Yerba Mate – A Long but Current History (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Yerba Mate – A Long but Current History (2021)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

155 pointsKaibeezy166 comments

Coming from an Argentine family Yerba Mate is great. I'm American but have been drinking it frequently since the time I was 14 or so. I drank tons in college but took a multi-year break a few years down the line due to reflux issues that it made worse. Those are some things to look out for - heartburn, sinusitis, negative changes in mood, tension headaches.

I notice that there is a huge difference between Yerba Mate brands in terms of the perceived effects. Lately Union Suave and Rosamonte have not been sitting well in my stomach or mind (irritability, lack of concentration, tension headaches, etc). Taragui Liviana and my new favorite Playaditos are the best for me. I've been drinking them twice a day with no perceivable ill effects. Although I do lose some endurance performance on the high end when drinking Yerba Mate before running which I've tracked with a chest mounted heart rate tracker.

I'd like to send the different brands off to a lab to have a better understanding of WHY I feel such a difference in the effects when going brand to brand. I'd assume its due to different concentrations in the three primary Xanthines - Caffeine, Theobromine, Theophylline. Anyways, definitely worth the squeeze, but don't be surprised if you need to try a few different brands to see which affects you the best.

Playadito is great. There's a kind of Yerba Mate that is easier on the liver and stomach now called Cachamai, and there's some alternatives too. It normally comes in with extra flavors such as Mint, Orange, etc.

I'm Argentinian, been drinking Mate daily (sometimes several times a day) since I was ~18 (32 now) and that Yerba is great :)

Are there negatives effects on the liver from consuming mate?

You can have dried lips caused by the liver (at least that's my understanding), but that's if you consume a lot, daily, for a long time

I'm a tea drinker (green Chinese types like Zhen Mei are mainly my thing) and occasionaly also consume Yerba Mate. Rather than saturating a high amount of the dried plant with hot water and drinking it with a traditional silver straw like people do in South America, I just prepare a normal infusion like one does with tea, with a metal straining net infuser leaving it for four minutes. It's easier on the stomach this way. It's also good in combination with lemongrass.

I've done the same for years. I think most of the ill effects of mate come to people because they're "overdosing" inadvertently.

If you steep a "tea" quantity of mate, I've found it to produce a remarkably long-lived, smooth, non-jittery sense alertness.

The only times I've ever felt like how coffee or black tea make me feel, is when I put in a 1/4 cup of mate and drink it the traditional way.

We also do that when you have to serve mate for a large crowd and it receives the name of ´Mate Cocido´ => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_cocido

I do a double brew where I steep the mate first, let it sit in partial quart bottles, then I brew a soup pot of Oolong tea and strain after 3 minutes I then add the tea to the mate as a kind of double brew. I may now strain the tea-mate combo after a shorter period. I still need to read the article.

It has 27g of sugar per drink. are there any options to not have sugar or sweeteners? I was hoping at least this company will be more health conscious.

Yerba Mate is brewed, like tea. You can buy the herb and brew it yourself, like loose tea. Yerba Mate is not a company, it's a drink with three thousand of years of history. The reason many energy drink companies add so much sugar is that it's extremely bitter. I like mine bitter, and many drink it straight.

I certainly wouldn't call it "extremely" bitter, but I guess it might be for you. To me, it's somewhat bitter but much less bitter than coffee. There's a lot of genetic variation in human bitter taste receptors, and different foods/beverages just taste inherently different to different people, before people even begin to develop preferences and acquire acquired tastes.

Acquired taste, just like coffee or beer. They don't need sugar.

That's right. I prefer it with a bit of sweetner, though. And the last time I bought online I got an orange flavored yerba from a brand called CBSé - probably the best one I've tried yet. This brand has lots of different flavors of yerba, it's excellent. The place I discovered it is Pampa Direct, here https://pampadirect.com/mate-yerba-mate/

Yerba Mate doesn't have any sugar in it. You might be looking at a packaged drink, but Yerba Mate itself is nothing more than a tea-like herb.

Maybe you mean the club mate drink popular in the hacker community? (Incidentally it displaced jolt cola in that role)

I've lived in Argentina since 2006, when I discovered mate.. it changed my whole approach to stable productivity because it would not crash you like coffee.

I'm happy to see this study finally. Surprisingly when I asked my doctor here if there were any studies on it, I was shocked to hear "Oh No!" when asked why.. she responded "1. there is no $ for funding it. 2. No one cares here about the clinical health effects, we all drink it ( +/- 45 million ), it works, and the only thing people care about is how many 'palos'/sticks get into the bag".

Personally, having drank it for 16 years, I do deeply wonder about the long term effects of it on the nervous system, which I don't think the paper addresses.

I grew up in the south Brazil, we share the same strong passion for things with Yerba Mate (Erva Mate in portuguese). People there drink for the entire life, like myself.

There's some studies from universities from south of Brazil and Embrapa that is a institution that oversees research on things related to agriculture.

One of the references I quickly found, that have more references. All in portuguese unfortunately:

https://aps-repo.bvs.br/aps/a-erva-mate-possui-acao-terapeut...

