Turkish street vendor brews coffee in sand, Internet is obsessed

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A fascinating video posted on YouTube by Ahmad Al-Zaben shows a Turkish street vendor appearing to brew coffee using a heated bowl of sand.

The video is going viral, mostly because it’s puzzling North American coffee drinkers. How do they do it?

“On first glance, it looks a lot like this coffee maker is summoning coffee from the bottom of the cup like a rabbit from a hat,” Digg writers observed.

“We’re guessing there’s some sort of reaction between whatever’s in the cup and the sand that causes the coffee to boil, but hell if we know what it is,” wrote entertainment.ie’s Brian Lloyd.

Open Culture’s Dan Colman called it “culinary alchemy.”

Fortunately, the Internet doesn’t just have questions about this mysterious coffee-brewing method. It’s also providing some answers.

The website Secret Coffee Drinks explained how to make Turkish sand coffee here.

Essentially, very hot sand brews the coffee, offering “a consistent, even heat.”

All that’s required to make your own is a spoon for stirring, a pot with a wide base, narrow mouth, long handle, and one or two spouts, and a hot bed of sand, heated “using any method.” (According to Wikipedia, a traditional heating source is the embers of a fire, although gas or electricity heating is also now satisfactory.)

No filter is needed.

Fill the pot, traditionally called a cezve, with water and fine coffee grounds — and maybe sugar and spices — then nestle it into the hot sand.

“As the water starts heating, gently stir the mixture so the coffee grounds are evenly distributed throughout the water and there are no lumps. Wait until the mixture is nearly boiling and has flames, but do not let it boil,” the website’s coffee experts instructed.

Then scoop the foam off the coffee and either (according to your preference) discard it or place it in serving cups. Pour the coffee into cups, allowing the foam to rise to the surface if you chose to keep it. Let the coffee sit for a few minutes until the grounds settle.

“Never strain Turkish coffee — it can upset the delicate flavour balance,” the site warned. “Once the coffee and the grounds have separated, enjoy the beverage.”

Reddit user BrotherGantry also explained the process — read his description here — adding that the man in the video appears to modify the traditional process:

“The guy in this video seems to be modifying a lot of the steps to make something like a ‘regular strength’ coffee more theatrically using traditional equipment (e.g. he starts with much less ground coffee in the pot, judging from the colour to begin with, overfilling it, not taking time to let the foam die down but pouring out some the brewing coffee into a cup to reduce the level, and pouring the results of a cezve made for several cups into a normal sized coffee cup instead),” BrotherGantry wrote.

Mystery solved.

Have you ever tried Turkish sand coffee?