Tej & Tella: Gesho and Ethiopia's Ancient Brews

Long before craft brewing was a movement, Ethiopian households were fermenting two of the world's most distinctive drinks — and the secret ingredient in both is a native shrub most of the world has never heard of.

Gesho (ሴሾ) — Ethiopia's answer to hops

Gesho is a species of buckthorn that grows native to Ethiopia. Its woody branches and dried leaves are used to flavor and ferment both of the country's great brews — the stems are boiled and the extract mixed with honey for mead, while gesho is also what imparts tella its pleasant bitterness. Where the rest of the brewing world reached for hops, Ethiopia had gesho all along.

Tej (ጠጅ) — the honey wine

Tej is fermented honey wine: golden, floral, deceptively easy to drink. It is served in a berele (ብርሌ) — the round-bottomed flask that fits the hand like it was always meant to be there — and in older tradition, from a gumbo, an ox horn. Homebrew tej, cloudier and wilder, is called defres (ድፍርስ), "unclear" — a badge of authenticity, not a flaw. Its gentler cousin is berz: honey water, barely fermented, low in alcohol — leave it longer and it becomes tej. In Oromia, farso is the local honey mead tradition.

Tella (ጠላ) — the homebrew beer

Tella is brewed from roasted grains — barley, teff, corn — with bikil (germinated barley malt) and gesho, fermented in an ensera pitcher. It is opaque, smoky, gently sour, and made for long afternoons. Around it cluster the region's other ferments: borde, the thick cereal beverage of the south and west; shamita, the overnight-fermented barley drink taken as a meal; kineto, the barley drink sweetened with honey or orange; and areki, the clear distilled spirit for the brave.

Brew your own with Gesho Entchet | Hops Stems and Gesho Kitel | Hops Leaves — and raise a berele at a Balè Moya gathering.