Quoting a translation from there:

"""Another clinical study demonstrated an increase in antioxidant capacity in serum and in total blood and a reduction in LDL-cholesterol in individuals with dyslipidemia after ingestion of 1L per day of yerba mate infusion for ninety days, which suggests that this is an auxiliary dietary supplement in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases in individuals who have a free food diet. The same action has already been described by other authors previously. Klein et al (2011) reported that consumption of mate tea for 60 days improved the control and glycemic profile of individuals with type 26 diabetes. Experimental research analyzed in a literature review indicates that mate tea improves glucose tolerance in obese animals.

""" Yerba mate consumption has been associated with the incidence of oropharyngeal and esophageal cancer, however, this seems to be mainly related to the habit of some people to drink the drink at very high temperatures. The ideal water temperature is 70 to 80ºC. """

There are studies: https://inym.org.ar/descargar/publicaciones/mate-y-salud/bas...

Also, INYM has codified the procedures regarding analysis procedures.

I drink coffee daily and don't experience any crash. I do drink water between sips so that may affect my experience. Many blog posts online claim this practice helps to avoid crashing. I like the taste of Yerba Mate but I find it makes me feel weird a lot of the time.

I started drinking Mate later in life, and definitely recall it sitting weirdly in my stomach at first. You might want to try drinking it in smaller concentrations? i.e. steeping for less time, with a smaller quantity of "tea".

A random theory, but since the chemical profile of Mate is quite different from coffee, it might be your body going through selective withdrawal from coffee that's producing the "weird" effect.

The chemical profiles are different (hence they taste different) but the addictive component is still regular ol' caffeine.

For long term effects, ask the long term drinkers of it. Sounds like you may have family who have drank it for a long time. They’re way better as a guide (with significant noise) as to what you could expect.

This is of course not scientific in the usual sense. But family history is another thing.

Yerba Mate got me through university.

It was such integral part of that time of my life that even now more than a decade later I still meet people who remember me as the strange tea pipe guy (I used a traditional gourd and metal bombilla).

However I stopped drinking it once it got known to me that it might have cancer causing properties.

Scanning the article I can see there have been direct connections made via PAH concentration in the plant, which gets extracted along with everything else once brewed.

It seems to be recommended that leafs only be used once to avoid extracting much of the PAH, but still it seems that the extraction does happen. And while we have all too many cancer causing chemicals in our daily life already, I am not sure I would want to introduce one knowingly.

Am I wrong here? Is the risk negligible or some known way of circumvent PAH extraction? Perhaps a Yerba Mate cold brew?

I've heard Andrew Huberman [0] often say the ill effects come from the smoked variety [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_D._Huberman

[1] https://twitter.com/hubermanlab/status/1500601677904113664?s...

The brand I use says that about their product:

"Our Yerba Mate is 100% air dried through a process that use warm air instead of smoke. That drying system enable the leaves to be free of PAHs. This creates a safe, healthy and light tasting yerba mate."

I don't know if the claim is true or not.

Which brand do you use? I couldn't find an exact match via web search :(

https://matelibre.com/ out of Montréal. They even have them in cans.

Looking at their site, they apparently even make a vodka drink with them now. Uh, caffeine & alcohol drinks is usually not very well received by the government here. I wonder if it'll stir some political drama.

Interesting, thank you for the link.

I'm currently working my way through his podcast back catalogue, and am very much liking the content and his way of delivering it.

Must say I have never heard about smoked yerba mate though.

I wonder if that is something akin to how coffee is roasted?

edit: turns out the smoking is part of the common processing done to dry the leaves. I guess finding a supplier that dries via other methods would then be preferable.

Huberman is great but I wouldn't use any of his product or supplement recommendations, whether paid or not. I mean, Athletic Greens — WTH?

What's wrong with Athletic Greens?

Do you know what his source is? He also recommends taking his preferred brand of dietary supplements which gives me pause about him.

Not sure if he cites this one specifically, but you can look at this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6443446/

There is a Yerba Mate cold brew called Tereré[1], is very common in some countries of South America. Even more than the hot version in some places. I myself had it many times, sometimes mixed with lime juice, and even mixed with vodka

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terer%C3%A9

Thank you for the suggestion, but I live on a small island in the North Atlantic where availability of goods is not particularly high.

I can get the Yerba Mate leaf, but the cold brew I would need to make my self.

I was rather trying to see if there was any literature out there on if cold brewing limits or eliminates the PAH extraction.

The only difference is using ice water instead of hot water. Preparation is the same: fill the gourd with yerba, pour water, spit out the first mouthful to clear the dust, pour water again and drink.

In other words, if you have the leaf you can make either version.

Apparently the cold version has less PAH. Not sure if this is a practical concern but for what it's worth there's literature.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09567...

I too live on a small island in the North Atlantic and I'm making my way through my first bag of Anna Park Yerba Mate (Andrew Huberman recommendation)[1]

Hello from Canada!

[1]https://www.amazon.ca/Anna-Park-Yerba-Mate-Organic/dp/B01B6W...

Well yes, my island is not disconnected from the wider world.

It is just prohibitively expensive to ship individual products in.

Also there is no Amazon or its like here.

Hello back from Iceland!

I see the https://metamate.cc/ mentioned elsewhere here seems to deliver to Iceland. Don't know about the cost though, maybe acceptable? They are based in Berlin and seem well stocked?

Edit: You know, thinking about the amount of flights to and from Kevflavik, no matter if commercial airlines, or business jets doing a stopover there for refueling, I feel there is a niche to exploit. For something like a mini UPS/FedEX/DHL using that empty space, which has to be there?

