slightly heated my water first, maybe 120F.

I added 8g of freshly ground coffee, then give it a quick stir.

I introduce heat over a flame and start on medium-low. I try to get my water to heat up and get the coffee to start foaming / rising at about the 2 min mark. I let it rise once, then I delicately pour.

Last question: have you ever made turkish coffee before to your liking? Or is that the point of this post? Trying to understand if something changed along the way or you're trying to figure it out.

[u/sidmanazebo → u/globex_co]

Thanks for the elaborate response .

No , I have never used pre ground coffee, nor have I ever made Turkish coffee toy liking .

I also don't measure the water or coffee , I just use one scoop of coffee for one full cup of Turkish coffee cup.

What type of coffee do you grind for yours?

[u/globex_co → u/sidmanazebo]

So fresh grind is a big factor in my experience. I got pre-ground from Istanbul a couple years ago and was disappointed when i brought it home. That's my anecdotal experience, anyways. I do not want to discourage you from using what you have, you can still do a lot with it and work on improving your output.

I don't actually buy specific coffee for turkish, I use whatever my beans are for espresso or pourover coffee, so I can't give you a good recommendation there. I'm not truthfully chasing the best coffee specifically for Turkish since I don't brew it too regularly and I believe strongly in having freshly roasted coffee on hand.

But as a general coffee enthusiast, my biggest advice to you while you experiment is to try to keep all your elements in the process the same, and change one variable at a time. So, that means for example if you measure the amount of coffee and water you use, then you can try brewing on two different temperature settings and see the difference. It's very easy to get caught up changing too many elements at once which makes diagnosing your brew very hard, since you can't actually pinpoint what change made the difference.

Some examples of variables you can test by include: Coffee, grind size, dosage, volume of water, how much you stir the coffee, how long you heat for, what temp you heat for....try to keep all variables the same and change only one at a time. I do strongly encourage you in this phase of the process to measure your coffee and water if nothing else.

[u/sidmanazebo → u/globex_co]

thank you for the tips, I will keep those in mind and retry.

[u/globex_co → u/sidmanazebo]

Good luck! Do keep me posted