We live in the era of fake news, and in the world of coffee there’s certainly a lot of misinformation about Turkish coffee. But we’re here to set the record straight about the syrupy, sludgy cup of coffee.
Turkish Coffee is a Brew Method
Turkish coffee is a way of preparing coffee, not a coffee origin. The Republic of Turkey produces tea along its Black Sea coast, but the climate isn’t suitable for coffee. During the Ottoman Empire, Turks controlled Yemen and its coffee trade, holding a virtual monopoly on the coffee trade. But the Dutch managed to smuggle a few seeds out and coffee soon spread around the world. For the last hundred years or so most of Turkey’s coffee imports have come from Brazil….
Dave Eggers has always been connected with specialty coffee in my mind. I purchased my first Eggers’s novel from 
Few people could have predicted the way specialty coffee has boomed in Istanbul over the last five years. It wasn’t that long ago you could count the number of specialty coffee shops in Turkey’s largest city on your fingers. Now that list is well over 60, and the lion’s share of those cafés have a La Marzocco espresso machine on bar.
Last year, the December Dripper emerged on the scene with a simple but revolutionary design. The brewing device uses a silicon gasket to adjust the flow rate with a simple twist. One of the more interesting applications of this design feature is making flash-chilled iced coffee– sometimes called Japanese iced coffee or an iced pour-over.
Small coffee roasters face numerous challenges, but Turkish roasters face a bigger obstacle: access to quality green coffee. Most coffee in Turkey is imported twice: first by an European or American importer, that by a roaster in Turkey. Martell Mason, an American expat based in Istanbul, is trying to change that. 
