[herbal_activist]

Anybody else out there LOVE yerba mate? Personally I think its an excellent alternative to coffee.. much less acidic and still a good amount of caffeine. It also has a whole bunch of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, amino acids and natural caffeine as opposed to the synthetic variety found in most energy drinks. I think a nice cup of mate (cold or hot) in the early afternoon with a bowl of herb pref. a sativa is a perfect way to give yourself a boost to get you through the rest of the day. Highly recommend it. Plus you can get it for real cheap from some sites on the internet.

[Haps]

I like matte in tea, it is a clean stimulant, and decreases appetitie. Morning thunder tea by celestial seasonings is a mix I used to buy, strong tea.
H

[FrankRizzo]

I drink that stuff once and a while. I have a friend that drinks it all the time. I'm not a big fan of things with lots of caffeine in them, but I enjoy that stuff.

i find that doing it the traditional way gets more benefit out of the yerba.

find a cup the size of the gourds they use, or just a gourd. fill it up 3/4. then put some tepid water in there to soak up for a minute.

IMPORTANT PART:
fill it up with hot water. but not REALLY hot. definitely not boiling. just like a little over warm-hot, if that makes sense.

pour and just drink it up. keep pouring and drinking.

i think basically over time the south americans perfected drinking it in this way to get the most out of the tree's leaves with the least toxins.

with hot but not boiling hot water, and quick infusions like that, you end up pulling out more of the vitamins and trace minerals, and less of the jivey caffeine and acids.

i actually just made a brew 30 minutes ago. guayaki brand. the brew should have a minerally salty taste. like your drinking the mineral-rich rainforest earth...

i've made yerba mate SOOOO many times the last 4 years. i never got it right. i tried the gourd with too hot water... not good. tried french pressing.. imo still not good, because the amount of time the water is in actual content with the yerba is way more than it would be than drinking out of the gourd.

when i first heard about yerba, and the "traditional" method...i thought... " HA!!!! these people are so IN-THE-PAST, they don't know what they are doing!!!!"

but i guess i am the stupid one. it took me 4 years to figure out that the way they do it is truly the best. its actually kinda genius. and when i think of it from my western/scientific lens....it makes a lot of sense.

i only had 5 quick gourd-takes of the mate and it felt like i took a vitamin/mineral supplement. i couldn't drink anymore. that is why they say you can live on mate. it felt like i just had something extremely enriching, and i don't feel like i took a stimulant at all. i just feel better overall.

BUT... if you use too hot water, its IMO way more stimulating and takes away from what yerba is supposed to be, and these people understand that.

[GET MO]

Im addicted to this stuff. so much so that i did a search on icmag for it! lol...

[Green Squall]

I quit drinking that stuff after reading that there's evidence it can cause certain cancers. Bummer because I used to love it.

defuq......... if you look long enough everything may cause cancer soon.
i dont believe in this much longer... its a herb for crying out loud...

love that mate coke which they server around our university
very tasty stuff

[Bongo Fury]

An Argentinian friend did let me taste mate and show me how to , but I didn't notice anything different as a tea . Maybe I did something wrong ? If there's a cancer evidence I think Argentinian people are ruined , because he says everyone there drinks a lot of.