My wife is Cypriot and we just got back from one of our extended visits there. While staying with her family, we enjoyed using their electric briki. It was nothing special, but it had a detachable base, narrow top, and fast heating. Of course, it worked on 220V and had a European (British) plug.
Fast forward to here in the USA…where can I find one that works on 110V? I found one or two, but they either do not have detachable bases or they have non-traditional shapes (i.e., very wide at the top). We are looking for one that holds from 8 to 16 ounces. If I want to invest in a step-up transformer, I’d be fine, but who wants to have one of those sitting in the kitchen?
And, yes, we already have traditional brikis that we can use on our electric stove, but that is a PITA compared to the nice electric ones we’ve used.
No, not really. A briki is quite a bit different in size and shape. The narrow top helps with the crema. There are plenty of them on Amazon (mostly from Sinbo) but they are all 220V. I have electric kettles, but they don’t really do the job with 6-8 ounces of Greek coffee. (My wife is Greek Cypriot, so we don’t use the T-word here.)
Oh, sorry. It’s a small pot for making Greek (or Turkish, but see my previous post) coffee. Typical capacity is 8 to 15 ounces, though some are larger. It’s narrower at the top than the bottom. A traditional briki (or ibrik) is heated over a flame. There are plenty of pics on Amazon and the web…just search for “briki.”
Traditional (non-electric) ones are plentiful. Every house we were in while on Cyprus had an electric one, which worked great for 2-3 cups of coffee. Takes about two minutes to make. I assured my wife that somebody MUST make a 110V version we could get when we got back home. Now I’m not so sure…
It’s gonna be tough to find an appliance like that for 120v for the same reason its tough to find British-style electric kettles; the heating element requires more current than can easily be delivered with a 20-amp 120v kitchen outlet.
If you really want one, my advice would be to get a 240v model and have a 240v plug installed in your kitchen. (If you have same basic electrical knowledge it’s not too hard to DIY.) Then replace the Euro-style plug on the appliance with the appropriate NEMA plug.
I’ve considered installing a 220/240V outlet, which wouldn’t be too hard to do, but a typical electric briki only draws about 800 watts. Theoretically, it would be fairly easy to make one with a heating element that operates on 110V. It’s certainly not much different from a percolator or a waffle iron. But that may be my only remaining option.
I already have a “Turkish coffee maker” that uses 110V and it works fine EXCEPT that it is much larger than necessary and is very wide at the top. It doesn’t make much foam.
I have never seen what you want, but you could buy a small camping stove that takes butane/propane cylinders and keep it in your kitchen to make the coffee the normal way. That way you avoid any electrical work just for making coffee. There are also transformers or solid-state voltage converters that can handle 800 Watts.
In fact, I have done exactly that. I have several small isobutane camping stoves and my traditional brikis (3" to 3-1/2" base) fit on them quite nicely. But you can imagine that it’s not ideal to have that sitting on my counter all day.
Converting 800 watts with a transformer is very practical, except for having the transformer sitting on the counter near the sink. They cost about $70-$100, too. I’m tempted to put one in a kitchen cabinet and hard-wire it to an (European) outlet.
But I continue to hope that somebody, somewhere manufactures a basic electric briki with a 110V heating element.
Hmmm…you can also try searching for “cezve,” which is the Turkish name for it (an ibrik is something different in Turkey, but the terms do get confused, and ibrik is popularly used in much of the world for cezve), but I can’t find anything 110v with that term, either. Just something from Walmart which does not look at all like a proper cezve/briki.