This is it! The eight contestants? teas are tested and a winner is chosen! There were no losers, since all eight contestants will be receiving free teas, but there was definitely one tea that came out on top. Filming took about five hours total, so you may notice a bit of caffeine-induced hysteria and what may have been a case of caffeine hangover by the time we had sipped our way through eight cups of tea. The Disembodied Voice (Amy) joined us for this episode as a third official judge of the eight teas. Each of us drank each tea and gave them each a score between 1 and 10. The tea?s three judges? scores were added together to give the tea its final score, with the highest final score being the winning tea. We also announced each judge?s favorite (i.e. highest scored) tea. If you were one of our eight contestants, you can expect an email from us in the very near future so that we can obtain mailing addresses for each of you and get your pick for your free tea. We?re emailing each contestant one at a time, in order of highest to lowest Showdown scores (the highest score getting first pick of the free tea). This has been a really successful event for STeaP, and we look forward to bringing you more contests and promotions throughout 2008! We have also received samples from several tea companies that we will be featuring soon, so watch for more opportunities to win tea goodies and learn more about what some of the smaller tea companies have to offer.

We are trying another Upton tea today in the form of Kensington Breakfast Blend. You?ll need a good black tea to stay up for the New Year (or at least I will). We also introduce and show off our Christmas presents. Brandice got a TriniTEA from Adagio and we?ll see how well it preforms. Stay tuned for our tea showdown next episode and our STeaP takes NY after that. We?ll be bringing in 2008 with a bang!

Happy Holidays from Joe & Brandice at STeaP! I’m very excited to share our Christmas episode with all of you. :) STeaP got a holiday surprise from Teaposy, a shiny new tea set for two! This little number was sent to us via the wonderful people at Importika and we just had to feature it for our holiday episode. We also got a wonderful flowering tea assortment and show off one of it’s selections, Calendula.For the holiday season, we introduce a more intimate STeaP, now with less wall and more host! If you ever wanted to find out what we’re saying during the show, now you can! Got any more annoyances with the show we should be trying to iron out? Email us at [email protected].

What do you do when your co-host is rude and talks on the phone during taping? Feed her a tea with bugs in it, of course!This week we’re trying a tea with a very long name, Formosa Natural Baihao Oolong Choice. This tea is one of the free samples sent to us by AuraTeas. Can a tea chewed on by cicadas really be any good? Watch and see.

The episode you’ve been waiting for, the breakfast tea rematch. Will throwing a quality Adagio tea in the mix change the results? Will switching seats help the tasters? Will everything taste like green beans from now on?Stay tuned, Steaple!Introduction written and performed by Steve Erickson.