I Switched My Morning Coffee with Yerba Mate. Here's What Happened.

Since 2017, I’ve been daily drinking coffee. With a limited budget, I’ve experimented with all sorts of roasts, countries, and a variety of brewing methods: coffee pot, moka pot, french press, aeropress, nespresso pods, turkish coffee made in an Ibrik, cold brew, V60, and instant.

Although my tea love came first, coffee quickly took over as the drink of the workday, early mornings, and so on.

Until recently.

Some years ago, I introduced my friend Max to Maté, because he wasn’t a fan of coffee. I had learned about Maté in my tea house days, but it had never become a daily drink for me. For him though, he’s obsessed.

While recently visiting Colorado, Max invited me over to his house for a “cupping” similar to coffee, but instead we were trying several kinds of Maté.


A collection of five different Yerba Maté bags, with our tasting notes on a sheet on the counter.

We spent about 4 hours in observation, smelling, drinking, and even doing a blind taste test. It was a delightful time of geeking out and catching up with Max.

Finding my favorite to be the blue bag (we got notes of sweet bread and spices), I decided to go all in and order a bag myself, and bring it to Canada. I decided to begin my experiment of nixing coffee and fully experiencing what Maté and its alternative energy is all about.

Let’s go there.

First, what is Yerba Maté?

Well, first of all, its tea. But, to be specific, there’s no capital ‘Tea’ in Maté. I wrote here about this distinction in The Truth About Tea.

Mate is a plant from South America, with the scientific name “Ilex Paraguayis”. It naturally has caffeine in it, which is actually quite rare for a plant. Not that many plants naturally contain caffeine. A short list, to my knowledge is Coffee, Tea, Cacao, Kola Nuts… to my knowledge, there’s not that many others.

Maté has been around for a long time, first used by the Guarani people group in South America a thousand years or more ago, but it’s just been around 10-15 years that it’s been discovered in popular western culture.



The Yerba Maté plant, Ilex Paraguayis
In countries like Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and a few others, this is a daily, if not all-day drink. When I was in Lebanon I was shocked to find Maté everywhere! It’s a huge fad for Syrians and Lebanese now too.




Here’s a Maté gourd and straw I found at a market near the border of Syria.



This a photo my wife took of a Syrian woman we went sledding with, using the same type of cup and an epic kettle stove.


Traditionally, Maté is shared in group settings, and is refilled with water and passed to the next person. The first steeping is INTENSE so the first one always gets the extra punch haha. It is a community drink. Thanks to my years in Latin America I’ve had the privilege of sharing a lot of mate with South Americans. It’s a love language for them.

How do you make it?

Maté, at least the good stuff, always comes loose leaf, in big bags. They’re big bags because people in Maté drinking countries drink SO MUCH of this stuff!

A grocery store shelf in Argentina

Maté is traditionally drank out of a carved-out and roasted squash/gourd, or even in some cases a hollowed-out animal horn or hoof. That’s next level.

This loose leaf tea is then poured carefully into a cup to make a “mountain” (so that not all the leaves are exposed to the water at the beginning), and then a metal straw with a filter, a Bombilla (bom-bee-yah), is placed inside.

Steepings can go for hours, with the tea getting weaker over time.

Typically, South Americans with carry around a huge thermos of water that is filling and filling as the day goes.

I have been experimenting also with Aeropress for Yerba Mate. It's worth checking out as a modern, cleaner alternative to experiment with. 

My Experience with Mate

I told my friend Jordan about the tasting, and he decided to try the alternative-to-coffee challenge with me. We’ve been sending photos and thoughts and geeking out about the new experience.

There are proper, traditional ways to drink it, but I paved my own way for my own taste. I use a tall glass with two slices of lemon.



The Energy difference
Holy cow! Not only is there plenty of caffeine to keep me awake/focused, it feels like a cleaner energy. I haven’t experienced any jitters, crashes, or "yikes that was too much” feeling. Certainly that can happen quickly with me and coffee. With Maté, the energy curve would go steadily up, steadily down, for a much longer amount of time.

Hydration
Having coffee with work certainly didn’t mean I was getting much hydration, in fact it was typically the opposite. The first few steepings are dark green and strong, but I’ll keep refilling with water all day, even as the flavor subsides. By the afternoon it tastes more like lemon tea with a hint of Maté, but I’ll be through more than 2L of water by that point. It is nice to have a work drink that energizes and keeps me hydrated and going to the bathroom often.

Temperature
It’s nice to have something warm all day to drink. Coffee has a timer for how long it stays hot, but for this, you can keep hot water boiling all day and a steady flow of drinking more, without any negative feelings or side effects.

So there you go, folks! Maté has been a phenomenal aid to my work and focus recently and I don’t see that train stopping anytime soon. Let me know if you have questions or recommendations on giving it a try!

My recommendation for your first bag of Mate: Taragui 
My recommendation for your first bombilla/straw: This $6 amazon option

Bonus: Check out Aeropress Mate