A coffee leaf beverage that begins with roasting the leaves over an open fire — and has been doing so, quietly, in Southwestern Ethiopia, long before researchers came to document it.
When a coffee leaf is held over fire and roasted until golden-brown, a cascade of chemical reactions likely begins. The heat drives off moisture, concentrates volatile aromatic compounds, and is expected to initiate the Maillard reaction — the same reaction associated with the distinctive flavour of roasted coffee beans, bread crust, and caramelised onions.
New flavour compounds are expected to form that do not exist in the raw leaf. The chlorophyll breaks down. The proteins and sugars interact at high temperature, likely producing a deeper, sweeter, more complex flavour substrate than any fresh or dried leaf can produce.
When this roasted leaf is then crushed while still warm — releasing the newly formed aromatic compounds — and boiled with spices, the brew that results is genuinely different from any other coffee leaf beverage. Not better or worse. Different in a way that is chemically specific.
In the Awoke et al. 2026 study of 64 Tepi Town households, not one household made Chemo without spices. Not one. The spice blend is not a flavour enhancement added to a base recipe — it is structurally inseparable from what Chemo is.
The core spices appear across virtually all households: basil, Koseret (a distinctive Ethiopian herb), lemongrass, ginger, and black pepper. Additional ingredients vary. But the principle — that Chemo requires a botanical blend alongside the leaf — does not.
Chemo is never served alone. The research documents consistent pairing with starchy foods — injera, bread, root vegetables, boiled grains. This is not incidental. Community understanding is that Chemo and food together are a complete offering. One without the other is incomplete.
The practical logic is clear: the starch moderates the intensity of the brew and extends the drinking experience. The brew adds warmth and aromatic complexity to a starchy meal. But the combination is also social logic — sharing food and sharing drink together is the fuller expression of hospitality than either alone.
In Tepi Town, Chemo is made primarily by women. The knowledge of how to make it — which spices, in what proportions, how long to roast, when the colour is right, how long to boil — is transmitted through observation and practice. A daughter learns by watching her mother. No recipe is written down. No standardised instruction exists.
This transmission pattern means the knowledge is robust in one sense — it has survived without institutional support — and fragile in another. If the practice stops being performed regularly, the experiential knowledge that maintains it begins to erode. Written documentation is a supplement to that knowledge, not a replacement for it.
The three leaf preparation methods documented in Tepi Town are not simply variations in flavour preference — they reflect different communities and different relationships to the coffee plant.
The roasted method is the dominant Tepi Town practice. The fresh-leaf method is documented as the Majang people's preferred approach — a different ethnic community with a different relationship to the forest and the plants within it. The lightly heated method sits between the two, used by households who prefer less intensity than roasting produces but more warmth than the fresh method offers.
Tap a category to explore the documented ingredients
The spice blend in Chemo represents household botanical knowledge accumulated over generations. Ten ingredients are documented across Tepi Town households. The research categorises them in three groups: aromatic leafy herbs, root and bark spices, and flavour modifiers. Each plays a distinct role.
The research notes something that statistics cannot fully capture: in Tepi Town, the knowledge of how to make Chemo has never been written down. It exists in the hands of women who learned by watching their mothers, who learned by watching theirs.
The study also notes that this knowledge is under pressure. Younger generations and urban residents have less regular exposure to Chemo preparation. Ingredient availability is changing — some traditional herbs are harder to find near towns than they were in the villages where Chemo originated.
Ethnobotanical documentation — the kind this study represents — is a form of conservation. Not of the practice itself, which can only be maintained through regular performance, but of the knowledge that makes the practice possible if someone decides to revive it.
One of the most practically significant aspects of Chemo — and of all coffee leaf traditions — is documented in a single sentence of the Awoke et al. research:
"The beverage reflects locally adapted strategies of resource use — by utilising renewable coffee leaves rather than beans, it does not compete with market-oriented coffee production."
The Tepi Town communities who make Chemo are also coffee producers. The beans they grow go to market. The leaves they use for Chemo stay local. The two are not in competition — they are two different relationships with the same plant, operating in two different economies simultaneously.