Mate is the national drink here in Uruguay, has been for a century or two :) (and for 500 years in Paraguay).
And it was a fad in California some years past. ("According to a major retailer of mate in San Luis Obispo, California, by 2004, mate had grown to about 5% of the overall natural tea market in North America")
But I'm surprised at the speed it's propagating in Europe.
Many say it's much better suited for prolonged concentration than coffee, almost every single university student here drinks it, so I'm not surprised that German hackers are taking advantage of its benefits too.
Uruguayans normally drink it alone but Gauchos (southern state of Brazil) drink it in a circle of friends.
I actually would like to drink one "Chimarrão"[1] just for me - so I don't have to get up all the time to pass it to the next assigned person[2] - but its considered rude.
It's a wonderful drink. I've been hooked up on it for many years now and it's the perfect hacking companion.
I still get my morning resurrection from coffee, but abandon it afterwards. Mate doesn't give me the jitters, doesn't burn my stomach and it's very low-maintenance compared to tea, which needs to be left just this much time before it becomes a bitter, undrinkable blargh.
Try a small amount of honey, I drink a fair amount of tea (I'm English, it has to be done) and I'm one of those freaks who like it pretty stewed but if I go too far I find a drop of honey takes a lot of the edge of the bitterness.
I'm a tea junkie myself, although unlike the pretentious tea junkies I don't pretend to be insulted at the sight of a teabag. I'm ok with the normal bitterness of the tea; what troubles me is that it does occasionally happen that I drop the bag or the leaves in, start debugging, and twenty minutes of how the fuck does this even compile later it suddenly dawns on me that FUCK I'VE BEEN STEEPING THIS FOR 20 MINUTES THIS IS GOING TO MELT MY TONGUE.
Mate doesn't suffer from this inconvenience. I just pour the water and forget about it, refilling it when there's no more of that sweet liquid and tossing in more leaves when that liquid is no longer sweet.
Edit: that being said, your tip about adding a drop of honey is spot on! I also like my tea a bit overstewed and adding a splash of honey does take the edge of a little if I push it too far.
I started drinking Mate after my father brought some yerba (and two Materas) from Chile. I prefer it to coffee mainly because the latter kills my stomach and intestine while I tolerate Mate quite well.
One recommended way of serving it is to grab a Grapefruit and "knead" it (as if it was dough) so that the juices are freed inside. Then make a big hole (like a triangle) with a knife, getting as deep as possible; add some yerba mate in the hole, and then place the bombilla (straw) in there. You can add some honey for a sweeter flavour.
I bought some Mate at a local store. I really liked the taste. Grassy, but in an elegant way. And it kicks less than a strong coffee, but it did seem to last longer.
What I heard was that throat cancer was more prevalent in parts of Southern America where people drink Mate. The traditional way of brewing it, in a gourd with boiling water is fine. The problem comes from actually drinking it while still next to boiling temperature. Interesting.
Is there much difference between the effects of mate and standard black tea? Because there's almost the same amount of caffeine in a strongly brewed black tea as there is in coffee.
Southern Brazilian here. I drink "tererê" (mate prepared as iced tea) quite often and find the effects to be quite similar, although the taste is very different.
I got hooked on Yerba Mate at a former employer - they kept it stocked in their meticulously curated kitchenettes. Occasionally I'll see it at a bodega and pick it up again, but I haven't found a reliable (and close-to-the-office) spot to pick them up quite a while. Stuff is fantastic.
The same in the south of Brazil. Mate is more than a simple tea for us, people drink it everyday and everywhere, in the "original form" (hot, in a gourd shell, share between a group of people).
Club Mate is the only caffeinated soda that isn't overly sweet, doesn't give me a bad stomach and doesn't make me jittery. The first time I had it was at a CCC event in 2002, and back then, it was really obscure. In the last 5 or so years though, it has became a staple in Berlin, and you can get it at practically every corner shop.
A lot of comments here seem to be equating various tea forms of mate with Club Mate. Club Mate is a soda as in it belongs on the self somewhere next to Coke and Red Bull. It's got more caffeine than Coke but only about 1/2 the sugar. I really liked it.
Tea made from mate is the same only in the sense that orange juice is similar to orange soda. As in they are arguably not really similar.
That's not to say anything negative about mate based teas. I drink those too. Just that, if you go get Yerba Mate or any other mate tea you're not drinking anything remotely similar to Club Mate.
I equated it mostly because I was commenting about its effects - if Club Mate has a similar effect than regular Mate "tea", it's a better alternative to coffee, and at least one comment here makes it seem so (cessor: "With mate the caffeine rush is much better"):
"The golden soda has become essential nourishment for anyone in Berlin involved in hacktivism, club culture, dance music, tech—just about everyone in the city under the age of 40."
This article[1] from pg has been linked like a million times, but it's as relevant as it was the first time.
> Trend articles like this are almost always the work of PR firms. Once you know how to read them, it's straightforward to figure out who the client is.
EDIT: oftenwrong linked the article before me; I hadn't read their message when I send mine. I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw it.
The first half of the sentence definitely feels that way... the second half just feels almost offensively exclusionary. Unless Berlin is a really weird, dysfunctional place, like London's Old Street roundabout on a city-wide scale - which is a horrifying thought.
