Making Tella - A Picture Guide

Brewing good beer requires attention to details, fresh ingredients, and an understanding of the chemical processes that convert boring, non-alcoholic ingredients to fun, alcoholic drinks! In our post today, we will show you the ingredients and general process for making Tella, the traditional Ethiopian beer. We encourage you to learn more and sign up for our Lalibela Brew Tour to get a better understanding the process in real life!

To make beer, you need four major ingredients: water, a bittering/flavoring agent, yeast and a carbohydrate. For a good overview, you can read more here. In many western countries, people brew beer with hops and barley as the flavoring agent and carbohydrate respectively. In Tella, Ethiopians use gheso and sorghum as the flavoring agent and carbohydrate respectively.

The Ingredients

Yeast Made from Barley

Sorghum

Gheso

The yeast, gheso and sorghum are all grounded prior to brewing.

The Brewing Process

The brewing process is simple. One one must yeast from barley (see left most picture above). This is done by taking barley, adding water and letting the yeast develop over a few days. Then, all of the ingredients are grounded to increase their surface area and make sure that they can mix well together.

Gheso, yeast and water is combined in a single pot for several days.

Then, sorghum bread is made, and broken into pieces. The bread is combined with the gheso and yeast mixture and water is added. Over the next three days, the yeast will break down the sugars in the sorghum bread and the mixture becomes alcoholic. Below, you can see the bubbling mix (as CO2 is released and sugars are converted into alcohol).

As the yeast does its magic, the mixture becomes less watery, and more pasty. The night before the beer is served, water is added for the last time.

The final product is a delicious tella