Guayaki

I saw this tea at the local grocery store, and I had to give it a try. It’s organic, and it has the magical word “chocolatte!” I’ve had a few chocolate chais now, and the problem with most is that although they use the word “chocolate,” its flavor is undetectable when brewed. Unfortunately, this is true of Yerba Mate Chocolatte as well. If I felt any chocolate, it was only because my imagination conjured it up. I am sure there is some cocoa in it the blend, but it doesn’t become distinct.

So, what is it? It is a somewhat spicy yerba mate. What is most noticeable is the nutmeg. I like my yerba mate chai richer and would prefer to feel the spices more distinctly. I appreciate the fact that it’s organic. However, I would not repurchase it only because of that. (It’s nicer with milk, especially vanilla milk.)

I guess I could get used to unsmoked yerba afterall… The leaves are surprisingly fragrant after adding a few drops of cool water to them. It smells piney, citrusy, and very woody. I guess I never could have noticed this sort of complexity until I let my palate reset itself after drinking only strong smoky yerba. Normally, smoke seems to meld all the flavors together in yerba, but I guess it makes the flavor more unidimensional. The complexity of this yerba, however, makes me think of walking in the woods and being surrounded by pine trees and fallen trees. Bright, piney, citrusy, combined with dark earthy and woody.

Awesome tea for a monday morning, or anytime really that your looking for to be alert. I enjoy one to two of these a week as needed / desired. Has a earthy bitter taste but extremely enjoyable with a floral / citrus after taste.

Tried this the other day, and I think it would have been really tasty if it weren’t for all the stevia. I usually find stevia to be one of the less offensive non-sugar sweeteners, but this tea just had way too much of it! Ick! Definitely not for me.

I have a serious case of nostalgia today, reminiscing with my mother about places I visited and adventures I had when I was a wee thing. I wish I could go back and give my younger self a camera, not really to capture events (not really my thing) but to capture places. So many of them have changed dramatically, I wish I could have captured them for my older self. Enough nostalgia, time for tea!

Today’s tea is Pure Endurance Yerba Mate Tea Bag by Guayaki Brand, it is a blend of Yerba Mate, Orange, Acerola Cherries, Eleuthero (Siberian Ginseng) and Natural Electrolytes. The aroma is herbaceous, similar to sage but with a sharper quality, with a sweet, fruity aftertone. The aroma is a bit hard to describe, Yerba Mate has a very distinct aroma that is all its own and I have not found anything that it smells like to compare it to.

Once steeped the tea is sweet and citrusy with a definite note of cherry. There are also notes of earthiness and delicate floral tones, all of these notes are accompanied by an herbaceous and sharp aroma of the Yerba Mate.

The initial taste is quite good, a blend of sweet cherries and oranges with a slightly floral note. The midtaste is still sweet but it starts to have a woody, herbaceous quality that becomes stronger until it becomes an odd aftertaste. The aftertaste is very herbaceous and fairly strange, but not unpleasant. With each sip the Yerba Mate taste grows on me, also the little boost of caffeine also grows on me. I am curious to try more Yerba Mate, I find the taste fascinating and have very little experience with it.

For photos and blog: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/01/guayaki-brand-pure-endurance-yerba-mate.html

My 1st review. I tasted it for the first time and boy was it bitter! I tried again and mixed some earl grey coffee with it, not much better. The second steeping was much better. It tastes pretty good if not for the bitterness. I will try milk for the next time. The second steeping seems to help with the bitterness.

I am just starting this and I will go so far as to say that it is an acquired taste. But not that difficult to aquire as I am starting to dig it more every time I get some more. Also I do seem to get a great boost within the hour after drinking it.

I hate this, but I want to, no need to like it because it is awesome for you! I made a blend that I use to help me get this down. I mix 1/3 mate, 1/3 lemon verbena and 1/3 of Peet’s coffee and tea’s Jasmine fancy green tea. It covers the taste pretty good. Hope this helps those people who cannot stomach mate, but really wants to drink it.

Btw, I like the roasted way better!

