Bowing to traditions

Tradition is something that binds people together.

Sometimes it makes sense when you look at it from an historical perspective but some other times, it amazes those that look at it.

 031 - Preparations

As far as tea is concerned, traditions are part of it since it began and nothing is more traditional then a tea ceremony.

What is a tea ceremony? For this post, I will define it as a sort of tea ritual, as an unique way of making and drinking tea over and over again until everybody in a certain area knows that the xxx tea ceremony is performed that way (the precise area depending on a lot of factors such as being the motherland of tea or of tea in Europe or a country full of traditions that sounds exotics to us or ..).

Everyone knows about the Chinese tea ceremonies, the Japanese one, the English one (aka “5 o’clock tea”) , the Indian one, the Moroccan one, the Russian one and I am sure I am forgetting a lot of them.

031 - 2 cups

What I want to show you here is a little less known tea ceremony (although several of us Teatraders have talked about it), the East Frisian one.

East Frisian? Yes, a small part of Germany (for the East part) and of the Netherlands (for the West part) that is famous in Germany for being the place where people drink tea and nothing else (I already spoke once about a trip to this area in a previous blog post).

I didn’t go back to this area yet although I am sure that one day I will as I have many things that I didn’t see yet (both tea related and unrelated) but I travelled to Bremen, another “tea town” in Germany (for me Bremen and Hamburg are the southern borders of “tea drinking” Germany) and although I find that they usually make black tea too strong (but I think I know why), I decided to make a short video about the “right” way to perform a East Frisian tea ceremony.

After reading a bit more about it, I did at least one thing wrong: I poured too much tea on my candy sugar since the cup should not be full but the candy sugar should be covered by tea.

But as goes the saying, practice makes perfection.

I am also lucky that I was the one pouring tea into my cup as I didn’t get into any trouble by forgetting to let my spoon in my cup (as long as you don’t do this, it means you want more tea).

 031 - 2 cups once more

Now regarding the strength of black tea that sometimes borders on the bitter side, my explanation is threefold.

First and foremost, Germans are black coffee drinkers and the stronger, the better.

A second but more factual explanation is that in East Frisian, tea is drunk with liquid cream and sugar to sweeten it, which makes it easier to drink. So why bother for the strength of your tea?

My last explanation is that in Germany, tea pots remain heated while they are on your table, which even if the leaves are no longer there, changes the taste of what you are drinking.

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