Brewing Armenian Coffee at Home — A Step-by-Step Guide

Armenian coffee — sourj in Armenian — is one of the oldest continuously brewed coffee styles in the world. It's also one of the easiest to brew badly. The line between rich and aromatic and bitter and burnt is roughly thirty seconds and one degree of heat.

This is the technique we use at the bar, written down for the people who've asked. Equipment is simple. Ratios matter. Patience matters more.

What You Need

• A jazve (also called cezve, ibrik, or Turkish coffee pot) — small copper or brass pot with a long handle and narrow neck. ~$15–25 anywhere that sells Middle Eastern goods.
• Finely-ground coffee. Turkish grind, fine as cocoa powder. If you grind at home, set your grinder finer than espresso. Most pre-ground "Turkish coffee" from a Middle Eastern grocer works.
• Cardamom. Ground, just a pinch per cup. Pre-ground from a spice jar is fine.
• Cold water. Filtered if your tap water is hard.
• A small cup. 3 oz is traditional. A small espresso cup works.

The Ratio

Per cup:

• 3 oz cold water
• 1 heaping teaspoon finely-ground coffee
• 1 small pinch ground cardamom (~1/16 tsp)
• Sugar to taste — added before brewing, never after

You scale up linearly: two cups means 6 oz water, 2 heaping teaspoons coffee, two small pinches cardamom. Don't go above three cups in a single pot — the foam doesn't scale and the brew won't come out right.

The Method

1. Cold water in the jazve first. This matters. Cold water gives time for the foam (the kaymak) to develop slowly as the pot heats.
2. Add coffee, cardamom, and sugar to the cold water. Stir gently — once. Make sure the coffee is wetted but don't agitate it more than that.
3. Low heat. Always low heat. If you're tempted to crank the burner, you will burn the brew. Be patient.
4. Watch it. This is the entire skill. As the pot heats, foam will start to climb the inside walls. Stay with it. Do not walk away.
5. Pull off the heat the moment foam rises to the rim. Do not let it boil. Boiling kills the foam and turns the cup bitter. The pull-off moment is when the foam touches the lip of the jazve — usually 3–4 minutes in.
6. Pour the foam into the cup first. Tip the jazve gently and let the foam settle on the bottom of your cup. Then pour the coffee underneath. Foam ends up on top. This is how you know you brewed it right.

Common Mistakes

• Heat too high. Foam rushes up in 60 seconds, you panic, you pull, the coffee is under-extracted and tastes thin. Lower the heat next time.
• Pre-ground coffee not fine enough. If your coffee is espresso-grind, it's too coarse — the brew will taste watery and grainy. You need flour-fine.
• Stirring after the first stir. Don't. You'll knock down the foam structure as it's building.
• Letting it boil. Bitter, flat, and the foam collapses. The whole point of jazve brewing is to extract just before boiling.

How to Drink It

Don't stir before drinking. The coffee grounds settle to the bottom over the first 30 seconds in the cup; you sip from the top. The last quarter-inch of liquid in the cup is sediment and traditionally is not drunk.

If you're feeling traditional, flip the empty cup upside-down on the saucer when you're done and let the grounds dry — that's the basis of sourj-reading, the Armenian fortune-telling tradition. Take it with whatever level of seriousness you like.

Or Just Come Drink Ours

If this all sounds like a lot, the bar at Toasted brews Armenian coffee for $4. We use the same technique above, with a few years of practice. Come in any morning and ask for one — we'll talk you through it while we brew.

And if you want to brew at home with our beans, we sell Stumptown Hairbender espresso ($19.95) but for Armenian coffee specifically you'll want the Turkish-grind from any Middle Eastern grocer in Glendale or Pasadena. The grind matters more than the bean origin for this style.