I mean, open https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ point it to KEF, let it run for a day in some tab, and see how much air traffic from BOTH sides of the Atlantic goes there?

Thank you for pointing them out. Have already sent them an inquiry about their drying process.

It isn't that there is difficulty actually transporting goods here.

It is that with transportation and import fees the products can, and often does, double in price. For cheaper things, it simply doesn't make financial sense to pay 4-5x the product price in fees.

Just ordered a bag! Do you have any recommendations for how to best prepare it?

I've been drinking mate my whole life but Tereré, if you are not used to it, is known to ensure you a fast and mostly unexpected bowel evacuation.

I never experienced this. Maybe if the ice & water is from dubious origin?

No. As a seasoned tereré drinker, the fact that you're drinking lots of (mostly) cold water, added to the higher polar and ionic charge of various organic compounds and soluble mineral found in it, should somewhat encourage movement of your lower intestinal tract. Doctors here do not discourage drinking of tereré, but warn that it does not hydrate the body properly, but the contrary. And this is one of the reasons: in the balance, your body loses more water than it gains, so you should supplement it with regular hydration.

There's also the fact that regular Camellia sinensis tea has astringent properties, and people keep expecting that yerba mate, being a "herbal tea", might have similar effects, when in fact it doesn't.

Of course, as parent stated, many people never experience such effects. YMMV.

I’m a coffee -> mate convert but wasn’t aware of the PAH cancer risk.

It seems that the risk is only present when drinking mate at high temperatures: https://www.verywellhealth.com/yerba-mate-and-cancer-5082076

Hrm. Regarding cancer, you could say the same about tea. Why would that be? Maybe because most drink it too hot? Hot fluids are bad for your esophagus over long times. So let it cool down?

Yes: https://aps-repo.bvs.br/aps/a-erva-mate-possui-acao-terapeut...

It's in Portuguese unfortunately. Some people drink at 90oC almost the boiling point.

Do you mean that people drink it at high temps or steep it at high temp? Can you steep it at high temperature but then wait until it cools down to drink it?

It’s the literally burning hot water going in your mouth. Coffee does the same thing. You have to let it cook a bit.

I can't do this. People I know claim I drink insanely hot drinks, but I think I have just gotten good at it over time. I don't burn my mouth or anything, but I can kind of sip of drinks while sucking in like 1:1 air:liquid, so I think that cools it down. Still, if I can stick my finger in a hot drink for more than a second, then it's too cool for me.

From the introduction, which starts by trying to give some wider taxonomic context:

>The genus Ilex comprises about 450 species growing in the tropical regions of South America and Asia. Ilex trees are located exclusively in South America...

The roughly 500-600 species in the genus Ilex are commonly called hollies and include the European Christmas holly, I. aquafolium. The genus overall has a worldwide distribution over both tropical and temperate regions, there is no particular concentration of diversity in the South American tropics. Strange to get basic facts so wrong in the opening sentences.

"Ilex trees are located exclusively in South America: in northern Argentina, southern Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay, where they cover an area of approximately 540,000 km2." That's the range of Ilex paraguariensis, the species from whose leaves yerba mate is made, not Ilex trees in general.

A related species is Yaupon Holly that grows all over the Gulf Coast region from Texas to Florida.

That one is Ilex vomitoria and is the only native caffeine producing plant that grows in north America. I make tea from the leaves after roasting them for a few minutes on low heat. You can find Yaupon Tea for sale in quite a few places now after articles about it appeared a few years back.

It is a hardy bush that can form thickets that are nearly impenetrable. It is used as a landscape plant here in Texas and most nurseries carry dwarf varieties that form hedges. I prefer the trees. They can reach 20' tall and are covered in berries during winter. On the coldest days here in N Texas the birds descend on my trees and feast until everything is gone.

I agree that it seems like they ignored a lot of related plants in their description.

Do you have a Yaupon brand you can recommend? I tried some in college and found the taste too bitter (like the leaves had been improperly-stored for way too long, kind of like how basil tastes when poorly-dried).

But I'm very into the idea of finding a good Yaupon, insofar as it reduces the carbon footprint of shipping things around the world & such.

I have several large yaupons growing on my place and I use the leaves from them.

There are quite a few outfits selling yaupon tea now and they are based all over the Gulf Coast. I haven't tried any commercial teas since reading about yaupons several years back. It looks like everyone and his dog who has ever tried to figure out what to do with all the yaupons on their property has chosen to market tea leaves. Some look like actual orchards but many advertise they sustainably or organically prepare the leaves. To me that means that as soon as they get an order they head outside to the thickest place and trim some branches and then go roast them and bag them up for shipping.

There are several outfits that distribute through grocery stores here in Texas. They sell blends of yaupon with other herbs. I'm not really an herbal tea person. I like a Earl Grey, a Chai, a green tea, etc but when you start throwing flowers in I brew some coffee. I understand that Earl Grey has bergamot but it isn't the main character get to do the tea leaves do the talking.

https://catspringtea.com/ NW of Houston in the heart of the yaupon thickets.

https://lostpinesyaupontea.com/ Hill Country yaupons

https://www.ritualyaupon.com/ Dallas company with canned teas.

https://www.texteacompany.com/ Piney Woods in East Texas. They look uncommitted to the task since they are surrounded by yaupon but claim to be out of stock. LOL

Those are all Texas yaupon tea companies. There are also others in the Carolinas, and other Gulf Coast states.

