Check out what Target is selling these days (click image to be taken to the Target product site:

In addition to glass teaware, Target is selling a 12-pack of Primula flowering teas for $16.99 (ON SALE) and Teaposy flowering teas in a 6-pack for $19.99. You may remember that we’ve reviewed Teaposy’s flowering tea in the past and have enjoyed it.

For those of you with a Target in your area, this is pretty affordable way to get into flowering teas and there’s no shipping to worry about either. Decent quality tea just seems to be getting more and more accessible these days, doesn’t it? :)

Can this show get anymore Assam? Absolutely! This week we bring you two strong Assams; TeaFrog’s Assam Banaspaty Organic FTGFOP-1, steeped for 4 minutes in boiling water, and The Simple Leaf’s Mountain Malt, steeped for 3 minutes in boiling water. How will they compare to the Sessa from episode #18 and Upton GFOP Assam from episode #11? Watch and see!

For photos from this episode, visit our Flickr pool, and for more episodes and other tea tidbits, visit STeaPtv.com. Contact Joe and Brandice via steap@steaptv.com.

According to a recent report, women who drink more than three cups of the good stuff every day are less likely to have a stroke or a heart attack because they seem to have less plaque in their arteries, but men don’t reap these same benefits.

Sorry, fellas. Seems you get the shorter end of the healthy side of tea, but don’t let that stop you from enjoying it as much the women do! :)

March 15th marked opening day for China’s baseball season, and the vendors sold tea at the game.

I’m sure a lot about the game felt different from your typical Dodgers game, but vendors selling tea sounded like an okay divergence from the American baseball norm to me! What do you think? Does tea have a place on the baseball field, or do you put away the assam for hot dogs and beer?

This week, we're trying one of the more rare kinds of tea blends, the Green/Black blend. How is it possible to steep a tea made from both Green and Black teas? This episode will answer that question.

The first tea is Upton's Midsummer Dream, a mix of China black tea and green Sencha along with sunflower petals, cactus blossoms and rhubarb steeped for 3 minutes in rumbling water. The second tea is Teasource's Prairie Passion, black and green tea blended with papaya, rosehips, sunflower and passion fruit steeped for 3 minutes in boiling water. Will the green and black teas play nice with each other? We'll find out.

For photos from this episode, visit our Flickr pool, and for more episodes and other tea tidbits, visit STeaPtv.com. Contact Joe and Brandice via steap@steaptv.com.

STeaP is looking juicy over at Blubrry this afternoon! Seems our matcha episode has crept onto the front page:

If you watch us through Blubrry, remember to click “Juice It” and our episodes are more likely to get some buzz. :)

This little podcast we’ve started has come a very long way since we began and I think we’re moving more towards a community. In order to help that along, I’ve been wanting to set up some forums to allow discussion about and around the show.

So, I’m happy to introduce steaptv.ning.com! This is mainly a forum site but has a lot of extra added social networking features too. Feel free to post on the forums or start new groups or do whatever you want. I can’t wait to see what kind of discussions develop.

Hope to see you there!

Time to win the blueberry white tea was 3 minutes and 37 seconds. Congratulations to our winner, Mark, who very geekily guessed a steep time of 4 minutes and 2 seconds (in a tribute to the answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything).

As a Douglas Adams fan, I was quite tickled to be able to give the prize to a Hitchhiker fan. Better luck to the rest of you in our many future giveaways! :)

(** Also, we did not have any entries for the other tea from that episode, the Berry Blueberry. I have a feeling this is because Joe and I were not fans of the tea, but if there’s anyone who would like to give the tea a shot and give an alternative review, the first email with “Berry Blueberry” in the subject will win the 2 ounce box. We are certainly eager to hear what others think of all of these teas!)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, tea drinkers! We bring you a very green tea today, in the event that you’re looking for something other than (or in addition to) green beer today. O-Cha.com Green Tea has generously shipped us some very high quality teas, including our choice for today, the Uji Matcha Kiri no Mori. They also included very helpful and specific instructions for properly preparing matcha, which can be found on their website.

I also (Brandice) made a promise to discover whether the two types of matcha (usucha and koicha) are different by preparation or are actually different tea leaves. I very quickly found the answer here, which is that the usucha is a thinner tea with much more astringency than the koicha, which is why it’s made with fewer scoops of matcha. The koicha is thicker, milder, and is made from much older leaves (often at least thirty years old). The tea that we’re trying in this episode is a usucha.

For photos from this episode, visit our Flickr pool, and for more episodes and other tea tidbits, visit STeaPtv.com. Contact Joe and Brandice via steap@steaptv.com.

COMING SOON: