Preparing Turkish Coffee in Sand

At the old times, brazier was a typical device used commonly in Turkish homes. As they were so indispensable, it was believed that person controlling the tongs of the braziers is at the highest level of the home hierarchy. Braziers were used to cook meals, heat up rooms and brew Turkish coffee.

Turkish coffee prepared over a brazier is called “kul kahvesi” in Turkish. It literally means “ash coffee”, since the coffee is brewed with coal ash located in a brazier.

Today, braziers are not common in Turkish homes any more. They are almost forgotten. I have to say finding such brewed coffee is really difficult nowadays. You can drink original kül kahvesi only at a few special restaurants. Or, if you are really lucky, you may meet with Turkish people who keep and use the traditional braziers.

However some people, especially older generations, still believe that coffee brewed over brazier is much better than coffee prepared over stove or with automatic machines. This belief motivated some Turkish companies to produce machines that simulate brazier heat. The logic behind this thinking is actually simple. They fill a metal container with sea sand and warm up the sand with electricity. A traditional coffee pot is placed in the hot sand, and that is all! The heat is gently transferred to the pot; therefore the pot received the same level of heat from all directions. This process allows brewing the coffee a little bit slower, but it is believed it is tastier. It takes about 3 to 4 minutes to prepare the coffee.

Maybe, these machines are not perfect substitute of taste of the traditional “kul kahvesi”. But, they offer chance of brewing Turkish coffee in a different and nostalgic way.

Cleaning of Turkish Mills

Why Should You Clean Your Turkish Mill?
The main reason behind cleaning a hand coffee mill is to get rid of the oil coming from coffee beans. If you don’t clean your mill, then rancid oil and other coffee residue will probably ruin your delicious coffee flavor.

How Frequently Should We Clean?
Okay, now you believe in that you should clean your lovely grinder regularly. :-) But, how frequently should be the cleaning? Of course, it depends on how frequently you use your mill and how indolent you are :-) For example, I use my mill almost every day to drink a cup of Turkish coffee. My thumb of rule is to clean it briefly every week, and to do a spring cleaning every month.

How to Take Care of Your Mill?
Please, don’t forget, moisture is the biggest enemy of your Turkish mill! So, you should avoid from cleaning it (especially internal parts) with water. If you’re obsessive about using water, you should clean only external parts with water, and of course, then you should wipe it thoroughly. Ideally, you can clean external part by wiping it with a damp cloth. I also sometimes use toothpaste as metal cleaner to clean the external part.

The best way to clean internal parts is to use your grinder! Just add some coffee beans or rice into your mill and grind them. By doing so, you can remove production residue within the grinding mechanism. Additionally, you can also brush out the inside parts as best you can with a small brush, such as a tooth-brush.

Buying Advice: Manual Coffee Grinders

This post is my third article in manual coffee grinders (aka hand coffee mills) sequence. (Hand Coffee Mill: Mechanism and Usage, Hand Coffee Mills)

Assume that you started to think that hand coffee mills are great and you decided to buy one. I am sure there a number of questions in your mind! I think one is so important among those questions.

Which is the Best Hand Coffee Mill?You can find many coffee mill brands and models in the market. Some of them are really cheap ones that are mainly manufactured as decorative or tourist products. If you’re looking for a hand coffee mill with which you can really grind coffee, please keep reading…

It’s actually not easy to understand quality of a mill, especially if you’re going to buy your mill over the Internet. First, you should decide what you’re looking for. As this blog is about Turkish coffee, I assume you’re looking for a manual crank style mill that can grind extra-fine coffee.

Actually, I really don’t like shopping by just following some certain brands, such as my jeans must be X brand, or my sneaker must be Y brand. What I care during shopping is quality and functionality. “How a product looks like” or “what brand it has” don’t have too much importance to me.

However, looking for specific mill brands is the easiest, and probably, the safest way to obtain your mill –especially if it’ll be your first mill or you’ll buy it over the Internet.

