 Hey guys welcome back to my youtube channel where you can receive a steady flow of information on completely random and unrelated topics. This is Daniel Rosal here and I'm going to do another video today about Turkish coffee. Now why hasn't Turkish coffee featured on my youtube channel today you may be asking yourself. Well I actually gave up coffee two years ago which is about as long as I've been running this youtube channel. So it unfortunately never got featured but recently I took up coffee drinking again and I remain a huge fan of Turkish coffee and it remains the only type of coffee I drink. So I thought I'd put together this little presentation on three common myths regarding Turkish coffee. So if you've never heard of Turkish coffee get ready to learn a little bit about it. Number one Turkish coffee is not from Turkey. Now this is very forgivable if you hear from someone about Turkish coffee and you've never heard of it before you would probably assume that it's using some special type of coffee bean that's only available in Turkey and it's not the case. In fact Turkey despite being a wonderful country does not produce any coffee whatsoever. There is actually no such thing as Turkish coffee. Turkish coffee instead refers to a brewing method for preparing coffee that was popularized in Turkey and to make Turkish coffee what you really need is super super finely ground coffee beans. It's the finest form of coffee ground that there is and it's considerably finer than espresso. So it's got nothing to do with coffee produced in Turkey. It's just a style of coffee drinking that went big in Turkey and the truth is this is potentially going to annoy some people. There really isn't any difference between Turkish coffee, Greek coffee, Balkan coffee and to a lesser extent Arabic coffee. Well Arabic coffee they put in cardamom but it's kind of all talking about the same thing but Turkish coffee is kind of the best known word for this. So as I said Turkey doesn't produce any of its own coffee at least to the best of my knowledge and Turkish coffee refers to a grind, fineness and a brewing style. Now what type of coffee is used for Turkish so typically it's arabica versus instead of robust coffee beans but the truth of the matter is that you can actually make Turkish coffee because it's a brewing style from pretty much any roasted coffee bean from anywhere that produces coffee on the planet. If you use coffee beans from Brazil that is completely legitimate but to be a little bit more authentic the origins of coffee are so much routed in mystery and the long history that predates them but it goes something like coffee coming from Ethiopia to Yemen and then spreading into Turkey. So if you want to be a little bit more traditional that's why some folks recommend using Yemeni coffee beans specifically. Now in terms of the roast I've seen conflicting info the place I buy my coffee from here in Jerusalem uses approximately a two-thirds to one-third ratio of light roast to dark roast so they they sell you a mix of coffee beans intended for Turkish but some people say it Turkish coffee should be using a light roast I've seen other folks say completely the opposite it should be a very dark roast so I'm not really sure there's any agreement on this but I personally don't like using dark roast for Turkish I use either the mixture that Izzymans sells me or I use just a light roast of whatever coffee bean takes my fancy on that day. Turkish coffee and Arabic coffee are very similar as I said I think Turkish coffee and Greek coffee as they're prepared today or Cypriot coffee or Balkan coffee are going to be pretty pretty 99% similar. The difference between Turkish coffee and Arabic coffee is that in the Arabic world it's very popular to add cardamom to coffee as I've shown you can hand grind your cardamom in a Turkish grinder like the sozen but that seems to be pretty much all there is in it to prepare Turkish and Arabic coffee in a finjan on the stove is pretty much the same process. Here are a couple of more fun Turkish coffee facts so this coffee that I have photoed here is called Mehmed Effendi you can pick them up on eBay it's and you can buy it in Turkey it's really really great coffee and Turkish coffee was introduced to Turkey in 1540 by the Turkish governor of Yemen so as they say the part of the world where coffee drinking was first really popularized although this is debated among people was Yemen the debate is whether coffee drinking was much of a thing in Ethiopia but regardless of that that part of the world Ethiopia Yemen is where coffee drinking first really became a thing and then it spread into Turkey by the governor of Yemen who brought it brought it to the attention of Sultiman the Magnificent or that's what I found out found out on the internet Mehmed Effendi which as I said is or these days still a really popular brand of Turkish coffee they claim to be the oldest pre-ground form of coffee selling direct to consumers in the world they've been selling it since 1871 and they sell it in these kind of distinctive and cool containers looking just like this that are popular among collectors and you can buy this stuff on eBay or Turkey as I mentioned the first evidence of human drinking coffee dates back to the 15th century so there's earlier recorded instances of humans interacting with coffee in this famous story about a Yemeni goat herder who noticed his flock was consuming some bean then getting kind of like rowdy and then he decided what's in this bean and he drunk some coffee he picked some he drunk some he consumed a coffee cherry like the actual uncooked unroasted fruit and then was like this is really cool no one actually seems to know if that story is apocryphal or true but again does any of this really matter but it's been since this period roughly that humans have been drinking coffee now of course coffee is a huge thing myth number two Turkish coffee is very strong I used to get this one from my dear mother who would say be careful drinking Turkish coffee is very very strong and I think I understand why people assume Turkish coffee is the most highly caffeinated form of coffee on the planet because it's cooked over a fire in these serious looking pots but it doesn't really again stand up to investigation so much so there are some folks who for strange reasons concern themselves with quantifying the exact caffeine composition of drinks and then publishing that in academic journals and the bottom line is that one estimate that I found repeatedly in more than one source is that 100 when they measure the amount of caffeine that gets brewed in a small little Turkish coffee container containing only 40 mils of coffee is 165 milligrams now that is definitely a quite sizable portion of caffeine but it's also not like mind-blowingly strong coffee at