A Short History Of Turkish Cezve.

Before espresso, before filters, before convenience — there is the cezve.

Developed in the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, the cezve (also known as the ibrik) remains the oldest coffee brewing method still used daily. It produces a thick, intense coffee that’s worlds apart from the clean, filtered cups that dominate today.

Here’s how it shapes coffee as we know it…

Turkish Coffee: the early years

15th Century:

Coffee spreads from Ethiopia to Yemen and across the Arabian Peninsula. It is first consumed as a ritual drink known as qahwa: made from dried coffee husks or lightly roasted beans that are crushed, boiled and then strained.

The result is aromatic and stimulating, but relatively thin. As coffee spreads through the Ottoman world, the way it’s brewed is about to change.

Enter the cezve

16th Century:

In Ottoman Turkey, something new: the cezve.

A small, wide-bottomed metal pot with a narrow neck and designed to sit directly in hot sand. Roasting grows darker. Grinding becomes powder-fine. Coffee, water, and often sugar are heated slowly. As the temperature rises, a thick foam forms on top.

The goal is not a rolling boil, but a controlled swell. And the sand bath provides steady, even heat, allowing careful extraction centuries before thermostats exist.

No filters. No pressure. No straining. Just dense, textured coffee, with grounds settling naturally at the bottom of the cup. Coffee is no longer steeped. It’s brewed. But it’s not perfect… boiling coffee can also push extraction too far and result in an unbalanced cup.

Coffee crossed borders & the method moves

17th - 18th Century: 

As the Ottoman Empire expands its influence, cezve brewing travels with it — across the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans and into Europe. And it is not just the method that spreads.

Coffeehouses follow, becoming hubs of conversation, politics and debate. Strong, communal, occasionally controversial, they’re sometimes even banned.

But the bans never stick, and the method barely changes because you can’t keep a great coffee down. Super-fine coffee. Careful heat. Foam above, sediment below.

Unchanged by design

19th - 20th Century: 

As industrial roasting, paper filters and espresso machines reshape coffee, much of Western Europe and the Americas move away from boiling methods altogether.

They’re notoriously tricky and can produce thick, slightly bitter cups which are fine for sipping but not much else. Cezve brewing becomes less common in these regions, replaced by clarity, speed and pressure.

But in Turkey, the Balkans and the Middle East, the essentials hold. Passed down through families and coffee connoisseurs, it resists modernisation. Same pots. Same processes. If it ain’t broke…

A golden oldie?

Today:

Today, cezve coffee is still an everyday ritual across Eastern Europe and Western Asia. In much of the West, it feels a little overlooked — partly because modern coffee culture tends to favour clarity and delicate aromatics over the dense, sediment-rich cup the cezve produces.

In 2011, the World Cezve/Ibrik Championship pushes it back onto the global stage, introducing a new wave of specialty coffee professionals to one of the oldest brewing systems still in use.

Because not everything in coffee needs upgrading.