How to Make Greek Coffee in a Briki

Greek coffee is not espresso and it is not filter. The grounds are never separated from the water: they are cooked in it and then poured into the cup, where they settle into a sludge at the bottom that you do not drink.

It takes five minutes and there is exactly one skill involved, which is not letting it boil. The moment it boils you lose the kaimaki, the fine dense foam on top, and a Greek coffee without kaimaki is considered a failure regardless of how it tastes.

The other thing worth knowing before you start is that sugar goes in at the beginning, with the water. You cannot sweeten it afterwards without stirring up the grounds, so you have to decide how sweet you want it before you make it. There are names for each level and ordering by name is normal.

Key preparation steps

1. Measure cold water with the cup you will drink from.
2. Add coffee and sugar to cold water and stir once, off the heat.
3. Heat slowly, never stirring again.
4. Pull it off the moment the foam rises, before it boils.

How sweet? The four levels

Sketos means plain, with no sugar at all. Metrios is medium, one teaspoon per cup, and is what most people order. Glykos is sweet, two teaspoons. Variglykos is very sweet, three or more, and is more common with older generations.

The sugar is not only about taste: it affects the foam. A metrios or glykos produces noticeably more kaimaki than a sketos, because the dissolved sugar helps stabilise the bubbles. A plain Greek coffee needs a slower, more careful heat to foam properly.

Decide before you start. Adding sugar afterwards means stirring, and stirring lifts the settled grounds into the coffee.

The grind, and why it matters

Greek coffee needs a powder grind, finer than espresso and closer to flour. This is finer than most domestic grinders will go, so buying it ready-ground is usually the practical answer.

The reason is that the grounds are never filtered. A coarse grind will not extract properly in five minutes and will give a thin, sour cup with gritty sediment you can feel. A powder grind extracts fully and settles into a dense compact sludge.

Greek and Turkish ground coffee are effectively identical in grind. The beans are usually a medium roast, lighter than Italian espresso roasts.

Getting the kaimaki foam

Low heat and patience. Put the briki on the smallest ring at a low setting and leave it. It should take three to four minutes to come up, and rushing it is the only real mistake available.

Stir once at the very start, off the heat, to wet the coffee. Then do not stir again. Stirring during heating breaks the foam as it forms.

Watch for the coffee to rise up the sides of the briki and a thick head of fine bubbles to climb towards the rim. Pull it off the heat immediately at that point. If it breaks into a rolling boil the foam collapses and will not come back.

Pour the foam out first, dividing it between the cups, then top up with the coffee underneath. Traditionally the cup with the most kaimaki goes to the guest.

How to drink it

Slowly, and with a glass of cold water alongside, which is served automatically in Greece and is not optional in practice.

Stop when you reach the sludge. The last centimetre or so is grounds and is not meant to be drunk. Tipping the cup back to get the last of it is the mark of someone who has not done this before.

The residue left in the cup is what fortune telling is done with, by inverting the cup on the saucer and reading the patterns once it dries. Whether you take that seriously is a separate question.

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