Karlsruhe, Germany, August 3, 2021 — A team of young entrepreneurs launched the app Steeped to provide tea enthusiasts in order to provide them with information and brewing instructions on how to get the best out of their tea. The development journey started in 2020, and the app is now available for users on iOS and Android.
The team of co-founders consists of Janek Wunderlich, CEO, Marcel Bechler, product manager, and designer, as well as Tristan Otto, marketing and sales manager. They had the idea to build this app back in school when they wrote down notes about the tastes of new teas they tried out. After interviewing peers and other tea lovers, they focused on tea brewing instructions rather than just taking notes and exchanging tasting notes.
Why would one need an app for tea brewing?
When talking about tea, we refer to loose leaf tea and not something that is repacked in bags, and for the preparation of loose tea leaves, you should have some knowledge on the tea you are dealing with if you want to extract a good taste. There is not much technological innovation happening in the world of tea, to be honest.
One reason for that is that the best taste for tea cannot be achieved based on machines or gadgets. The primary aspects here are the quality of the tea itself, the quality of the water you use, and the proper preparation based on what tea you brew and how you like to drink it. The Steeped app can help you with the latter of these three aspects.
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As of now, they provide guides for the following types of tea: Long Jin (green tea), Tie Guan Yin (oolong), general black tea (red tea), general green tea, general white tea, general oolong, general yellow tea, general dark tea, herbal infusions, fruit infusions, spice infusions, Darjeeling (black tea), English Breakfast (blended black tea), general matcha (green tea), general chai (spice blend), Earl Grey (blended black tea), jasmine (green tea), chamomile (herbal infusion), pu’erh (dark tea), lapsang souchong (black/red tea), peppermint (herbal infusion), sencha (green tea), Bi Luo Chun (green tea), Ceylon (black/red tea), Bai Mu Dan (white tea), Baihao Yinzhen (white tea), Da Hong Pao (oolong), Junshan Yinzhen (yellow tea), Tai Ping Hou Kui (green tea).
How does it help me exactly?
Many tea enthusiasts love their tea time but maybe don’t have the time or motivation to do research or read books about how which kind of tea has to be properly prepared. Humans have been drinking tea for thousands of years, and certainly, there is no single right way to prepare and brew, but there are some common practices that the tea experts agree on as the “best” way to brew per sort of tea.
The app currently covered five primary brewing styles: Western-style, Gongfu brewing (Chinese tea ceremony), Grandpa-style (simply leaves in a cup), cold brew, and Matcha brewing. They will also tell you which type of brewing is recommended for what sort of tea in the app.
https://twitter.com/SteepedApp/status/1374368832207298565
In order to get the instructions, the users just need to load up the app, pick a tea out of the list or out of their favorites, pick a brewing method as mentioned above, select the size of their teaware and cup with a handy volume slider, and finally select their desired intensity of the tea. As a quick overview, it will give you information on how much water you will need, the temperature the water should have for brewing, the weight of leaves you should use, as well as the duration of the brew.
Once all is set, you can start the process, and the Steeped app will accompany your tea brewing process with guided steps and timers. They even included an adjusted timer when you want to go for follow-up brews, which is common for many good tea types. What does that mean? It means that the time for a second brew of the same leaves would take longer in comparison to the first brew, and it will take more time for each additional brew.
Plans for the future
We talked with Steeped CEO Janek Wunderlich about the app and their roadmap for future updates. Later this year, they plan to implement additional features into the app, such as letting merchants sell their tea and teaware and including social community features like lettings users create profiles, follow each other, and exchange tea reviews.
They further plan to add product pages for specific teas and add detailed descriptions for these tea styles along with knowledge articles to not only get the best out of the brewing but simply to learn more about the user’s favorite types. At the end of the exchange, he added, “Try a tea you never had, there’s so much variety, try something completely new and let it surprise you.”
I downloaded the app myself, and I’m ready to try it all out. Maybe you would also enjoy that a good tea time? Try the app out for free on Android and iOS. If you’re a merchant, you can also try to work with the Steeped team by joining their program here.
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Photo credit: The feature image has been done by Anthony Tran. The app graphic is owned by Steeped and was provided for press usage. The tea ceremony photo was taken by Michelle Kim. The picture showing a woman taking notes was done by Camille Dellerie. The image depicting a woman during tea harvest was prepared by Danurwendho Adyakusuma. The last image of the body of the article showing a variety of tea products was taken by the author for TechAcute.
