How to Prepare Your CoffeeEthiopian Spris
What you need
Ingredients run from the top of the cup to the bottom; the last item is the bottom layer. Values are normalized to a true 100% stack.
- Grind
- Fine — espresso, if using a machine; moka-fine for a stovetop pot
- Water temperature
- Hot — both halves brewed strong and served hot
- Total time
- 6 min
Order a spris at an Addis Ababa café and the same cup that pours a macchiato next door instead fills half with strong black tea, half with strong coffee — poured so the coffee settles over the tea rather than mixing into it, a dark band floating on reddish amber. Spris is Amharic for 'mix,' and the drink is a small, everyday expression of a wider Ethiopian instinct: taking two strong, separate things and letting them sit together rather than blending them into one. No milk touches it — that is what tells it apart from the macchiato ordered at the next table — and sugar is stirred in or left out, purely to taste.
Steps
Brew the tea strong and hot
A timid tea disappears the moment coffee joins it — spris depends on the tea holding its own tannic bite against the coffee, so it is brewed to a genuinely strong cup, not a delicate one.
Brew the coffee separately, just as strong
Both halves are made at full strength on their own before they ever meet — an espresso shot or a strong stovetop brew, never a weak backup to the tea.
Pour the coffee over the tea, slowly
Coffee is slightly denser than tea, so a slow pour lets it settle in its own band across the top rather than folding in — the two-tone look, dark coffee over reddish-amber tea, is the whole visual point of a spris.
Add sugar to taste, stir only if you want to
Sugar is optional and personal, never a fixed measure — some drinkers stir it through, others let the layers sit a moment before mixing so the two flavours are tasted apart first.
Cup ready
Time to enjoy your Ethiopian Spris
Brewed the way they do it in Ethiopia. What next?
Tips
- Use a real black tea brewed strong enough to bruise — spris is a tug-of-war between coffee and tea, and a weak tea loses before it starts.
- Let the pour happen slowly and close to the surface — a fast pour from height mixes the two halves instead of layering them.
Common mistakes
- Adding milk — spris is defined by having no dairy at all; that absence, not a particular ratio, is what separates it from the macchiato served at the same counter.
- Stirring immediately — the floating dark-over-amber layers are part of what a spris is ordered for; mixing on sight skips the moment the drink is built around.
Variations
Within the Ethiopian Spris tradition, the preparation above takes these familiar shapes:
Ethiopian macchiato
The order poured at the same Addis Ababa counter, from the country's Italian-influenced café tradition — espresso cut with a little milk, where spris uses no milk at all and layers strong coffee over strong black tea instead.
FAQ
What does "spris" mean?
Spris is the Amharic word for 'mix.' Ethiopian cafés also use the same name for an unrelated layered fruit-juice drink — papaya, mango, and avocado puréed and stacked in a glass — so the word describes a whole approach to combining strong, separate things rather than one fixed recipe. This recipe is the coffee-and-tea café order, not the juice-bar version.
Is spris the same as an Ethiopian macchiato?
No. A macchiato is espresso cut with a little milk, following Ethiopia's Italian-influenced café tradition. Spris has no milk at all — it pairs strong coffee with strong black tea instead, poured so the two sit in visible layers rather than combined into one drink.
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