Tuesday
Turkish Tea: How It's Brewed, Poured and Served
No. 09 Food and Markets 4 min read
A double teapot, a tulip glass and no milk. How Turkish tea is brewed, how strength is chosen glass by glass, and where it is grown.
Turkish tea is brewed in a stacked two-pot kettle called a çaydanlık: water boils in the larger pot below, and loose leaves steep in the smaller pot set on top, making a dark, concentrated brew. Each glass is then built to order, a splash of that concentrate topped up with hot water from the lower pot, so strength is a question asked and answered at the table, not fixed in the kitchen.
What is a çaydanlık, and why two pots?
The two-pot kettle separates brewing from boiling. Plain water heats in the wide bottom pot; once it boils, some of it goes into the smaller pot on top, along with several spoonfuls of loose tea, and that top pot steeps over the rising heat without ever running dry of water below it. The result is a strong, almost syrupy base that would be undrinkable on its own, which is exactly the point: it is never served at full strength.
How do I ask for the strength I want?
At the point of pouring, a small amount of the dark concentrate goes into the glass first, then hot water from the bottom pot fills the rest, and the ratio between the two decides how the tea tastes. A lighter glass, mostly water with a little concentrate, is called açık (open or pale); a stronger one, closer to the dark brew itself, is koyu (dark). If you are offered a choice and have no preference, açık is the easier place to start, and you can ask for it koyu next time.
Why does it come in that small curved glass?
The glass is called ince belli, literally slim-waisted, and its shape lets the tea be drunk while it is still very hot. It is held by the rim rather than the body, so your fingertips stay clear of the hottest part of the glass. The glass also makes colour visible at a glance, which matters in a drink where colour is how you judge strength before you taste it.
Is there milk, lemon or anything else in it?
No. Turkish tea is drunk black, with sugar cubes stirred in or dropped to dissolve on their own, almost never with milk or lemon. Mint, sage or other additions are occasional variations rather than the standard, and ordering tea without qualification gets you the plain version: dark leaf tea, hot water to taste, sugar on the side.
Where does the tea itself come from?
Most of the tea drunk in Turkey is grown on the Eastern Black Sea coast, centred on Rize Province, where high rainfall and a mild, humid climate suit the tea bush. The state tea enterprise ÇAYKUR, headquartered in Rize, buys fresh leaf from growers, processes and markets it, and runs its own research institute on tea and garden crops. That regional supply, much of it through one state enterprise, is one reason the glass in front of you looks and tastes much the same whether you are served it in a home, a shop or a çay bahçesi.
When and where is it actually drunk?
Tea punctuates the day rather than marking a single meal. It opens breakfast, appears at a market stall as a seller's way of saying wait a moment, moves through offices and shops as a round brought on a tray, and anchors long afternoons in a çay bahçesi, a tea garden, often alongside a backgammon board. Declining a glass outright can read as curt; taking it and leaving it half-finished is a perfectly normal way to accept the gesture without committing to a full round.
What does it mean to be offered a glass?
Offering tea is less an invitation to a drink than a way of marking that a conversation is about to happen, whether that is a shopkeeper slowing a sale, a host settling guests into a room, or a stop in an otherwise busy work day. The gesture matters more than the glass itself: it is common to see a glass arrive, go half-drunk and cold, and be quietly refilled or replaced, because the point was the pause it created rather than finishing the tea. Understanding this changes how you read a shop or a market stall that offers tea before any business is discussed: it is not a sales tactic so much as the accepted way to start.
How does it compare with the tea some visitors expect?
Visitors used to a single teabag steeped directly in a mug sometimes assume Turkish tea will taste the same, only stronger, and are surprised by how little it resembles that habit. There is no steeping a bag to a personal taste and lifting it out again; the strength is set by how much concentrate goes into the glass before the water does, which puts the choice in the hands of whoever is pouring rather than the drinker alone. There is also no milk to soften the tannins, so the first glass can read as sharper or more bitter than expected until the sugar and a second glass settle the palate into the register the drink is actually meant to sit in.
A dated note
Last checked 6 October 2026: brewing habits and glass sizes are remarkably stable across Turkey, but a shop's exact strength or sugar practice still varies place to place, so the safest approach on a first visit is simply to ask for açık or koyu and let the person pouring adjust from there.