Zassenhaus, Sozen, Acar or Hon?
I think the most known brand for a coffee mill is Zassenhaus. Over time, Zassenhaus’ Turkish coffee mill, 175M Havana, has become a legend. Zassenhaus has been producing manual crank mills since 1867. The company located in Solingen is actually known for spice mills, swords, knives, scissors, and razors.

 Zassen manual coffee grinder: 175M Havanna

But, there’s another brand that’s also very successful at manufacturing high quality hand mills, especially Turkish coffee grinders. Its name is Sozen (Sözen in Turkish), which is based in Turkey. Although it has been producing very high quality coffee mills for more than 100 years, Sozen isn’t known as widely as Zassenhaus is. I think it’s mainly because of that it’s a very small family business, which is isolated in Turkey. Sozen has a small workshop that is specialized in production of coffee mills, which are handmade. Sozen also manufactures spice mills, cezve (pot), scoops, and mortars.

Sozen traditional manual coffee grinder

Sozen is definitely my top choice as a hand coffee mill. That’s not only because Sozen coffee mills are much cheaper than alternative ones, but also Sozen offers the highest quality. Sozen mills offers uniform and very fine grinding. As a result, Sozen presents a great price-quality combination.

If I were in place of Sozen’s owners, I would definitely try to expand production by improving production facility. Also, they can make improvements in marketing too. Even a simple web site in English may double their sales.

There’re two other Turkish brands that I can suggest you. Acar and Hon are the mill brands coming after Sozen. If you can’t find Sozen, you can buy Acar or Hon.

Hon manual coffee grinder

Acar is coming after Sozen, since their coffee mills require much more turning of the joint arm –of course, comparing to Sozen-. As an example, coffee for one cup of Turkish coffee takes about 150 turning with Acar, while the same amount of coffee needs about 50 turnings with Sozen.

Is there too much explanation? Are you lost among words? Okay, in short, I suggest you to prefer Sozen, Zassenhaus, Acar or Hon by order.

If you have a chance to examine a mill before buying, then my suggestion is to take a look at burr and mill, which are the most important parts of a manual coffee grinder. If it’s possible, try to test the mill before buying it.

Hand Coffee Mill: Mechanism and Usage

A traditional manual coffee mill’s outer shell is made of solid brass or wood.

Design of a hand-crank coffee mill can be box or cylinder. In this article, I mainly talk about cylinder-shaped grinders.

On the top of the mill, you can see a crank handle, which can be lift off to put coffee beans into your mill. Working mechanism of a hand coffee mill is based on same mentality with that of a pepper mill. Just turn the crank to rotate crankshaft in order to grind coffee beans.

(crank handle)

(the upper body of the mill - the crank handle and crankshaft was removed)

The inner conical burr is similar to that of a pepper mill. The burr can be steel or iron. Of course, steel ones last longer than latter one.

(the burr - you can see the residue from the coffee I drank while I was writing this article :-)

(bottom of the upper part - the burr and crankshaft together)

There is a nut (screw), which not only keeps burr stable but also gives you the opportunity of adjusting coarseness. You can change the adjustment by screwing up or down the nut. So, your grinder can be adjusted for ultra fine coffee (for Turkish coffee), or a coarser grind suitable for other brewing methods, such as French-press or espresso. For example, if you want to have Turkish style fine coffee, you should screw the nut as tight as possible without breaking the joist.

(the nut - the model above has an external tool to adjust it)

(bottom of the crankshaft)

Bottom of the mill is a kind of canister. You can easily remove that part to get your ground coffee. Shape of the bottom part can be cylinder or globe. Actually, there’re no differences between two shapes. It just depends on your choice. Some people think globe ones are more ergonomics.

There’re two final tips about using your hand coffee mill. You shouldn’t keep extra beans in your mill. Otherwise, you may get a metallic aroma from your ground coffee. Also, you shouldn’t adjust the nut when there’re coffee beans inside of your mill.

Hand Coffee Mills

Finally, I found some time to write a post! This article is about hand coffee mills, as not only these mills are great to grind your own coffee but also I've received a number of questions about them.

