Taking a look at the video below (or just about any video on Turkish Sand Coffee), it looks like magic. Coffee is emanating from a vessel moving around in the sand—constantly being drained into a cup to drink from! But despite this aura of magic, there is nothing unusual going on here. As you may recall in one of several brewing methods, the Turkish brew boils coffee. Finely grounded coffee is mixed with water in a cevze (the long handled pot).

The sand is actually the heat source—as it is hot sand. The heated sand uniformally heats the cevze, and does it slowly enough to give control over when to pour the cevze’s contents, which seems to happen continuously. As noted in the boiling method of coffee, the coffee grounds are not filtered—they merely settle at the bottom of the cevze (and in your cup, as some coffee grounds will make it to the top). This style of coffee is obviously very strong—it is very much a dirty espresso.