The Turkish Espress

Dec 19, 2024

I think a good Turkish coffee is an incredible treat, but the process is too fiddly for me at home. The other day, I was messing around and created[1] this pretty simple technique for folks with espresso machines (and maybe Aeropresses with the Fellow Prismo attachment)[2] to get a rough approximation of that sweet and potent drink.

  1. To your freshly ground coffee, add in some spices to your taste.
    1. Cinnamon and nutmeg are pretty easy to come by, and you might also try allspice, ground ginger, clove, or others.
    2. Make sure the powder you're adding is incredibly fine; so far, my experience with store-bought powders is fine.
    3. Use your Wire Distribution Tool (WDT) to evenly mix the spices into your grind.
  2. Add a sugar cube to 6-ounce cup (or so) and draw 1 to 2 shots of espresso
    1. Use a fancy cup; a simple cappuccino cup is fine, but this is a treat, so treat it like one.
    2. You could also easily stir the sugar in later, but this looks nice and you feel cool.
    3. Also, experiment with sugar amount here; for 2 shots, you might do two cubes.
  3. Add in 1-4 oz of hot water, sip, and enjoy!

It's been a year or so since I had a good Turkish coffee so I don't have a great reference point for authenticity of taste, but it's pretty good and comes with a few benefits:

  1. Not accidentally swilling coffee grit
  2. No (new) equipment if you already have an espresso machine
  3. Way less fiddly and messy to learn

Give it a shot![3]

  1. While I'm sure it's been done millions of times before me and probably discussed online, I didn't reference any of that. ↩︎

  2. And you know, from my experience with the Instant Coffee Taste Test, maybe you could make a really potent mix of instant coffee (1-2 tsp in 1-2 oz hot water) to approximate espresso? ↩︎

  3. I don't like this pun either, but it was an accident, ok? ↩︎