How to Read Turkish Coffee Grounds: A Step by Step Guide

Nobody learns to read coffee grounds from a chart. You learn it at a kitchen table, with a cup that is still warm and someone beside you saying: do not look at the stain, look at its edge.

That is how my grandmother in Izmir taught me. Before she let me interpret a single sign, I spent a year doing nothing but making the coffee. I thought it was unfair. Now I know that badly brewed coffee gives a silent cup, and that most beginner mistakes happen long before anyone looks inside.

So this guide covers the whole road, from the ground coffee to the last sign by the handle. Give yourself half an hour. It cannot be done faster, and it is not meant to be.

What you need

Only Turkish coffee can be read, the kind that goes into the cup unfiltered. Filter coffee, espresso and capsules leave no grounds that could form pictures.

The grind decides everything. Turkish coffee is as fine as icing sugar. Rub it between your fingers and you feel no grains. Buy it ready ground from a Turkish or Middle Eastern shop, or have it ground there. Espresso grind gives you coarse sludge that slides off in lumps and draws nothing.

The cup should be small, about sixty to seventy millilitres, with a straight or slightly rounded wall. Patterns, gold rims or a dark glaze inside make reading nearly impossible. The handle is not decoration. Later it becomes your fixed point, the place from which you locate everything else in the cup.

Brewing Turkish coffee in a cezve

Measure for each person, and never put more water in the pot than there are cups on the table.

1. Start cold. Measure the water with the coffee cup itself: one cup of cold water per person into the cezve. Add two heaped teaspoons of coffee per cup. If you take sugar, it goes in now. It cannot be added later.
2. Stir once. Stir now, before the heat, until coffee and sugar are mixed in. After that the spoon stays out. This is the rule people break most often.
3. Heat slowly. Put the cezve on a low flame. Turkish coffee needs patience, three to four minutes. On high heat it boils over before any foam has formed.
4. Share out the foam. As soon as a thick, pale foam rises at the edge, take the pot off the heat and spoon a little foam into each cup. In Turkey, coffee without foam is called coffee without a face.
5. Let it rise once more. Put the cezve back, let the coffee rise a second time without a rolling boil, then pour slowly down the side of the cup so the foam stays on top.

The grounds belong in the cup. Let them run in and wait a minute for them to settle. Turkish coffee is served with a glass of water. You drink it first, so your mouth is fresh.

Drinking, making a wish, turning the cup

Drink in small sips and always from the same side, ideally opposite the handle or just to the left of it. That keeps one wall of the cup untouched and makes the lip side easy to recognise later. Do not stir, and do not swirl as you go.

Stop when only one thick sip is left. Too much liquid washes everything away. Too little leaves the grounds sitting in a lump at the bottom. The right amount is roughly a teaspoon of liquid coffee above the grounds.

Then comes the wish. In Turkish this is “niyet tutmak”, holding an intention. Think of one question, silently, for yourself. Ask three things at once and you get three half answers.

Place the saucer on the cup like a lid. Hold the two together between thumb and forefinger, swirl them two or three times at chest height, then turn them over towards you in one calm movement. Set the cup down upside down and leave it.

Now you wait until the base of the cup is cold, five to ten minutes. Some people lay a ring or a coin on the base. Custom says a ring for a question of love and a coin for a question of money. During this time the thin coffee drains away and the grounds dry onto the wall. Look after two minutes and you find wet mud. I tell the story behind these customs in the piece on the tradition of Turkish coffee.

The order of the reading

A cup is not read at random. There is a fixed route, and it begins outside the cup.

1. The lift. Raise the cup slowly. If it comes away easily, the matter in question is in motion. If it sticks to the saucer, custom says the wish is already on its way. Many older readers will not even open a cup like that.
2. The saucer. What has run out belongs to your wish. One large, calm patch is a good sign. Many torn patches are detours. Look for shapes here too.
3. The handle. Turn the cup so the handle points towards you. Begin right beside it, because that is where you stand.
4. The wall, once around. From the handle, move along the right wall, on to the far side and back along the left wall. Read in bands as you go: first the rim, then the middle.
5. The bottom. It comes last because it shows what is oldest.