It does make a great tea which you can drink alone or with a sweetener like honey.

You’re right, it’s wrong, but not that wrong. Several sources indicate the majority of Ilex species occur in South America and Asia, so that was probably what they meant to say. Ilex paraguariensis is limited to Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina, and are clearly the “Ilex trees” referred to in the second sentence quoted. So, yeah, it’s imprecise and syntactically sloppy but not that far out, and not the main point of the paper, but as Jack Reacher says, “details matter”.

It's woefully wrong for something in the primary literature. Yes, I understood what information they were sloppily failing to be precise about. If I were refereeing this paper I'd insist on a correction.

Aye, they've been telt ;)

The thing I enjoy about Mate is how long lasting and stable its stimulating effect is. Coffee just gives me a quick spike after which I feel bad. Mate helps me to concentrate on boring stuff for hours.

Having looked at multiple articles before posting this one, your point is definitely a major advantage mentioned consistently. The technique of adding water repeatedly is how I’ve always done oolong tea and gotten a very similar experience.

I should mention I went down this rabbit hole due to the World Cup attention, but have been drinking mate for years and years.

I've been trying various Mates and they do nothing for me, in fact often I get sluggish and sleepy.

I have a similar effect after coffee, but if I drink like 4 espressos at once I get a slight bump of focus. When I get past 8 espresso my hands get a bit shaky and again I feel like I need to go to sleep.

I guess caffeine is not for me, however I still drink it, as it helps with migraines and ADHD.

I have been drinking too much mate for such a long time that I can only relate it to withdrawal symptoms at this point :)

That's because it's really just the caffeine causing a small adrenaline release. A lot of people don't realize that, I suspect. It's also why it can make you have to take a dump immediately. Caffeine doesn't amp you up, it just causes your body to release a tiny bit of adrenaline which is what amps you up.

I have no clue what Mate does.

Anyone else had terrible teeth pigmentation when consuming yerba mate tea? I had tried using it for some time, but had to go to the dentist because my teeth where turning brown. After realizing that introducing the tea was the only change I made before the issue started, I stopped consuming and the issue was indeed solved.

I'm from Argentina. We drink mate all the time. I never heard of (or experienced) teeth pigmentation issues caused by Yerba Mate. (yeah, I know it's a data point of one, but given the popularity and tradition of mate in the region, I think I'll hear about it if it's a common issue).

Assuming you are in the US. I notice that US products containing Yerba Mate (like tea bags or drinks) are heavily industrialized and have many other things besides Mate. I'll not discard the possibility of a problem caused by combining Yerba Mate with other chemicals.

Other than that is not different from coffee: drinking too much coffee without proper dental hygiene also affects teeth pigmentation.

I'm from Argentina and consume it on a regular basis. I haven't noticed any pigmentation, although I have the habit to rinse my mouth after finishing a cup of anything that's not water so that might be why.

You're almost certainly drinking the smoked leaves. Smokers teeth stain as well. I'd bet this is the culprit. Maybe try switching to unsmoked yerba mate?

Dentist feedback: yerba mate pigmentation could be clean with a typical prophylactic treatment.

For the non-dentists here, could you obese provide an example of a "typical prophylactic treatment"?

The professional teeth cleaning most folks with insurance can get 2-4 times annually with a dental hygenist - eg. Scaling and polishing.

Hey, we're just big-boned.

It means getting your teeth cleaned professionally

Definitely. Here in Brazil we brush our teeth 3 times every day (most people that I know). And I do this professional cleaning once in a year/2-years for other reasons as well. No issues. I drink since I was 7 y.o. (some decades counting from there).

I just wish Club Mate was popular in the states. I love it and it's super popular in Berlin but I have yet to introduce it to a single person in the USA who like it (T_T)

Total Wine and More usually carrys it although it is currently sold out: https://www.totalwine.com/accessories-more/mixers-water-soda...

2600 Magazine on the East coast and Noisebridge on the West Coast are the only 2 registered distributors of Club Mate in the USA. If you are in SF, you can get one at Noisebridge for $5.

Are there any attempts to produce it locally? $5/bottle is crazy, here you can get a crate of 20 bottles for 15€ [0]

A few years ago there was a real boom with many small soda companies/startups popping up to challenge the Club Mate hegemony with their own Mate brews. Many disappeared again but some did stick around, so there is still a good variety in Mate vendors.

There are still many rather small operations too [1][2], so entering the soda market doesn't seem to be that hard compared to other things. And having a product that's mildly addictive is good for customer retention.

[0] https://www.flinkeflasche.de/categories/52 [1] https://kolle-mate.de/ [2] https://www.flora-power.de/

And 2600 is often sold out.

Fun fact: Yerba Mate is widely used in Syria and Lebanon due to trade between Latin America and the Levant. I grew up drinking Yerba Mate Tea almost every day.

Yes. It used to be that a great place to leverage this fun fact to your advantage if you were looking to score yerba in the U.S. was a middle-eastern grocery. Also fun to have a bag of Cruz de Malta with an ingredients label in Arabic slapped on it. Nowadays, of course, it's easier just to go online.

Mate Softdrinks are ubiquitous in Germany, it’s fueling the IT industry and students.