the same time now coffee estimates as to how much caffeine each brew method have are like all over the place they're completely you can google caffeine content filter coffee french press turkish and you'll just get random answers from all over the place one thing that does matter is the roast people would tend to assume that a dark roast is going to have more coffee but in fact as you roast the coffee beans further you're actually going to be getting rid of some of the caffeine so in fact light roast typically contain more caffeine and there's a lot of different things that are going to affect the caffeine content how hot was the water how long was the water in touch with the coffee grounds etc etc but bottom line it's definitely true that Turkish coffee is strong coffee but it's pretty easy to get a stronger cup of coffee from other methods such as a drip coffee can sometimes contain and percolate it especially up to 200 milligrams of coffee now the most um and that an alegis former coffee or the one that kind of looks the most looks most like Turkish at first glance is espresso even though they are pretty different given that Turkish coffee is a unfiltered and b it's cooked over a stove and espresso the main distinguishing feature of espresso is that it's pressurized water being forced through coffee grounds so they kind of look the same they look they're typically dark coffees and very small glasses but they're actually quite different preparation methods nevertheless uh one of the values I found for a double shot of espresso what the Italians call a doppio is up to 185 or 150 so at that point we're pretty much getting the same as Turkish coffee bottom line you have to enjoy all forms of coffee in moderation as you may be able to tell I had a uh decently strong Turkish coffee before starting this presentation but the truth of the matter is that Turkish coffee isn't some phenomenally strong uniquely strong form of coffee it's just about as strong as other forms of coffee really and there is substantial variation and among what people think and what estimates people get when they measure it anyway myth number three or final one for today Turkish coffee requires complicated equipment or specialist specialist knowledge to produce because Turkish coffee is kind of cool when you look at photographs of all these wacky brass gear and whatnot but it actually doesn't really cost that much to get started here's my cost estimate for an Ibrick you're looking at Ibrick's also called a Sesve and I'm surely pronouncing that wrong it's a Turkish word I think Ibrick is the Arabic word where I'm based in Israel people call this a finjan although that's actually incorrect because in local Arabic and standard Arabic the finjan refers to the cup and not the brewing vessel but what in any event these things run from like 10 to 50 dollars you'll get much nicer much more elaborate ones at the higher end of that you'll get really basic brass ones at the lower end of that you can definitely pick one up if you live in a major metropolitan area check out your nearest Turkish ethnic store or Middle Eastern ethnic store and they'll almost they're almost guaranteed to have Ibrick's or you can you can certainly order one from eBay or the internet secondly now if you want to get an electronic grinder they are it is going to be expensive the reason is that Turkish coffee is super super fine and it requires substantial horsepower to actually you know turn the conical burr grinds at burr wheels to get a grind that is that thin there are they are there are machines on the market that are rated to do Turkish coffee but to really get something very reliable you tend to be looking more at commercial grinders so the actual actually interestingly the most affordable way of getting into grinding Turkish coffee at home if you don't want to buy pre-ground Turkish coffee is to pick yourself up a manual grinder there is a Turkish brand and again I know I'm pronouncing this wrong I'm reading it as if it were English called Sozin I think it's called that's pronounced chosen in Turkish but anyway maybe someone who speaks Turkish will watch this video and correct my pronunciation but in any event those also cost you know like 30 to 50 dollars so you're looking at that and you don't have to really replace these if ever at all potentially the burrs will become less sharp over time and you'll start to not get that super fine performance but you know for 20 to 50 dollars you can just buy yourself a new one if that ever happens to you and finally of course you need coffee beans I don't know five dollars for coffee beans 10 dollars depending on the quantity now of course you can also pick a pre-ground Turkish coffee if you have access to a Middle Eastern store in your area and that's not really super expensive five ten bucks for some of that as well but I think if you're getting into Turkish coffee it's always worth having your own grinder the reason is that you can't get pre-ground Turkish coffee everywhere in the world if you're in some random town in you know the Midwest of America that maybe doesn't probably doesn't have a Turkish store but you can probably find coffee beans somewhere there pretty much anywhere in the planet these days so that's why I recommend if you're going to become a Turkish coffee maverick uh do get yourself a hand grinder now this is my Turkish coffee gear I took this photo a couple of days ago I use as I mentioned an automatic Turkish coffee grinder from a Turkish company called Arzum I picked these up in Turkey but they sell a couple of models on Amazon including a 110 volt model for folks in the US but these are amazing traditionally of course you cook it on the fire but day to day I find it much more convenient to use this little electronic appliance I have a whole collection of these ibrics on the bottom right this is my sozen grinder I also have a Lido from orphan espresso in fact I have two of their Lido's they do Turkish and I've also just for fun picked up a random manual grinder from Amazon that also does Turkish so lots of options and then Turkish coffee beans you don't need as I said any type of particular coffee beans if you're grinding yourself you just need something that's a light roast anyway I think I've taken enough of my night and your night or your morning talking about Turkish coffee I hope this little presentation was informative maybe got you interested in Turkish coffee definitely encourage folks to at least give it a shot because in my opinion there is nothing quite better than a really really strong really short Turkish coffee that you grind yourself cook yourself very satisfying thank you guys for watching if you want to get more videos as I said about usually unrelated random topics do consider subscribing to this youtube channel thank you for watching