Turkish Tea: How to Make, Serve and Drink

An obsession, an addiction, a daily routine, a ritual, a welcome gesture, a conversation starter, a break from work, a breakfast companion, a way to while away the time and what not. These are many roles and faces of the Turkish tea. As a visitor to a shop, a public office, a friends’ house in Turkey you are often served a tulip-shaped glass of hot tea crimson in color with two tiny sugar cubes on a saucer and a little spoon to stir. And the pleasure of hugging that beautiful glass with your fingers and feeling the warmth of the tea on your palm does its magic as it comforts you and lets the conversation flow.

While there is a good deal of symbolic meaning in the Turkish tea drinking its very taste is important too. Turkish tea is normally black and most of it is cultivated domestically on the Black Sea coast. However, you will get amazed by the varieties in the taste of the seemingly same tea you will encounter in Istanbul or other places in Turkey as different tea makers would have their own brand preferences, own blends of different teas and a bunch of tea making tricks too.

On my first visit to Turkey I bought a large pack of Turkish tea to take home and was largely disappointed with the results I could produce with it. There was clearly something to discover and so I came back. I have found that the way the Turkish tea is brewed is very close to the traditional samovar technology in Russia. In case with samovar a very strong tea brew (zavarka) is prepared in a porcelain tea pot that gets placed on top of the samovar so the brew stays hot. The tea is served by diluting the brew with hot water from the samovar body. The Turks as the geniuses of shortcuts have created a great shortcut in the tea brewing too: they developed a construction of two stacked kettles called çaydanlık - the bottom part is for the boiling water while the upper one is for the tea brew. Here is how you go about making Turkish tea.

How to make Turkish tea

• Rinse both kettles, fill the bottom one with water and bring to boil;
• Meanwhile, put in some tea leaves (about 40 g or 1.5 oz yielding about 15-20 Turkish glasses) in the meshed box from the upper kettle and wash it with warm water to remove the tea dust. Close the box and put it in the upper kettle, put the upper kettle on top of the bottom one;
• Once the water in the bottom kettle is boiled, pour out some into the upper kettle to brew the tea. Add more water to the bottom kettle and put the whole çaydanlık back on heat until the water in the bottom one is boiled again;
• Pour out some tea brew (with a Turkish tea glass the rule of thumb will be to pour out the brew to the narrowest point of the glass) and then dilute it with water
• Reduce the heat to keep your tea warm as you’ll be serving a few rounds. Once the tea drinking is over turn off the heat and remove the tea brew - you’ll need to brew it anew for the next tea drinking session.

Making tea is just a half of the deal in Turkey as it is very important to know how you serve it in a proper way. Some of my learnings have come hard way so I will share them to spare you embarrassments while you are in Istanbul or elsewhere in Turkey. Once I served the tea that was looked at and immediately poured out on the ground. This was how I’ve learned that the tea in Turkey can be served in a variety of ways between the two extremes - koyu (dark, strong) and açık (light, weak). I put too little tea brew and the tea came way too weak so I nearly insulted the person without knowing. The distinction and the Turkish words are useful to know if you are particular about your Turkish tea preferences and would like to order it the way you like - strong or weak.

On the other occasion the head of the workers team came down to the kitchen around 5 pm and the house hostess asked me to serve tea to him. Asked in such a way that assumed that I should have known that a visitor should be served a cup of tea without saying. Ok, noted down. But once I did I had revealed my lack of awareness of one more custom again: I did put sugar in it while you don’t do it here in Turkey. On the contrary to the Turkish coffee that is served already sweet - you rather serve a bowl of sugar cubes on the side and people add it to their tea as they please. What I saw is care have appeared to be an interference into the sacred ritual of the Turkish tea drinking.