After reading the whole thing, here's my summary:

Yerba mate reduces cholesterol, encourages fat loss, improves heart health, and has similar stimulative effects to coffee. However, the method of its preparation is important, as some varieties can increase the risk of certain types of cancer.

Drink it cold in moderate daily amounts for the best effect.

70C / 158F would be enough. According to the paper, it is not different than coffee or tea when it comes to the risk effects drinking it hot

How to spot an Uruguayan: they're nursing a thermos flask under both arms.

How to tell its an Uruguayan when they speak: "Its a bombeeja.."

Is there any Yerba Mate you can buy that doesn’t taste horrible though? I consider myself pretty adventurous, but I bought some the other day and was shocked at how such a gross beverage has become popular so quickly.

Depends upon which flavor you find objectionable. If you don't like the taste of very strong green tea, then yerba mate may not be for you. However there are several other factors that can lead to yerba mate tasting bad. First is the quality and freshness of the yerba. It should be 6 months or less since it was packaged (check date stamps). It should be made with 80-85* C water (too hot, and it will be super bitter). Whether the yerba has stems (palitos) or not (despalada) can make a difference, stems contribute a bitter taste to the drink. As has been mentioned, knowing how to load the mate and get it primed can also have an effect (ideally, you're going for a slightly nutty, green tea flavor, with a tiny bit of sweetness). It also needs to be a high quality brand, which can be very difficult to obtain outside of S.America. Some high quality brands are:

- Taragui (Argentina) - La Merced (Argentina) - Union (Argentina) - Canarias (Uruguay) - Sara (Uruguay)

For preparing mate cold (called tereré) - La Rubia (Paraguay) - Pajarito (Paraguay)

... and though highly controversial, you can add sweetner to it to make it less bitter, at least until you palette adapts. But be prepared to be chided with "si no es amargo, no es mate" if mate connoisseurs catch you doing this.

Let me add Colón Tradicional (Paraguay) for tereré.

Yerba Mate is bitter, but there are different values and shades of bitterness. Taste between brands might vary quickly and in one brand, there might be various blends and varieties. For example, parent mentioned La Rubia. It's a fantastic product but it tastes too acidic for me. Colón (and Pajarito) is mellower in that regard.

For example, Colón offers a premium variety with superb taste. I don't use it because I drink Tereré and after two or three sips the flavor completely washes away. The regular variety is stronger and lasts longer.

When I have to explain yerba mate's taste to people, the most useful comparison is that the taste is somewhat similar to a more intense green tea.

1. add some raw sugar ( 1 teaspoon per gourd ) 2. try the smoked 'Barbacua' flavor https://www.amazon.com/MERCED-Barbacua-Cosecha-Limitada-500g... it rocked my world.

If you love La Merced Barbacua, try to get a hold of some of the Barbacua from Sol y Lluvia, it's by far the best smoked yerba I've ever had!

I will add Rosamonte premium, best yerba ever (at least for me).

Might not be the best ever but I can attest it's a fantastic product which I would recommend in a heartbeat.

I was told to spit out the first few sips.

Traditionally it's the job of the one preparing/serving the mate (the cebador) to take the first sips until it tastes right. So it's entirely up to you if you want to spit it out. Just make sure that by the time you offer it to someone else, that it's tasting good.

I still can't get past the sharing aspect, especially in the time of covid.

Have there been any studies on disease transmission in cultures that partake of drinks in this communal manner?

> Is there any Yerba Mate you can buy that doesn’t taste horrible though?

The short answer is "no". That's what it tastes like. It's an acquired taste, like coffee or beer, and it takes more than one try to get hooked.

Source: am hooked.

I don't think it tastes terrible at all, but I'm used to drinking matcha/sencha, kava and kratom.

All are very earthy tasting, but not bad once you're used to this.

I've never gotten much out of yerba versus tea, to be honest. It has so many magical benefits abscribed to it, but I think it boils down (no pun) to a lightly caffeinated drink and not much more.

Try adding some sugar. Traditionalists will pretend to be repulsed by it, but even in Argentina (where I come from), plenty of people add it to their mate.

heh, i went to Argentina for work once.. (it was just pre covid) and I was shocked and amazed at their consumption of this stuff... not only do they pour copious amounts of artificial sweeteners into the cups but they share the cup and straw around the office!

I shudder to think of them doing that during covid...

Sharing the straw is definitely the way to go here in Argentina. Note: I'm Argentinian but I don't like mate and sharing a straw feels gross to me. Other Argentinians tell me there's something wrong with my genes.

Mate is a social thing here. You're supposed to share and there's a ritual about how the round goes, who prepares the mate for the rest of the group, and how you signal that you don't want to drink anymore.

Also curious: Uruguayans share our love of mate but for them it's an individual thing, they don't share their mates. So we say that Uruguayans are born with a mate thermos under their armpits, one for each of them!

I'm not following the joke, can you elaborate?

Sure thing!

Mate is traditionally drank with a metal straw, a small "cup" (the gourd) and a bottle with hot water, which we Argies always call a "termo" (after the thermos brand, much like many people call tissue paper "kleenex"). This bottle is used to constantly refill the gourd, since each "serving" of water only lasts a couple of sips. Note the yerba mate inside the gourd lasts many rounds of sipping until it also needs to be changed.

