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.