Turkish coffee or Greek? The question is almost as old as the brew itself. While coffee came to Europe via the Ottoman Empire, Turkish-style coffee - dark, sweet and with a heavy sediment in the cup - is familiar to most Australians thanks to our large Greek population. Perhaps we should just call it briki coffee.
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"Briki is what we call the pot," says Tia Tsonis from Vanilla Cakes in Eaton Mall, Oakleigh, which should really be renamed Eaton Plaka: it's packed with Greek cafes, bars and souvlaki shops, their outdoor tables full of Greek-Australians of all ages. And while espresso-based coffee and Greek frappe - milky iced coffee made with instant - look to be the most popular orders, Tsonis says Vanilla couldn't get away with not serving briki coffee, too.
They make coffee the traditional Greek-slash-Turkish way - adding ground coffee, sugar and cold water to a briki and slowly bringing it to the boil, so it bubbles and foams up the sides of the pot, producing a lovely kaimaki (crema).
Because the sugar goes in at the beginning, you order for degree of sweetness, Tsonis explains: sketo for no sugar; metreo (one teaspoon each of coffee and sugar per demitasse cup); glyko (two teaspoons of sugar); and even vary glyko, with four teaspoons of sugar. If you want just a little bit of sugar, you can ask for "meoligi".
She says we favour a slightly darker roast in Australia than the "blonde blends" popular in Greece, due to the influence of Italian espresso.
At Hellenic Republic in Brunswick they use a blend from Cyprus, says Hellenic's Chris Glover. "There's not much information on the pack: 'Original Mocca blend 100 per cent pure coffee.' But it's the best we've found. Thick crema and a great flavour."
Louis Dimopoulos from Emporio Coffee says traditional Greek coffee was a blend of arabica and robusta beans, but now Emporio, which supplies Vanilla Cakes, uses exclusively arabica, blending beans from Brazil, Indonesia and Uganda in a medium roast.
The coffee is ground to a fine powder at the roastery using stone-faced grinding discs that don't overheat it, an issue when coffee is being ground so fine.
The characteristic flavour - a medicinal sweetness - comes from this fine grind: briki coffee is partly a suspension of coffee particles. "You are drinking the coffee itself," says Dimopoulos. "Not just an extraction or an infusion."
