Turkish çay
Black tea brewed in a stacked double kettle — a çaydanlık — where concentrate is made in the upper pot and diluted to taste with water from the lower. Served in small tulip-shaped glasses, it is drunk in very large quantities throughout the day in Turkey.
Also called Turkish tea, Rize tea.
What it tastes like
Brisk and strong, with the depth of colour that gives the glasses their appeal. Strength is decided per glass rather than per pot, which is the whole advantage of the two-kettle system.
What it is built on
Teas
- Orthodox black tea — Slower to open and more variable than CTC, and that variability is the point: orthodox manufacture is what makes single-origin black tea worth buying as a single origin rather than as a blend component.
Brewing method: Western brewing (teapot or mug) — A small amount of leaf in a large volume of water, steeped once for a few minutes and then strained off. The approach most English-speaking drinkers already know, and the one most teas sold in the West are made for.
Ingredients
- 30 g Turkish black tea, from Rize
- 1.5 litre Water
- Sugar cubes, served alongside
Preparation
- Step 1. Fill the lower kettle with water and bring to the boil.
- Step 2. Put the leaf in the upper kettle with a little hot water and let it steep over the steam. (15 minutes)
- Step 3. Pour concentrate into the glass, then dilute with water from the lower kettle to the strength wanted.
Serves 8. About 25 minutes from start to finish, including anything that has to simmer or cool.
There is no single correct version
Turkey is among the highest per-capita tea-consuming countries in the world, and almost all of it is domestically grown around Rize on the Black Sea coast. Ordering conventions — açık for weak, koyu for strong — are standard.
The steps above are one workable account of how this is made, not the authoritative recipe. Households and regions differ on proportions, on order and sometimes on what counts as the drink at all.
Common mistakes
- Letting the upper kettle boil dry, which scorches the leaf
- Adding milk, which is not part of the practice
Sources
This page is TeaHQ synthesis. The proportions and the sequence are written from common practice as TeaHQ understands it, with no external source behind them, which is one more reason to read the note on regional variation as the more reliable part of the page.
This page describes how the drink is made and where it is made that way. It says nothing about what drinking it does to a person, and the quantities of milk, sugar or spice are recorded because they are part of the recipe rather than as any kind of recommendation.
Written comparisons
Where TeaHQ has set this drink against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.
- Zavarka vs Turkish çay — Two drinks built on the same principle and served from different apparatus. Both keep a strong concentrate apart from hot water and combine them in the glass, and the two traditions are historically related rather than parallel inventions.