I have samples to give away of the Mighty Leaf Green Tea Tropical tea that we will be sampling in an episode that will airing the last Monday in February. First several people to email me at brandice@steaptv.com are going to get a sample in the mail in time to drink this tea along with us on the 25th!

Hop to it! :) Offer ends when I am out of supplies, and thanks to Mighty Leaf for providing generous samples.

We switched the iTunes feed this morning to point to blip.tv’s feed. You won’t have to do anything for this move, but if you see any problems with the feed or your ability to download the show through iTunes, let us know in the comments. Everything’s looking okay so far though.

Enjoy your STeaP!

STeaP has created a CafePress store for those of you who want to proudly display your support of our tea-liscious podcast. Stickers, mugs, teddy bears, and even yard signs are available for the purchasing here.

Keep an eye out in the upcoming weeks for the appearance of apparel as well. We’ll be releasing a set of spiffy STeaP gear in the next week or two so that you can proudly wear our logo to your local tea rooms (or anywhere else, really). :)

The Great Tea Exchange

LiveJournal is generally a great place to generate conversation about specific interests, so I am a member of several tea communities. Recently, a new one caught my interest, because it involves the actual exchange of tea with a special tea penpal. From their community description:

This is is a community for tea lovers to share their favorite teas with other members, as well as make friends/penpals! This will work just like any penpal community – post an intro, comment on ones that interest you and exchange info between yourselves. You can work out what you want to send between you. =)

Please only accept penpals/swap partners if you are serious about sending mail. There’s nothing worse than penpals who never write back! =(

Are you interested in finding some tea penpals? If so, hop over to LiveJournal’s Great Tea Exchange and swap some teas. :)

We’ve just been informed from auraTeas that they have a new 10% off discount code available through March. Here are the details:

Offer: save 10% with any purchase
Code: spring
Expire: 03/31/08

We’ve had some great tea by them so this is a great opportunity to pick some up with a discount. Check them out at http://www.aurateas.com/.

We’ve traveled a long way since starting STeaP, from an off the cuff whim to actually traveling and filming an episode in NYC. Along the way, we’ve met some great people (you) and had a whole lot of fun drinking some great teas.

Brandice and I have recently been thinking of expanding the show past my dining room and going to more tea rooms and tea events throughout the country. We also want to upgrade some equipment, like microphones and cameras, and get more prizes to give away like the last showdown (which we both thought was a blast). There’s even a cool event in NY in April called the Coffee and Tea Festival that would be awesome to go to but it would cost about $300.

All of this will require financial backing of some sort. So far, nearly everything has been out of pocket for us. Getting outside money will allow us to do a lot more with STeaP in general. This, of course, is a big step for us and I wanted to get the community’s input on how it could go down. I think there are a couple of options here, but I wanted to get people’s input into what everyone thought was best.

Options I see are:

1. Get a sponsor or three. This would mean that there would be ads on the show. I wouldn’t want it to be blatant and I wouldn’t want to be beholden to liking a tea I thought was gross, but it would mean advertising and logos in the actual episodes.
2. Ask for donations, NPR-style. That would mean money from all of you and a slower “growth” cycle. Also, you’ll be giving us money to go to cool places and buy you prizes. It seems weird to me, but maybe it does make sense.
3. We could sell something of value. There’s a concept! We’ve thought of doing T Shirts and maybe even a quick reference book. There could be DVDs (If you’re all gluttons for punishment!). With this, we could make a small overhead and use that towards the things we want.
4. We don’t do anything different. We could just live on the equipment we have now, stay in our dining room and just give away prizes that tea shops donate. With all the free tea donations, I don’t think I’ll be buying tea for a while so future expenditures look to be pretty low. This would be called the “Don’t sell out” option, I guess and if that’s what people want, then that would be fine with us.

If you would like to leave your two cents on the subject, please comment below. What would you like the future of STeaP to be? If we should grow, what’s the best way? Are you avidly against ads in the show? What about on the blog?

It looks like the iTunes feeds download has been down all weekend. Our current hosting solution, BingoDisk, has had problems since Saturday and they expect to be back up on Monday. We’ll be sure to get Episode #18 up then. If you’re new to our show, we’re very sorry this happened! But if you try again later today, everything should be worked out (according to them).

UPDATE: Still down. There’s been a statement from the CEO of the hosting company, but no idea on when it will be back up. Please watch via Viddler or on this site until we’re back up.

Here are some teas that we’ve been sent by tea companies for review. We’ll be doing an episode on these teas, so if you’d like to purchase them and drink along with us, order samples of each! :) The first person to email me with a link to this entry will get a sample pack of the Might Leaf teas (so you won’t have to order them and you can drink along).

This is something that we will be doing at regularly at STeaP, in order to allow you (the viewer) a chance to try some of these new teas with us, and to give you information ahead of time about the companies we are going to be featuring. If you have suggestions, or if you are affiliated with a tea company that you would like to have featured on STeaP, please email us at steap@steaptv.com. We are more than happy to try any teas that are sent our way!

To find out more about each tea, you can click on the images below and you will find links in the picture descriptions that will lead you to the company’s website.

As we’ve mentioned before, STeaP is hitting NYC this week as part of the contest that Joe won (mentioned earlier), and we’re inviting YOU to join us! Here are the details, just in case any of you happen to be near New York City and would like to see us film a very special episode of STeaP:

• Who: Joe & Brandice (w/ special guests Chris and Michelle)
• When: January 11th at 9:30 a.m.
• Where: Alice’s Teacup, 156 East 64th St., New York City, NY 10023

If you’re in New York City this Friday, stop by and join us!

Also, keep an eye out on our blog for some upcoming alerts that will let you know what we’re going to be reviewing ahead of time, so that you can try the teas with us. :)

Tea Showdown is being filmed tomorrow and will be live all over the internet on Monday, January 7th!

These are the teas that will be battling it out for some super fun prizes:

• Rishi Jade Cloud Green Tea – Steven
• Adagio Valentines Tea – Samantha
• Harney & Sons Black Currant Tea – Joanna
• Upton GFOP China Yunnan ZY40 – Chris
• Tazo Green Ginger – Ro
• Harney & Sons Paris Tea – Tess
• Craigmore Estate Nilgiri Op Tea – Michelle
• Fatikchera Estate Assam Tea – Ann

You can see all them pictured here (except the Tazo, which Joe and I realized we had forgotten as I was writing this entry – don’t worry, we’re on it!), on Joe’s dining room table, eager to be tasted tomorrow during filming! The memory game is included in this shot to help all of your tea-addled brains to remember to watch the big Tea Showdown on Monday, January 7th to see who wins the 2008 title of… well, something we haven’t decided yet.