What each of these places means is explained in full in the zones of the cup. For a start, this is enough: the handle is you, the rim is soon, the bottom is old, the right is arriving, the left is leaving.

Along the way, choose three or four clear signs and let the rest be. A reading with twenty symbols is not thorough. It is confused.

Light and dark, large and small

Before you look for birds and rings, look at the cup as a whole. Is it mostly pale, with plenty of white porcelain? Then things are light and the roads are open. Is it dense and dark? Then you are carrying a lot at the moment. That is a description, not a threat.

Pale areas are roads. Where the grounds have run off, something is moving forward. A white stripe from the bottom up to the rim is one of the loveliest signs there is.

Dark areas are weight: worries, thoughts, unfinished business. At the bottom the weight is old. On the wall it will pass.

Sharp edges speak plainly. A sign you recognise at once is a fact. One you have to guess at is a possibility.

Size shows importance. A fish across half the wall is a great stroke of luck, a fish the size of a grain of rice is a small pleasure. Very small signs next to a large one belong to it, like the clauses of a sentence.

What each shape means is set out in the list of 40 coffee cup reading symbols. The most common figures have their own piece on animals in the coffee grounds, and if you come to the cup with a question of the heart, carry on with the signs of love.

Beginner mistakes, and who reads for whom

The mistakes repeat themselves. I have made every one of them.

Then there is the question of who reads. By tradition you do not read your own cup. The reason is simple: in your own cup you see what you hope for or what you fear. So friends at a table swap cups, and in every circle there is one person to whom everyone pushes theirs. In my family that was my grandmother. She read for everyone, and never for herself.

Fala inanma, falsız da kalma. Do not believe in the reading, but do not go without one either.

For practice you may still look into your own cup. Write down what you see and compare it with what someone else finds in the same cup. That is the fastest way to learn.

The right photo for the app

If nobody at your table can read, I will read your cup in the FalciDilara app. For that I need three or four photos of the inside of the cup, and the saucer too if you like. What I cannot see I cannot read, so a minute of care is worth it.

1. Daylight. Stand by a window. No flash: it glares on the porcelain and swallows the pale areas.
2. Different angles. One photo with the handle towards you, one from the opposite side, one at a slant from the left or right, one straight down onto the bottom.
3. Close enough. The cup should fill the frame. Tap the inside so the camera focuses there and not on the table.
4. Dry. Take the photos only when the cup has fully cooled and nothing is running any more.

A white cup against a calm background is ideal. I write every reading fresh for the cup in front of me, and the first one is a gift. If you would sooner ask cards than coffee, the blog also has everything on tarot.

Frequently asked questions

Can you read coffee grounds from filter coffee or espresso?

No. Both are filtered or pressed, so no fine grounds remain in the cup. You need coffee ground to powder, boiled in a cezve and poured with its grounds. Greek, Arabic or Bosnian coffee made the same way can be read just as well.

How long should the cup stay upside down?

Until the base feels cold, usually five to ten minutes. In a warm kitchen or with a thick cup it takes longer. Two minutes too long is better than one too short.

Can I read my own coffee cup?

Tradition says no, because in your own cup it is too easy to see your own wish. As a way of learning it is still good practice. For a question that truly matters to you, get a second voice.

Does sugar change a coffee cup reading?

Not the interpretation. Very sweet coffee makes the grounds a little stickier, so they cling to the wall in a thicker layer. If your cups always turn out too dark, try less sugar and leave a little more liquid when you turn the cup.

What if I cannot see anything in the cup?

Hold it at arm’s length and narrow your eyes slightly. Shapes come from areas, not from lines. If nothing appears even then, the cup is quiet today. That happens, and it is not a bad sign.