I really enjoy using traditional hand coffee mills. There’re a lot of reasons behind this love. First of all, it’s really exciting to know people used similar devices ages ago to prepare their coffee! Second, you’re not dependent on electricity, so it’s really an environmentalist device. Third, a manual coffee mill is really compact and small. Furthermore, the coffee, which is ground with a quality hand coffee mill, is so good as if it’s ground with a professional grinder. Last, but not least, by grinding your own coffee, you can drink very fresh coffee!

Do I sound too nostalgic or sensitive? Okay if you think so, please just wait for another reason. I think it’s the cheapest way to grind you own coffee in your home! :-)  Just think about how much you should pay for a high-quality coffee grinder… Most probably, more than $300! But, I just paid less than $50 for my hand-made manual coffee mill that can be used to grind coffee beans for different brewing methods -from espresso to Turkish coffee!

If I need to summarize, benefits of having a hand coffee mill are as follows:

- No need for electricity
- Relatively cheap- Functionality of adjustable grind -from Turkish fine ground to coarser
- Nostalgic
- High grinding quality
- Easy to keep and to carry
- Freshness and taste

How about the bottom side? I think the main difficulty of the hand coffee mills is that they depend on your muscle. But, actually, using these manual grinders is not as hard as it sounds, if you don’t consume coffee in massive amounts.

As a summary, if you’re not a heavy coffee drinker, or you like taste of fresh coffee, or you just looking for some nostalgia, I highly recommend you to buy a traditional hand coffee mill.

Equipment to Prepare and Serve Turkish Coffee

It's thought that preparation of Turkish coffee is a hard and complex process. Also, it's believed that it needs a number of sophisticated equipment. However, this myth is not true. Once you learned it is very easy to prepare Turkish coffee. You just need some basic equipment.

To grind
As explained in preparation section, you can skip the grinding step by buying ground Turkish coffee. Therefore, you can prepare your Turkish coffee faster. Of course, you will have a better result by using freshly ground coffee beans.

If you decide to use grind your own coffee, you have two options:

- First one is to use a Turkish grinder (mill) (kahve degirmeni) to grind your coffee yourself. You can buy a special Turkish grinder online or you can ask your local coffee stores. (Please click on link for more information about manual coffee grinders.)

- Second option is to grind your coffee at your local grocery store. In the States, most of the grinders at your local grocery or coffee stores have a Turkish coffee setting.

Dark or medium roast are okay for Turkish coffee. The point is to have strong aroma and flavour. The end result of the grinding process should be powdery, something like baby powder (even finer than espresso coffee grounds). Don't forget, Turkish coffee is the finest grind of all coffee. So, you should grind your coffee as fine as possible.


To brew

• A narrow-topped small boiling pot
• A teaspoon
• A heating device

You can use any kind of pot that is narrow-topped. In Turkish, this kind of pot is called cezve. You can also find it under the name of "Turkish warmer". Traditionally, cezve is made of copper and has a wooden handle. But, there are also steel or other metals models of cezve. The size of the pot should depend on amount of coffee to be prepared. If you use a pot that is too large, at the end you will not have too much foam (kopuk), which is one of the critical indicators of a good Turkish coffee.

Teaspoon is used to put coffee and sugar (if you desire) to the pot and to stir. Normally, you should use 2 teaspoons of coffee (5 grams or 0.176 ounces) for per cup. Of course, it mainly depends on your taste. You may increase or decrease this measure. You can also use a teaspoon to stir coffee powder (and sugar).

You can use any regular heating device. The important point is not to use very strong heat source, as lower heat allows gentle heat transfer.

To serve

• Turkish coffee cup (fincan)

Turkish coffee represents a life style and a culture. So, you shouldn't drink it from ordinary cups. It is served in special cups that is called fincan in Turkish. It is about the size of espresso or sake cups. Turkish coffee cups are generally made of porcelain. They have a handle and a narrow bottom. In Turkey, you can't find a household without fincans. :)