So to drink mate in Argentina, you need yerba, one straw, one gourd, and one termo per group of people, because we share the mate. But Uruguayans don't share their mate, even though they are heavy mate drinkers, so each carries their own mate and termo under their arm, everywhere. Hence, "they are born with a termo under their arm".

It's not really a joke, more like a friendly description of Uruguayans and mate.

When I was there last month, a lot of people said that not sharing mate anymore was one of the major cultural things that happened in Argentina because of Covid. Of course the country has other problems that it deals with but yeah looking around it seemed that almost all people carry their own. I’m not Argentinian though so I might not have reliable info just very recent

I'm Argentinian and we keep sharing mate as if nothing have happened. Off course there may be some people that started to drink their own mate but definitely not the majority, not even close.

Sharing mate is a ritual too culturally rooted to Argentinian society. It's hard to explain but it goes beyond drinking a hot beverage.

Ok, that's nice to hear. I must have believed anecdata too much

In some parts of Europe (especially Germany/Austria in my experience) you can find soda drinks such as "Club Mate". I like the taste as it's sweteened but not excessively.

I know that, but don't like it that much. What's acceptable though is Club Mate Granat. That is blended with some pomegrenade juice, and looks red. Recommended.

Also still available for €0,89 per 0,5L where I live :-)

I think Club Mate Granat is an atrocity that tastes nothing like Mate.

But when it comes to mixing flavors, I think Mio Mio Ginger Mate is pretty great.

Or Lux Mate with mint - but I’m afraid they closed down.

Mio Mio Ginger Mate was acceptable, but not good. But they also had something Guarana Pomegrenade, which was better. While were at Ginger, ever tried Bundaberg? :-) Lux Mate Mint sounds interesting, but never had it, so far.

> Club-Mate has developed a following in computer hacker culture and tech start-ups, especially in Europe.

―https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club-Mate#Hacker_culture

I also like Tschunk, a caipirinha-like cocktail made with Club-Mate, rum, brown sugar, and limes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club-Mate#Tschunk

Yeah you made me remember tschunk, I liked it!!

Beside hacker culture it's also quite common in the clubbing scene. I also like to mix it with vodka, it's simple and works pretty well.

I had it once and I wasn't really a fan either, but then again I also don't really like tea in general.

Like with a lot of things, some foods and drinks are "indoctrinated" to us as children. I imagine mate falls into this category.

Could also argue coffee and alcohol taste horrible at first, but you learn to suss out the more complex flavours with habitual use. Of course you also learn to enjoy them because of the effects they have on your body.

I remember trying the Guayaki brand canned version that was lightly sweetened and really liking that, but they don’t seem to offer it any longer. Odd. Definitely try various levels and types of sweetener, as others have suggested, and I’ll add: try it iced.

I got the loose leaf bagged stuff from that brand. How does it compare to other brands?

used to love Guayaki until i realized it has 20-30 grams of sugar. i've found brands that have lower amount, can't remember the name off the top of my head though

I also dislike when mate is too bitter, but that doesn't generally depend on the yerba itself, but rather on how you prepare mate.

Try: - removing dust from yerba, by covering the top of your cup with a slightly humid cloth and shaking it for a few seconds (the dust should stick to it, but the leaves should not) - heating using water a tiny bit under 70 degrees hot (above this temperature the first mates will be too bitter, and the last too washy) - pouring water always in the same place, so that the leaves slowly get wet from bottom to top

If you compare to coffee without sugar, It's definitely much easier.

Like others are saying, it's an acquired taste.

I have the same problem living now in southeast Brazil, because many people in south acquire this taste since childhood, like myself. When I offer to people in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro they make a sad face as well. :)

But my wife is liking now (she's natural from Rio). It took like a decade for her to really enjoy.

Try Meta Mate 23 [0] if you can find it where you are. It's vacuum packed while fresh, so instead of the usual bitter road dust affair you get a vibrant-green mate with a mellow, grassy taste. Haven't bought anything else after I discovered this one.

[0] https://metamate.cc/product/23/

Try the Union Suave, but the secret is how you prepare the mate. Try to find a video from an Argentinian guy doing it.

This is it. I hated it too the first time I tried it. Then I watched a couple of videos and the experience was totally different.

It indeed tastes horribly to me too, but I just can't help drinking it around five times a day.

It's probably 80% preparation and 20% acquired taste. Few people enjoy coffee when they first try it. Mate is also very easy to overextract and become extremely bitter if not prepared with caution and the correct technique.

It is hard to find yerba mate that doesn't taste stale outside of south of South America.

Friends that drink it ask for people traveling to SA to bring them some. They are also very particular about how to choose it.

Like any tea, yerba has a long shelf life if stored properly. It's true it used to take some sleuthing and a bit of luck to track down a bag of yerba at a nearby supermarket in the U.S., and even if you managed to find some you were unlikely to have more than a couple brands to choose from (in a supermarket in Buenos Aires, there are typically dozens). But these days you can order just about any brand of yerba you like on Amazon for the same price or less than buying it in the store, and it will be FedExed to your door in only a few days. As I write this, I'm drinking a mate made with a very fresh bag of La Tranquera. Bárbaro!

There's some brands in south Brazil that sell in a vacuum bag, like coffee, that I store for an entire year.

This is how I'm "importing" the good stuff to Rio from south Brazil or Buenos Aires, Argentina sometimes. It's easier to find good brands in Auckland, NZ in specialized stores than here.

