Grandfather style tea, and some promo

I drink tea all year long. This is all I make at work, and that involves an Irish Breakfast tea I like. It comes in teabags, and that makes it easier at the office.

With the changing seasons, I make tea at home more often. When I'm home, I prefer some of the quality loose leaf teas. Now I know about a teapot and all the paraphernalia that goes along with it. I even own some of this stuff, but these days I prefer Grandfather style tea.

To make tea this way, you need to pay attention to which kind you buy. Many great teas go acrid if you leave them in the water too long. I love a good Darjeeling, but it won't work here. I have one called Golden Monkey that works great. This time I chose Dragon Pearl Oolong, because it also works great and lends itself to more photos.

First you need a cup. I like a big mug when I make tea this way. I just happened to get a new one yesterday.

This is a BIG mug. First thing you do is add your loose leaf tea directly to the mug. For Golden Monkey it's like a big three fingered pinch. In this case I'm using five pearls.

See why they call it Dragon Pearl Oolong.

Boil your water and pour it right in the cup. The pearls will unravel and coat the bottom of the cup with leaves. These leaves remain in the cup the entire time.

When it looks like a decent cup of tea, enjoy.

Loose leaf teas can be expensive, but I really like them. By making it Grandfather style, I can get three quality cups from one pinch of tea. After that, I chuck the leaves in the flower bed. I could probably add one pearl and keep it going, but I don't

I ordered ten of these mugs for promotional purposes. I chose an image where I also make an appearance, even though Lisa will get all the attention. My plan is to give them away over time.

I learned that most promotions involve a giveaway of some kind these days. I'm an ebook guy, and winning an ebook doesn't exactly fire anyone up. I've seen a lot of Amazon gift cards too. We gave away a gift card during the book blast, and we're still giving away a card on the extended Paranormal Bar & Grille tour. We're still doing our scavenger hunts and there are ten gift cards plus five ebooks at stake. Since I'm mentioning it again, you can get in on the scavenger hunts here.

I'm trying to figure out something different, and these are good mugs. Lisa always makes a great graphic, but I added the link to my Amazon author page on the back. Lesson learned, I would use a link shorter the next time. A QR code might work too, but didn't want to work on the site I used to build these.

Questions for you guys: Would you ever try Grandfather style tea? If you have, do you like it? Would you be more inclined to enter a giveaway if one of these mugs took the place of an Amazon card or an ebook? Would you ever type in the link on the back, or am I expecting too much? Either way, I have nine more of these and I'm going to try it on my next promotion. I'm keeping this mug for myself.