Bosnian Coffee: The Ritual & How to Drink It

Bosnian coffee, bosanska kafa, is a strong, unfiltered coffee served in a little copper pot, and it is far more a ritual than a drink. It arrives on a tray with its own kit and its own etiquette: you do not stir it, you do not down it, and you certainly do not take it away in a paper cup. To drink it properly you let the grounds settle, dip a sugar cube, take small sips, and give the whole thing the unhurried hour it asks for. This guide walks through what turns up on the tray, how the coffee is made, exactly how to drink it without looking lost, and why locals will gently correct you if you call it Turkish coffee.

If you want the full spread of what to eat around it, from ćevapi to the sweet trolley, our guide to Bosnian food and 15 dishes to try covers the plates; this one is about the cup.

Turkish coffee, or not? What locals will tell you

Technically, the coffee in your fildžan is a close cousin of Turkish coffee, both descended from the same Ottoman method of boiling finely ground beans without a filter, and Wikipedia will tell you that in Bosnia and Herzegovina the drink is often simply called Bosnian coffee. Say “Turkish coffee” out loud in a Sarajevo café, though, and you may get a raised eyebrow, because locals draw a real distinction and are proud of it.

The differences they point to are in the making and the serving rather than the bean itself. The most-cited one is the order of operations: in the Bosnian method you boil the water first, then add the coffee, where the Turkish way tends to put the ground coffee (and often sugar) into cold water and bring it all up together. The classic Bosnian sequence goes a step further, and it is oddly specific: when the water boils, a splash is poured off into a cup and set aside, the coffee goes into the pot, that reserved water is tipped back in, and the pot returns to the heat to foam up once more. Bosnians also tend to serve the coffee in the džezva for you to pour yourself, rather than pre-poured into the cup. How much of this is genuine culinary difference and how much is national pride is a fair question, and honestly the answer shifts from one family and town to the next, which is half the charm. Order it as bosanska kafa and you will always be on safe ground.

What arrives on the tray

Order a coffee in a traditional place and it comes as a small production, not a single cup. On a round metal tray you get the džezva, the long-handled copper pot the coffee is brewed and served in, kept hot by the metal itself. Alongside it sits the fildžan, a small handleless cup you pour the coffee into, sometimes cradled in a decorative copper holder. There is a glass of cold water, there are sugar cubes, either loose in a little bowl or in a lidded copper pot, and more often than not a piece of rahat lokum, the soft, chewy Turkish delight, tucked on the side.

Every piece has a job. The water resets your palate and is meant to be sipped between mouthfuls. The sugar is not for stirring in, as you will see below. And the džezva doing double duty as both kettle and serving jug is exactly why the coffee stays hot through the long, slow session it is built for. In the old bazaars the whole set, pot, cups, tray and all, is beaten out of copper by hand a few streets away, which is why so many visitors end up carrying one home as a souvenir.

How it is brewed

You do not need to make it yourself to enjoy it, but knowing what happened in the pot helps you drink it right. The coffee is ground extremely fine, closer to powder than to the grind you would use in a filter machine. Water is heated in the džezva until it is just off the boil, the pot is warmed, and the ground coffee is added, at which point it hits the hot metal with a soft pop. Back on the heat it goes, briefly, until it foams up toward the rim, and this is the moment that needs watching, because a džezva boils over in a heartbeat if you turn your back on it.

Two details matter for what lands in front of you. The first is the foam, the pale crema that rises as it brews. It is prized, and a good pour shares a little of it between the cups rather than leaving it all in the pot. The second is the rest. Once it comes off the heat, the coffee is left to stand for a minute or two so the grounds sink, and that settling is the whole reason the drink works: everything heavy drops to the bottom of the džezva, leaving the coffee above it clear enough to drink. Rush it and you get a mouthful of silt. This is also why the coffee is never stirred once it is poured.

How to drink it, step by step

This is the part worth getting right, because doing it the local way is half the pleasure. There is no strict ceremony, but there is a rhythm, and it goes something like this.

• Let it settle, and pour gently. If it comes in the džezva, give it a moment, then pour slowly into the fildžan so the grounds stay behind in the pot. Skim a bit of the foam across with it if you can.
• Start with the water and the lokum. A sip of water first, and a bite of rahat lokum while the coffee finds its temperature, is the traditional way in.
• Do the sugar-cube trick. Rather than dropping sugar into the cup, the local move is to dip a corner of the cube into the hot coffee, bite off the soaked piece, and then sip. Some people simply hold the cube behind the teeth and draw the coffee through it, or let it dissolve under the tongue. Either way you get the same result: the coffee’s bitterness and the sugar’s sweetness side by side, not blended into sweet mud.
• Sip small, and slow. This is a drink to nurse, not knock back. Take little sips, chat, sip again. An hour over one coffee is completely normal, and rushing it defeats the whole exercise.
• Stop before the bottom. The last centimetre is grounds. When the coffee turns gritty on your lip, you are done, so leave the dregs in the cup rather than swallowing them.

Why you slow down for it

Speed misses it entirely. Where an espresso is fuel you throw back standing at a bar, Bosnian coffee is the opposite proposition: the drink is the reason you stopped, not a means to keep moving. Sitting over one is a social act more than a caffeine one, and the language gives it away, since an invitation to “have a coffee” almost always means “let’s sit and talk,” with the coffee as the excuse. Accepting the offer, even if you only manage half the cup, is read as good manners; refusing outright can feel a little cold.

You will hear this unhurried, savour-the-moment attitude bundled up in a single hard-to-translate word, ćeif (also spelled ćejf or ćef), roughly the quiet contentment of doing something purely for the pleasure of it, at your own pace. Whether or not anyone names it while you are sitting there, that is the mood you are being invited into. The best thing you can do as a visitor is put the phone down, order a second water, and let the afternoon stretch.

Where to drink it

You are never far from a good one, but the old towns are the natural home of it. In Sarajevo, the Ottoman bazaar of Baščaršija is thick with coffee houses where the smell of fresh bosanska kafa hangs in the lanes and nobody will hurry you off your seat, and it is the single best place to settle in for the full tray-and-ritual experience. Our guide to things to do in Sarajevo points you to the quarter where the cafés cluster thickest. Mostar, Trebinje and any town with an old core will serve it the same way.

A couple of practical notes. It is cheap, often only a couple of convertible marks (KM) a cup, and the smaller, older places are frequently cash-only, so carry a little local currency rather than counting on a card. And if you fall for the ritual, the copperware to recreate it at home, a džezva, a set of fildžani and a hammered tray, is sold in the same bazaars where you drank it. Take it slowly there, too: the coffee taught the country its pace, and it is a good one to borrow.