In addition to the other suggestions, consider alternating the source of the mate. Argentinian and Brazilian ones are quite distinct in flavor. Lowering water temperature may lighten it a bit as well.

If I find particularly bad tasting one, I'd add some Agava syrup and lime juice. Tastes great then.

I've wanted to visit Argentina since reading https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day.... (2006) which mentions mate as a national obsession and love affair

The whole post is great so I don't want to copy too much here - click the link! read it all - but on mate's possible effects:

Mate aficionados will tell you that mate contains a special compound, mateine, that serves as a tonic and mild stimulant, promoting alertness without making it hard to sleep, reducing fatigue and appetite, helping the digestion and serving as a mild diuretic. Scientists will tell you that mateine bears a suspicious resemblance to a chemical called caffeine. Mate aficionados will then grow indignant, explaining that mateine is really a stereoisomer (mirror image) of caffeine, with different effects, which will in turn irritate the scientists, who will snap that caffeine doesn't have a chiral center, so it can't have a distinguishable mirror image, and why don't the mate aficionados just put a sock in it.

Since I am writing this from Argentina, I will just diplomatically state that mate includes a constellation of chemicals, whose presence may affect the way the body absorbs caff... er, mateine, giving it a unique physiological effect.

If anyone is like me and finds yerba mate too strong or too bitter, I highly recommend guayusa. It's from the same genus so it's a caffeinated holly plant (ilex guayusa) too, but it has a more pleasant, slightly sweet taste. Anecdotally, I find guayusa gives an energy boost on par with coffee, but sustained for much longer, and with gentler slopes (I.e no crash)

The first 2/3 ones are bitter by nature. Then starting the 3rd or the 4th one (you just add water on top, don't change the leaves) it gets better.

This may sound weird yet, in my country,Yerba mate has different connotations during the sectarian strife, it was a indication of particular sects. 'Yerba mate becomes a major import commodity in Syria'

On 8 December 2019, the Central Bank of Syria included mate in the list of basic commodities supported for import. This underlines its significance in Syria as Syria is considered the world’s largest mate importer.

Syria received 34.5 thousand tons of mate from Argentina in 2018, according to the National Institution of Argentine Yerba Mate (INYM), from which Syria imports 99.7 percent of its mate annually.

Those figures were “historical” in Argentina, according to the Buenos Aires Times, Argentina’s only English-language newspaper. https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/2020/01/interesting-...

There is some weird thing about it in my country, pre-war,'Yerba mate becomes a major import commodity

Syria received 34.5 thousand tons of mate from Argentina in 2018, according to the National Institution of Argentine Yerba Mate (INYM), from which Syria imports 99.7 percent of its mate annually.

Those figures were “historical” in Argentina, according to the Buenos Aires Times, Argentina’s only English-language newspaper.

They mentioned Syria in the proposal to add a Mate emoji

Other than the chemical analysis, I like to think that Mate has another useful property. That is: Mate is a great chance to get together and share a moment with family and friends. Note that drinking Mate happens almost every morning and every afternoon (in many places like work, school and home), and since it takes 4 or 5 rounds to "quench" your desire of Mate, before you notice it, half an hour has passed. In the meantime you got ready to work in the morning, or talked with your kids or wife about the day in the afternoon, etc.

First, I love the saying that Mate is the "drink of hospitality in South America."

Second, there have been some very interesting studies done with Yerba Mate -capsules- where if taking 6 500mg capsules there is an association with weight loss and especially appetite suppression. It functions much the same way (though not as acute) as GLP-1 like Ozempic/semaglutide which is all the rage right now.

I'm a Yerba Mate drinking, HN regular and started live streaming my open source work recently. Here's a clip of a calabaza and bamboo bombilla slurp in the wild https://clips.twitch.tv/EnjoyableEvilSnakeTBTacoLeft-vQBnhCz...

For anyone who drinks yerba mate, the throat cancer incidence [0] is likely due to consumption of benzenes produced when smoking the leaves. You can buy unsmoked leaves in bulk.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19695149/

Hah wait until you find about chimarrão

It's literally mentioned in the document a bunch of times.

May refer to the demeaning origins of the name. Wikipedia:

   In Brazil, traditionally prepared mate is known as chimarrão, although the word mate and the expression "mate amargo" (bitter mate) are also used in Argentina and Uruguay. The Spanish cimarrón means "rough", "brute", or "barbarian", but is most widely understood to mean "feral", and is used in almost all of Latin America for domesticated animals that have become wild. The word was then used by the people who colonized the region of the Río de la Plata to describe the natives' rough and sour drink, drunk with no other ingredient to sweeten the taste.

I spent a few weeks in Uruguay this year, and those folks are big on mate.

I brought a cup and bombilla back as souvenirs, but they are currently just 'decorative' right now; I haven't used them to drink mate yet.

Club Mate Anyone?

Berlin right?

does mate actually have cancer causing properties or does the cancer come about from long term sipping a hot drink through a straw?

My reading of that literature is that there isn't a lot of evidence one way or another. However, last time I looked at it it seemed like the most likely cause was from how some mates are smoked, and that unsmoked mate didn't have the same cancer risk. Take this with a grain of salt though, because although I followed that pretty closely for awhile, I stopped at some point and it's been a couple of years since.

Any source of what brands/varieties are smoked vs not?

