Tealand Ostfriesland

Outside, the storm blows from northwest. Wind velocity 7. The wind pushes white clouds. Now, it is the best moment to enjoy the East Friesian national beverage. East Frisian tea does not only bring a wonderful inner warmth. It is stimulating and calming at the same time. To get to know the right East Frisian tea drinking and the history of the tea, the tea land Ostfriesland is worth a travel. For here the teapot never cools down.

"Nu is Teetiet!“ (Now it’s teatime!), they announce in the mullion window of the small tea room near the castle of Lütetsburg. With pleasure, the guest now takes off his wind jacket and shakes the last raindrops from his hair. The candy sugar – Kluntje – silently crackles when the landlady pours the tea into the small china cup. “Three cups of tea are East Frisian right”, she tells us. And, of course, this also is valid for tourists. But if you then do not put the spoon into the cup, you get more and more cups. This may result in a hurting stomach, because the East Frisians prefer a very strong tea.

Teetiet – teatime. This is time to talk. While the landlady puts the pot in the right place of the tea warmer with the flaring tea light, she explains the connection between tea and the clouds outside. You drink East Frisian tea with cream. The cream is put by a cream spoon on the border of the cup. The cold cream runs down in the hot tea and then rises like a cloud. And you do not stir the tea. You drink it “in three stories”. So you first taste the softness of the cream, then the bitterness of the hot tea and finally the sweetness of the candy sugar.

Ostfriesland is a tea land. There are only a few places on earth where they drink so much tea. About a quarter of the in Germany consumed tea comes to us. Nevertheless, tea not always was so popular, as the guest learns in the next station – in the tea museum of Norden. In the middle of the 19th century they said: “The frequent taking of the tea gives a limp skin to the women and a pale appearance. We saw strong and healthy men where many cups of tea cause, drunk with an empty stomach, stupidity, yawning and nausea.”

The tea museum lodges a unique collection to the history of tea, among it Chinese tea service from the 17th and 18th century. The glass cupboards of the museums show impressing examples of the history of European tea culture; among them there is a teapot of the mourning table-ware of the widow Fredericks the Great. Various living situations are reflected here. They show tea enjoyment in citizen and worker’s houses. The museum also has an own tea kitchen inviting you to have a tea-break.

For the East Frisians, the tea ceremony is a holy thing. And they are masters of drinking tea: in Marienhafe, 3010 enjoyers with a 620 m long tea table slurped into the Guinness World Records Book. That is why people like and try to teach the guests in the tea land Ostfriesland how to prepare the tea in the right manner, during a tea seminar. There you can get the tea diploma, but only if you are able to answer the questions around the East Frisian tea. So the aspirant must know for example that Klaus Störtebeker was no tea drinker. The reason: 600 years ago, in Ostfriesland they did not drink tea.

East Frisian tea ceremony

The East Frisian tea is a mixture of many different kinds of tea. Some, such as the Assam tea play the dominant role. They also mix – according to the brand – Java, Ceylon, Sumatra and Darjeeling teas.

For a real East Frisian tea mixture you ‘d normally take more than ten different kinds of tea to get the typical taste. It is best to enjoy the strong tea with Kluntje (coarse white candy) and cream. The water too is important: True East Frisians say that they only travel with a can of tea water.

Accessories
- Teapot
- tea cups (decoration of „Ostfriesische Rose", East Frisian rose)
- East Frisian tea spoon
- teapot warmer
- tea sieve or broom
- Rohmlepel (cream spoon)

Ingredients
- Soft water
- East Frisian tea (Thiele Tee, Bünting, Onno Behrens)
- Kluntje
- fresh skimmed off cream or fresh East Frisian tea cream

Procedure
Rinse teapot with cooking water, per cup 1 teaspoon of tea per cup (+ 1 teaspoon for the pot) and fill it up to a quarter. Infuse 3 minutes and then fill the pot completely. Give 1 Kluntje into the cup, pour the tea through the sieve into the cup and then carefully use the cream spoon to put the cream “on the tea”.