It is usually drunk strong and brown with sugar or salt or sometimes without any flavouring agent. The coffee, grown on the higher slopes of Ethiopia, has a delicate and pungent flavour that is destroyed if over-boiled.
Ethiopia is often described by historians as the birthplace of Coffee Arabica.
The lady of the house where the coffee ceremony is held serves the brew in small China cups. The women attending the ceremony are usually dressed in their traditional white robes with colourful woven borders.
"That is the only time when the husbands do not object to their wives going out to visit friends and the only time when husbands do not accompany the women as well," Zewide said.
The idea has lived through centuries - when coffee was discovered in the country thousands of years ago - to become an effective tool of people-to-people bondings in modern times, Zewide said.
