Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony

Ethiopian coffee ceremony

Bright rays of sun light shining through the blinds; it is Sunday morning day here in USA in my home. I can truly say that this is one of the most memorable Ethiopian coffee ceremony I every have, because it was five years since I had traditional one with my family in Ethiopia. I wake up on Sunday morning with the breathtaking aroma of coffee; with the sweet Frankincense fragrance smell fills my home; with the scattering green grass on the floor; with the pungent smell mingling with the heady scent of incense. There are couple steps in Ethiopian coffee ceremony events.

The ceremony starts. My wife, dressed in a traditional white dress with colorful, red, yellow and green woven borders, with ankle-length embroidered at its borders, sits on a stool, next to a clay brazier filled with heavy chunks of charcoal. There is also scattering green grass on the floor of the area where the coffee will be roasted. She washes a handful of raw, green coffee appears green/gray in color. She pours the coffee on the roasting pan and roasts them in a coffee-roasting pan on small open fire/coal furnace. At this time most of my senses are being involved in the ceremony with my wife shaking the roasting pan back and forth so the beans won't burn, it sounds like shaking coins in a tin can. She shakes until the coffee beans start to pop, which sounds like popcorn. The invigorating aroma of freshly roasted coffee overwhelmed me. The most memorable aspect is that my wife takes the roasted coffee and walks it around the room so the smell of freshly roasted coffee will fills the air. Frankincense is lit and fills the home with a sweet fragrance.

In second step, she puts the roasted coffee in a small household tool called 'Mukecha' (moo-ke-ch-a) for the grinding. Mukecha is a heavy wooden bowl, where the coffee beans are placed in and grind with another tool called 'zenezena' which is a wooden/metal stick. She crushes the beans in a rhythmic up & down manner (pistil and mortar). This produces a coarse consistency, unlike electric grinders. After she crushes fresh roasted coffee powder, she puts in a traditional pot made out of clay called 'jebena' (J-be-na) a shiny clay black in color. Ethiopian coffee pot, called "jebena, "which is round at the bottom and narrow at the top with a straw lid. She fills with the pot with water and boiled on the small