I’m able to get quite a few types imported from South America, but from my attempts at translating the packaging and trying to Google things, I can’t tell what’s smoked or unsmoked.

Argentinian mate is traditionally smoked so most brands you will find are of the smoked variety. The brazilian version, chimarrão, is traditionally not smoked, so you might start by looking for that.

ha! NYTimes just ran this article on it: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/sports/soccer/argentina-y...

Read it while drinking my Tereré. Nice :)

Yerba mate <3

I bought a couple of nice bags of what I believed to just be normal herbal tea. Having never heard of this "yerba mate" thing I thought it was just the brand. Once I looked closer at the bags it had a whole load of instructions like "use the pipe" and "don't stir as it blocks the pipe" which was just bizarre. Since when is a pipe or straw needed for tea?

I tried to make a normal herbal tea with it but it tasted disgusting and nothing like the cherry flavour it claimed to be. Total waste of money and seems like an incredibly hipster and convoluted drink to need all that crap including a straw.

I even googled it again just now and one of the top results is a reddit post saying try it with soda? Ridiculous.

I just stick to herbal tea bags now.

What an incredibly judgemental answer from a person that chides other HN users for their choice of programming frameworks.

> Total waste of money and seems like an incredibly hipster and convoluted drink to need all that crap including a straw.

It is the opposite of hipster, the drink has been in use for 400 years in South America, and is appreciated by millions.

> I just stick to herbal tea bags now.

Stick to skim milk, it fits you better, child.

> the drink has been in use for 400 years in South America

Try around 3000 years.

What on earth are you on about? Seems to fit the very definition of "triggered".

Are you really so upset I don't like your drink, you'll bring up conversations about programming frameworks and resort to calling people children?

Wow, personal attacks, I hope a mod takes a look.

Although I am against the personal attacks and triggering, I think you didn't taste the same drink as him, it would be like boiling tea bags and then drink it cold. If you want to judge the drink, try at least preparing it properly.

Like many new things, Mate can certainly be an acquired taste!

The instructions you’re seeing are for the traditional bombilla (cup) and pipe/straw.

Funny that you refer to it as an “…incredibly hipster and convoluted drink”. It is actually a traditional drink enjoyed for hundreds of years and consumed daily by tens of millions.

You can brew it like any other loose leaf tea, but if you have problems with fiber particles you can just use a normal coffee filter after brewing and before transferring it to a coffee cup.

I brew it just like any regular herbal tea and I'm pretty happy with it. The whole ritual with the pipe and gourd is a bonus, but never required.

If you dislike the more bitter flavors about it, try steeping it at a lower temperature (like 70-80C) and only for a short duration (2 or 3 minutes). That should make it a lot more bearable to you. You can also get packages that have less or no stems or powder, which both add to the bitterness.

You're not supposed to brew it like a herbal tea, the proportion of mate to water will be all wrong :) The hotness of the water will also be wrong, mate is brewed with mildly hot water, way less hot than tea.

That said, if you enjoy it, keep doing that way... there's no mate police!

Tsk. The green stuff. Unroasted. Sieve in glass. Boiling water. 10 minutes. 390ml Äqctiön! :-)

You can easily find the answers to these questions by spending an hour or so reading about them. Instead, you choose to make this public display of emotions on being confronted with something slightly unfamiliar, helpful to nobody at all. It’s unbecoming that someone who calls themselves a programmer would be shocked that specialty tools exist.

Feel free to explain to the other person who said they also prepare it regularly the same as I did

Someone already did. Even that person suggested you try it differently, but it sounds like you're invested in it being a convoluted hipster drink instead of being curious or having a discussion about it.

How can that be the case when I said I don't like it and don't drink it?

I hate to say this, but "you're doing it wrong". Mate is not prepared like herbal tea, which is why you don't like it: you're preparing it wrong.

It's also a low brow infusion, people from lower social strata drink it as much as well offs, so it has nothing to do with being hipster.

Again, go watch an Argentinian YouTube video to learn how it's supposed to be prepared. It's OK if you don't like it -- don't tell other Argies, but I don't like it either -- but at least first learn how you should brew it!

In fact it could be. It's one way of preparing the tea known as "mate cocido" or just "cocido". You brew it as you would brew regular tea leaves.

People here prefer "cocido quemado", which is yerba mate roasted with sugar on charcoal for brewing tea, but brewing cocido as an herbal tea is quite well known and accepted. And I admit the taste is somewhat different not only to other teas, but to other mate brews and beverages, as well.

If you would like to try yerba mate, I'd suggest you do tereré. Nothing like ice-cold tereré in a scorching summer day.

I'm an Argie. I've tried mate in all its forms. I liked mate cocido as a young kid, but not anymore. I've of course tried tereré as well. My wife is a heavy mate drinker, and she takes it with a spoonful of sugar -- tried it, didn't like it either.

Nothing could make me like it now, trust me.

Just pointing out the parent commenter thought he was buying a kind of herbal tea, which mate is not, and he prepared it wrong (though I suppose mate en saquitos is the closest to a tea). No surprise he didn't enjoy it!

Calling mate "a hipster thing" hints at ignorance, don't you think? It's like calling green tea a hipster thing just because you aren't used to it. Millions of Chinese people would disagree!

I don't know where you live, but it would be great if you can find someone to help you preparing your first proper Mate. It takes some tries before you get the taste you want.

I think I'd rather just stick with tea bags really

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