What gives Turkish coffee that unique "quality"?

Question

I'm wondering what makes Turkish coffee made out of original Turkish packed ground coffee taste so differently (better) from what I can do from beans that I grind myself or in the shop, following basically the same technology?

I had a few hypothesis:

• It's all has to do with right Cezve, i.e. pot. However, buying 'true' Turkish coffee pot didn't help. Actually I get much better results with Turkish ground coffee comparing to the one sold by weight even if the latter costs more.

• They add cardamom to the coffee. I tried it, coffee tastes better, but it's still not the same.

• They grind it very very finely. I asked the seller to grind my
  coffee as fine as they can but the result is still poor. (Actually this is still an open question, because they can use better machines than the ones I have access to.)

• They use special coffee mixes.

Then in Wikipedia I read that it is mostly about fineness of the grinding, but burr mill and mortar proposed there didn't work in my case. I also bought a turkish coffee mill like this:

I tried to grind the coffee with this mill many times, results are always poor. Does anybody know what is the secret? Can I make my own coffee that would be the same quality (or better) than, say, Mehmet Efendi?

Answer 1

Assuming that:

• you have found the best available beans in your market.
• which are then finely ground
• and used instantly after the grinding (have in mind the finer the grinding the faster the coffee taste deteriorates as it both absorbs humidity and all smells from the environment with it and in the same time releases its aroma).

You can look for:

• right Cezve : the pot shouldn't be a steel, as the temperature rises very fast which leads to bitter/ burnt taste. The preferred material is copper.
• right preparation methods : make it as slower as possible and wait for it to create a thick cream (caimác) that will protect its aroma as in espresso. To achieve that you can use either direct flame (as you can directly see the flame and control the amount of heat transfered):

or sand (which has large heat capacity and it takes a lot of time to get hot):

• steer it frequently till it boils: to homogenize it perfectly; otherwise the coffee and sugar go down on the bottom and melt/ burn and deteriorate the taste.

Answer 2

Disclaimer: Frankly, since I was registered to this site, I was thinking on answering this very question. So, here you will see the answer in a while. Most of you very probably will not like it. Still, I will also disclose the fact how you like it at first place. That's all science of coffee.

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It's widely known that, historically Turkey is one of the hubs of coffee trade and well-known for the Turkish-style brewing. However, this tradition is unfortunately not the best-known thing among the population in these days. Worse than that, the community is not self-aware of this. So, big merchants are using such ignorance as a benefit.

A few big roasters and coffee-houses known to prepare Turkish-coffee are somewhat built a monopoly on beans. The beans are mostly imported from Brazil and mostly the cheapest batches that are molding to keep the prices low. You can see two photos of some randomly chosen beans from a bag. These are six beans out of thirty, so the bad bean rate is around 20%. Imagine, when Ernesto Illy once said that one bean out of fifty in a cup spoils an espresso.

Then comes the roasting. Luckily, the big roasters have nice roasters for big batches. However, if you are visiting a small local coffee shop, it is possible that they have still using a pan to roast and burning the flat side of the bean and cannot roast the curvy side.

Below, you can see a photo from one of the most popular shopping malls of Istanbul. You can clearly see the uneven roast. I don't even discuss the storage conditions here! The damp, the light, the air...

Of course, the roast degree... Normally, cinnamon to city roast is the advised degree for proper Turkish coffee. However, bulk producers mostly goes beyond first crack, even to the second crack to hide the moldy flavors. The result is more like Vietnamese style; very dark roasted charcoal flavors. This is not what it used to be. However, the packaged roasted and ground Turkish coffee is mostly that.

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So, the question remains, what makes it special? How do you feel a mouthful when you taste it at the headquarters and cannot reproduce it at home?

The answer is, freshness. That's what you feel, in my opinion. Most bulk roasters do not even care about degassing as they are selling anyway. (This may affect the taste, I assume. They start grinding right after roasting to get rid of stock expenses.) They sell to the tourists or to the ignorant Turkish population. Still, at the end, when you visit their headquarters, you smell a very fragrant coffee flavor. This adds to the aroma you taste. (You know, they say onion and apple taste the same when you don't smell them.) Then, you drink a very fresh cup of coffee. This is very probably nice as it is just roasted, even if the beans were bad.

However, you buy a bag of very fine ground over-roasted bad coffee. The bag itself does not have a one-way-valve or it is not filled with inert gases or it is not vacuum packed. Thus, it goes stale very rapidly. Note that, fine ground coffee goes stale more quickly. Even during your trip to your home. So maybe you have one or two days to finish the bag, if not a few hours.

TL;DR There is nothing special about Turkish coffee. It goes stale stale just so quickly as it is ground so fine. Commercially marketed Turkish coffee bags contain crap.

Answer 3

I can confirm that the supermarket-variety Turkish/Greek/Serbian etc coffee is usually prepared from the worst beans they can find, but there is something in the flavor of ready-ground coffee that is hard to replicate with your own beans (supposedly the secret ingredient is cinnamon but i cannot confirm if adding a stick of cinnamon to the grind will do the trick). Also, you definitely you need a very fine grind. Beating it in a mortar will not do very much (i have tried), and dont try passing it through the grinder twice (it will jam). The solution is the manual grinder from e.g. Zassenhaus, it is expensive, but does the job! Be sure to set it to the finest setting by undertanding thoroughly the fine german engineering and tighening it correctly.