I am trying to create a Turkish coffee mixture, by combining Colombian, Brazilian, Robusta and a few other types together in some percentage. I could not find a base at which to stand in designing such mixture. What are the ideal characteristics of Turkish coffee ? How much caffeine, glucose, other chemicals should it contain ?
2 Answers
There is no recipe for preparing a perfect blend.
Before beginning, please read this somewhat relevant question first:
I, personally, prefer to use Ethiopian Harrar single origin beans, light-to-medium roasted. However, this may all depend. When you go to a commercial Turkish firm, they mostly consume Dos Santos beans from Brazil, which itself is a kind of blend itself, and roast them to charcoal.
To prepare a Turkish blend, all you need to know is the characteristics of the brewing technique (See this previous post for a discussion) as you can see in the previous post. Opposite to the espresso, Turkish brewing is the least acidity revealing technique out there as it uses decoction. Therefore,
- you can safely use acidic beans
- you don't need to roast a lot to get rid of acidity
- and, as a result, you can taste the fruitful notes, go for fruity beans
- you may safely try dry/honey processed beans
Then, about the chemicals... You should not put any additional chemicals in it. It should be just ground coffee. I know some commercial products that already mix some herbs or sugar with fine ground coffee; but it has nothing to do with the reality apart from marketing. Think of it as 3-in-1 instant coffee products. You probably don't want to drink them.
To prepare Mokka, turkish or greek coffee (if they ask you, they are completly diffrent ;-)):
- Grind 2 parts of coffee fine as dust
- Cook water for 1 cup in an ibriki
- add 1 part of sugar to the cooking water
- lower the heat
- stir in the coffeepowder
- take the ibriki off the heat as the coffee is rising
- put the coffee back on the heat
- take the ibriki off the heat as the coffee is rising
- enjoy
As you can see you don't need any chemicals. Only sugar and coffee. Normaly 100% Arabica.