🇹 Ethiopian · Traditional Drinks
🍺 Ethiopian Barley Beer
ጠላ — Tella
Ethiopian Tella — the traditional home-brewed barley beer of Ethiopia. Barley malted, toasted, boiled with gesho, and fermented for 3 days into an opaque, slightly sour, lightly alcoholic beverage. The everyday Ethiopian grain beer — less prestigious than tej but more widely consumed.
Tella is the beer that Ethiopia has been drinking since the agricultural revolution first took hold in the highlands — a fermented grain drink of modest alcohol content (2—4%), slightly sour, opaque, and satisfying. Made by women in every highland household who specialise in its production.
Heritage & Origin
Origin: All of Ethiopia — the traditional grain beer of the Christian highlands
Tella is the ancient fermented grain beer of Ethiopia — made from barley, sorghum, teff, or maize, malted, fermented, and flavoured with gesho for bitterness. While tej is the prestige drink served to honoured guests, tella is the everyday drink of Ethiopian highland communities — brewed by women at home and sold at small tella houses (tella bets) throughout the country. It is the beer that Ethiopian farmers drink at harvest, that weddings are toasted with, and that community gatherings are marked by. Like tej, tella is flavoured with gesho — making it distinctively Ethiopian.
Ingredients
Equipment: Large pots, Fermentation vessel, Straining cloth
- 500g barley or sorghum grain
For malting: water for soaking
- 30g gesho twigs
- 5 litres water
Starter: 100ml previous batch of tella or active yeast
Method
- // Malting (3 days before brewing)
- Soak barley 24 hours. Drain. Spread on wet cloth. Sprout 2—3 days until 1cm sprouts appear.
- Dry sprouted grain. Toast in a dry pan until golden-brown.
- // Brewing
- Boil gesho twigs in 2 litres water 20 minutes. Cool. Strain.
- Grind malted barley coarsely.
- Mix ground malt with 3 litres water in a large pot. Boil 30 minutes.
- Cool to warm. Combine with gesho water.
- Add tella starter or yeast.
- Ferment in a covered vessel 3—5 days, stirring daily.
- Strain through cloth. Serve at room temperature.
Chef Tips
- Malting is essential — it converts barley starch to fermentable sugars.
- Gesho provides the characteristic bitterness — similar to hops in function.
- Tella is always opaque — do not expect clarity.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Skipping malting — unfermentable without it.
- Over-fermenting — very sour.
The Science
See TZA264 for traditional grain beer science.
Nutrition (per serving)
Health Benefits
- B vitamins from fermentation.
- Barley beta-glucan.
- Probiotic bacteria.
- Best consumed in moderation.
Cultural Note
Tella is Ethiopian community — at every harvest, wedding, and communal work gathering (debo), tella is prepared and shared. The woman who makes the best tella in a village has a social status equivalent to the best cook — the quality of her tella is the measure of her skill and care.
Storage & Serving
Storage: Consume within 3—4 days of straining.
Reheating: Not applicable — serve at room temperature.
Serve with: At harvest celebrations, At weddings, At tella houses, With injera