many thanks for the info – it’s certainly got a few new tips in there that I wasn’t doing (generally I’ve been failing on strength, but I learnt pretty fast about the mess made when it boils over). the info’s certainly made a difference in taste though!

many thanks again,

md

I don’t think there is any great secret to making ‘traditional’ Bosnian coffee.

Here are some things you might want to try out though:

Get yourself some raw coffee beans and bake them in the oven yourself. This will ensure that they are as fresh as possible.

When you are making coffee, using obviously ground coffee – maybe manually ground up – make sure you put lots of coffee into the water, so it is stronger once made. I usually put around 3-4 small spoons of coffee for every average tea cup of coffee I drink.

When you are making the coffee, make sure you are not treating it as making instant coffee. In other words, once you pour the boiling hot water from the kettle onto the ground beans, make sure the whole mixture is brought up to the boil at least once again in the pot. This will ensure that the ground coffee beans have given all their goodness out into the water.

Coffee will rise when it has boiled for a little while, so make sure that it does not spill over – nasty job cleaning it up later and it will smell – I rather like the smell of burning coffee.

When you are done with boiling, just let the whole thing settle down a little. The froth that is made on top when boiling coffee is taste, not something that should be filtered away as I have seen many people do.

Pour you coffee into the cup without any filtering, but after it has settled down. Make sure in each cup you have at least a little bit of the original froth that was created by the boiling process.

Pour some milk, if you like it, add sugar and off you go. You have something that can pretty much be called ‘traditional Bosnian coffee’.

Regards.

great post – I recently visited sarajevo and found it to be truly enchanting. I also had the luck to pop into a coffee shop and order myself a coffee (through pointing at a word on the menu that I thought meant coffee). it was a ‘traditional’ coffee, in that it wasn’t the standard coffee I receive in ireland. anyway, it was a great coffee in a great location! I actually bought a grinder and a serving cup before I left sarajevo, but haven’t managed to replicate the coffee I received. if you had any advice on exactly how to make the powerful coffee I received I’d greatly appreciate it. no sign of any exact info (save for the boiling) on the web. my email is damestreet at the domain gmail.com

many thanks for yourt great post,

md

I think that doctor would tell me to stop or at least cut down heavily on coffee if I talked to him about it, but I don’t smoke, don’t drink, so coffee is my only letting-the-steam-out activity.

Oh occassional sheesha (nargila) is done as well, I must admit.

Thanks for commenting first of all.

Fez indeed was a traditional hat of Bosnians just over a century ago.

Nowadays it is considered outdated and bad looking piece of head gear, which is not worn by pretty much anyone in Bosnia, apart from those who know and understand what the ‘real deal’ is.

Your comment actually gives me a nice idea for one of the future posts on this blog.

Thanks for commenting and I will try and check out the book you recommended.