Londoners usually think Berlin is kinda weird. Things are very different. The London ideal is suit, tie and lots of money. In Berlin it's actually the opposite. It's a bit hipsterish, but also really cool.
> The London ideal is suit, tie and lots of money.
The City ideal is suit, tie and lots of money. Outside of the City and Docklands, you'll find plenty of Londoners with nothing but scorn for that ideal.
Berlin isn't really any more "hipster" than other cities, it's just...more relaxed. As you say, not so concerned with money and status. Not as frantic and crowded as New York or London. Lots and lots of trees.
It's basically achieved the perfect urban population density thanks to blocks of six-story buildings. Very lively, but rarely uncomfortably crowded.
The original, South American variant, is a tea-like infusion, which is supposed to be bitter and sugar-free :) (though there's a "mate dulce" sweet variant)
Thanks for the reply, but I would be more interested in a soda with artificial sweetener. It would be great if they made a Club Mate variant without sugar
It's all lovely and shit, but once you hook up on Club Mate and leave Germany you feel quite damned. I feel the same about Savanna Dry (South African Sider) but in recent years they expanded the market quite dramatically hope germans will do the same :)
It gets way harder if you travel a lot. To get some delivered within EU should be fairly easy there are plenty of individuals doing cargo delivery business with insanely low prices but if you in asia or africa you out of options...
If you speak german there's a great Chaosradio episode [0] about the different "Hackerbrausen" / "Hackersoda" where they are talking about the history of Club Mate and other drinks in that genre.
"Brause" can also be translated to "lemonade" or "soda" in german. The article claims "shower", which is another meaning, but in the context the wrong one.
I'd like to stress what the article says about the difference to other caffeinated drinks. I drink coffee a lot, since it is more easily available, but I prefer club mate if I can get some. For work it is much better than coffee. I tend to get very shaky and restless from coffee, my leg will start bouncing after a lot of programming (i.e. concentrated work periods in front of a computer). With mate the caffeine rush is much better, I stay more focussed and can concentrate more easily. I am not as restless. Yet it is possible to overdose. One bottle can last for hours, I bet the guy in the article could look through time after 10 bottles a day. If you can get it, try it!
I've seen it in almost every shop in Hamburg. In other regions it's more a few group of people that drink it. In my university it's quite popular for instance.
Visit any Hackerspace anywhere in the world, and you'll likely find a crate of two of Club Mate there. It's a de-facto official drink of Hackerspaces worldwide. At ours (Kraków, Poland) we go through a crate or two a week.
Learned about when visiting LeineLab in Hanover, stuck with me forever since. At Hackerspace Kraków we go through a crate or two in a week, and this drink kept us through many sessions of night hacking.
Is there any cheap place to buy this in the U.S.? I've wanted to try it for awhile, but I can't justify spending three dollars a bottle at the 2600 store when I can get regular energy drinks for half the price.
I recently switched to matcha from coffee buying into similar claims of 'long lasting jitter free zen concentration'. Have been happy so far. Has anyone tried both matcha and matte? How do they compare?
I used to drink a lot of club mate. I loved it, but I had to stop drinking it because there is much more sugar in it than you would think and I developed dental health issues.
If it's so good why shouldn't someone Kickstarter a company to make something similar in the US? Seems like a real opportunity. Just advertise on HN and profit.
That stuff will scrap your taste buds out and keep you awake for days. For some reason I like it... not sure why. Its an acquired taste and I can't see it going gangbuster here.
I think it is similar in that are many cola options, but only one Coca-Cola. Although there are many mate alternatives as well, the mystique surrounding Club Mate and its recipe is what makes it stand out from the rest.
Man I have given this serious thought before. Anyone else? Get in touch if you want to kick some ideas around. I don't know the first thing about distribution, but I'm interested in brewing craft sodas, and I could make a kickass website for it.
Maybe. But it is also interesting. I upvoted this because the "every Hackerspace in the world drinks Club Mate" phenomenon is real, and I'm happy I could learn more about the stuff I drink all the time ;).
If I look at the company I work for, it's quite diverse.
Munich: human-made espresso and beer. I haven't seen much tea.
Düsseldorf: machine-made espresso, Club-Mate and a variety of tea.
Don't know what they drink in Frankfurt.
The tea drinkers in Düsseldorf are not yet very sophisticated. What most of them failed to understand: absolutely excellent Japanese green tea is available - due to s strong Japanese community.
Many of these trends are actually from Hamburg. The CCC originated in Hamburg. New drinks like the Flora Power mate and 1337MATE are from Hamburg.
And it was a fad in California some years past. ("According to a major retailer of mate in San Luis Obispo, California, by 2004, mate had grown to about 5% of the overall natural tea market in North America")
But I'm surprised at the speed it's propagating in Europe.
Many say it's much better suited for prolonged concentration than coffee, almost every single university student here drinks it, so I'm not surprised that German hackers are taking advantage of its benefits too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_(beverage)
There's a Congress on Yerba Mate and its health effects and benefits going on right now (from the 8th to today)
http://www.infoyerbamate.com/index.php?option=com_content&vi...