Kopi Joss

Kopi joss is the coffee of the night-time street stalls of Yogyakarta, on Java: sweet coffee served with a red-hot lump of charcoal dropped straight into the glass. The coal sizzles as it hits, and that sound is said to give the drink its name. It’s credited to a stall owner known as Lik Man, and today it’s one of the city’s best-known street treats. Here’s how it’s made and where it came from.

The short version

• Sweet Javanese coffee with a burning lump of charcoal in the glass.
• Named for the sizzle as the coal hits the coffee.
• Credited to Lik Man, a Yogyakarta stall owner, around the 1960s.
• Health claims are unproven.
• Best tried from a vendor, not made at home.

How is kopi joss made?

1. Ground coffee and sugar go into a heatproof glass, as for kopi tubruk.
2. Boiling water is poured over them and stirred.
3. The vendor takes a red-hot piece of charcoal from the stove that heats the water and drops it into the glass, where it sizzles.
4. It’s left to settle, and you sip it around the charcoal.

Sources differ on how much sugar goes in: Brewminate describes four spoons, SilverKris “a couple of spoonfuls”. At the original stall, SilverKris watched Lik Man’s son, Kobar, add a second ember to the glass. Once the charcoal has cooled, you can fish it out and drink. Wikipedia puts the price at around 5,000 rupiah a glass.

Who invented kopi joss?

Kopi joss is usually credited to a Yogyakarta stall owner known as Lik Man (also Lek Man, Pak Man), who is said to have started around the 1960s. His angkringan, a street-food cart, stood near Tugu Station. The stories differ:

• One says he wanted a way to reheat coffee quickly, and perhaps to ease a stomach ache.
• Another says he noticed the coal he used to boil water and decided to dunk a piece in a cup.
• Wikipedia says his customers, many of them railway workers from East Java, asked for kopi kothok, coffee boiled with sugar and water, which he couldn’t make, so he dropped a burning coal into the coffee instead. His son Kobar told SilverKris much the same: making it would have needed another stove, so “he put burnt charcoal in the coffee so it would be as hot as kopi klotok”.

Treat the details as local legend: all the versions agree on the stall, the man and the charcoal.

Is kopi joss good for you?

Vendors say it helps the stomach, and some articles repeat claims that the charcoal cuts the coffee’s acidity and caffeine. I haven’t found good evidence for any of this, so I’d treat it as local lore and enjoy kopi joss as a piece of Yogyakarta street culture rather than a remedy.

Where can you try it?

In Yogyakarta. The original, Kopi Jos Lik Man, is on Jalan Wongsodirjan, in Gedong Tengen, and SilverKris lists it as open daily from 2pm to 3am. It’s now run by Lik Man’s son, Kobar. Other vendors have widely copied the drink, and Brewminate describes it as mainly a novelty for tourists now.

Kopi joss vs kopi tubruk

	Kopi joss	Kopi tubruk
Base	Sweet ground coffee and boiling water	Ground coffee, sugar and boiling water
Extra	A red-hot lump of charcoal	None
Where	Yogyakarta street stalls	Across Indonesia
At home?	Not recommended	Easy

General guidance only. Burning charcoal is extremely hot and gives off fumes: don’t try to make kopi joss at home, don’t eat the charcoal, and let the glass cool before handling it.

Kopi joss vs other methods

• Kopi tubruk: Indonesia’s everyday grounds coffee.
• Kopi sock: Malaysian and Singaporean cloth-filtered coffee.
• Vietnamese phin: sweet coffee through a metal drip filter.
• Turkish coffee: another unfiltered coffee, made in a cezve.

Explore every boiled method in the boiled chapter.