How to do tea like an East Frisian

Arriving in Germany, I spent my first month with a family in Münster. When friends or family would come around, the tea set, with its small delicate cups, would come out. So would a little pot of rocks of sugar, called Kandis, and a dainty jug of thick creamy something that looked like condensed milk, but I was never entirely certain. It wasn’t milk, because it seemed to simply coil and ripple in the tea, and I could never get quite enough of it to make my desired cup. But it was nice to sit there with the blue and white crockery, drink the strong black brew from the small cups, and listen to the sugar rocks crackle. Once I left that family, and began buying my own teabags, it took me a few years of buying, drinking, and lamenting supermarket teabags that had the strength of dishwater – and becoming alarmingly used to it – until I realised, in a country that seems to run on filter coffee and fruit tea, existed a pocket of the country in which tea making and drinking is a serious business; East Frisia.

Tea is a religion to the East Frisians, who inhabit a chunk of land along the north-west German coast, between Germany and The Netherlands. I didn’t know it at the time, but the ritual I was partaking of in Münster, with the shiny rocks of sugar, and the thick cream, was an East Frisian tea ritual. Fast forward a few years, and I now live in Germany’s north, where the East Frisian tea culture is a strong presence, and the tea, thankfully, readily available.

Tea came to East Frisia in the 17th century, at around the same time it was taking off in England. The Netherlands, a country that has long influenced East Frisia culturally, also imported masses of tea from Asia, and it filtered east. Pride and an independent spirit defines the East Frisians, and as coffee became the more popular drink, they stuck with tea. It was a more economical drink, and, besides, their tea culture set them apart from other regions. It still does.

East Frisians drink tea all through the day, although Teetied – tea time – is traditionally 2-3pm. Annually, the East Frisians consume something like 300 litres of tea per capita. They drink it strong, the leaves a blend of Assam, Darjeeling and Ceylon. It is a warming brew, one that has long staved off the cold storms rolling in off the North Sea.

Like so many traditions, the proper East Frisian tea ritual is something passed down through the generations. Tim Janssen, who grew up in East Frisia, believes ‘there are many young people who are not so familiar with the traditional way of making tea anymore. However, my grandmother was always eager to make the tea the proper way.’

So what is the proper East Frisian way? Glad you asked.

Prepare the Pot:

Get out the tea set – preferably and most likely with the classic East Frisian white and blue design – and warm the pot. ‘My Grandmother took the tea pot and poured hot water in it so that it would become warm. Then she emptied it again and put the tea leaves in, and then she poured hot water in it again.’

Allow the Tea to Steep:

Give the tea leaves 3-4 minutes to brew. Don’t remove them. Traditionally, East Frisians would just add more leaves to the ever-brewing pot over the day, or when visitors arrived, which is how they arrived at drinking such a strong brew.

Add the Kandiszucker:

Kandis are little rocks of sugar that sit at the bottom of the cup and slowly sweeten the brew as you drink. They take a while to fully dissolve, so you can reuse them for your second (and third) cups. ‘Put 1 or 2 »Kluntje« into the cup (Low German expression for »Kandiszucker«). Then you pour the tea into the cup, using a small sieve so that the tea leaves stay outside of the cup. When pouring the tea into the cup and onto the Kluntje, you hear a typical cracking noise which is very important for the »traditional way« of preparing it. You do not put the Kluntje in the tea afterwards.’

Add the Cream:

The thick cream, which is like condensed milk in consistency, can be added to the cup using a spoon. Ideally, you trickly the cream down the side of the teacup. But do not stir it! ‘You wait for the Sahne to spread in the cup until it looks like a cloud. And then you can drink the tea (still without stirring it).’ The cloud of milk, like the slowly dissolving Kandis, is all part of a key element of the East Frisian tea – its evolving taste as you drink.

Know Your Limits:

If you are a guest in an East Frisian’s house, come thirsty. Two to three cups of tea in one sitting is the norm – »Dreimal ist Ostfriesenrecht.’’ However, like beer in Cologne, you have to let your host know when you’ve had enough. ‘If you're done, you have to put your spoon into the cup. If you don't put the spoon into the cup, this signalizes the host that you still want more tea and they will refill without asking you.’ On this, East Frisian Walter Pannbacker adds another important part of tea culture; ‘We used to have a lot of visitors without prior notice. If you had time, you'd just start making tea and they knew it was convenient to receive visitors. If a visitor is not offered tea straight away, he knows it's not a good time and leaves after five minutes - and nobody needs to be impolite and say: ‚Sorry, I don't have time.’’’

Text: Liv Hambrett