Ethiopian Honey Wine
Zeleke's honeywine in spa water bottle to take home and age for the next few weeks
In the Bemuurde weerd a northern ‘borough’ of innercity Utrecht, I passed by the Ethiopian restaurant Sunshine. I’d already heard about the homebrew honey wine and was keen to taste and find out how it was made. Restaurant owner Zeleke Zerfu generously gave me a glass to try and between serving restaurant guests he told me about how he went about making his wine and the perils of fermenting honey.
The wine was still young with a herby and liltingly honey twang, but within a few weeks it will reveal its vrai potent ambrosic punch. Using Ethiopian or local honey and wine yeast, Zeleke makes the wine in the restaurant basement according to the Ethiopian recipe called Tej, similar to hydromel as we’ve experimented with earlier in making FermentBrussels. Instead of using the leaves of Gesho (an indigenous Ethiopian plant related to the Sea Buckthorn, Rhamnus prinoides) he uses hops, which has a similar bitter agent. He used to make his wine in glass containers until once there was a mighty explosion down in the homewine storage in the restaurant basement. Now he re-uses plastic fanta, and coca-cola bottles to ferment and preserve the wine (reverse capitalism?) which reaches an alcohol percentage of around 14 percent after a couple of months. Zeleke’s knowledge will be an invaluable resource when it comes to honey brewing Utrecht city Linden flower honey .
Zeleke Zerfu with his honey wine served in the Berele carafes