I greatly enjoy this tea. You do have to let it steep a bit longer than others, but that flavorful chai is worth the wait. It could stand to be a bit spicier for me sometimes, but I do like it quite a bit.

Very sad day… This is my second-to-last bag of this. I shall need to buy more next week when I go grocery shopping. I love it. I have a lot of the Traditional Mate left, but I don’t like it as much.

It’s so sweet and rich and spicy and earthy… The mouthfeel is creamy and decadent. It’s a beautiful way to wake up in the morning. My favorite breakfast tea.

I love this tea so so so so so much. It’s full of beautiful, warming spices, and it tastes like chocolate without being sweet, somehow. It’s delicious. It lingers on the tongue and warms the belly. The smoky taste characteristic of yerba mate is diminished, which is fine with me.

It has less caffeine per sachet than the Traditional Mate, but that doesn’t bother me any, because the taste is far better.

Housemates are being idiots again. I can’t wait to go home for a month.

This tea is a new source of comfort for me, even though I really had no business buying ANOTHER box of tea. I’m glad I did it anyway.

This is just delicious. Sweet and a little spicy, smooth and chocolatey. The smokiness of the yerba mate is virtually eliminated by the spices, but they’re not overpowering. It’s expertly blended. It feels like a dessert tea. Like, I feel like I just drank a warm, homemade, fair trade, organic, non-GMO, South American chocolate spice cookie.

Will be restocking this when my box runs out!

Too subtle for my taste.

For a tea that boasts organic cinnamon, organic licorice, organic ginger, organic nutmeg, organic clove and organic stevia—I find the tea lacking flavor depth and tasting watery.

Still great as a soothing late night drink to warm your bones in winter.

I brewed this one for 10 minutes as the upper end suggested as one that likes strong tea. Yerba Mate is hard to describe as it has both a mellow smoothness to it which is a bit like puerh but a light freshness to it which is a bit like green tea. Nice for something different and could be a possible tea alternative but not something that I plan on drinking too often.

I’ve gotten into a strange sleeping pattern (which is to say, I’ve been sleeping like crap lately), so I needed a little something stronger than my usual green or black morning cuppa to get me going this morning.

This yerba mate has been my go-to drink for extra energy ever since I quit coffee. It gives me just the right amount of caffeine to wake me up and get me focused, without making me jittery. I used hot water from my housemate’s Keurig because boiling water makes it bitter, and I let it steep for half of my 8 am class, which translates to about 45 or 50 minutes.

Sounds like a disaster, right? But it wasn’t. It peaked in strength after the first ten minutes, and then the bag just kinda sat there in the water, not doing much. It was perfect. The flavor was smoky and earthy, and it helped me feel more full after my on-the-go breakfast (a Nutri-Grain bar).

Definitely going to keep a box of these teabags around for lousy Monday mornings like this one. It helped bring me back to life without being too demanding to prepare, and it tasted good, too.

This tea didn’t taste like I thought it would at all. It’s a very smoky flavor. Not exactly unpleasant, but it definitely takes some getting used to.

Like it says on the box, don’t make it with boiling water, because it will be bitter. I like to put the electric kettle on for about a minute or two, and then pour it over the teabag and let it steep for five to seven minutes.

I stopped drinking coffee a few months ago, and switched to tea full-time. Now I drink this mate when I need an extra energy boost- it’s awesome because it won’t give me the coffee jitters.

Finally, about this brand- Guayaki doesn’t use a lot of smoke-roasted yerba mate leaves. The smoke-roasted ones are the ones that can cause cancer- they use air-dried instead when they can. And this tea is also organic and grown sustainably. So the company overall is pretty ethical and cares about their customer’s health. If you’re going to drink yerba mate, I highly recommend Guayaki’s!

a tea bag from KallieBoo! i’ve been sitting on for a while now. lazy bum i am.
i guess with all the swapping i learned how much i love black tea versus, well, everything else haha.
my boyfriend prefers mate always. and so i always just give it to him and usually drink something else.
this is a good fresh creamy green kind of taste. simple. brown leafy.

in unrelated news:
i’m taking a modern dance class tonight and i’m already nervous.
i’m very excited about Agents of SHIELD.
i had two free donuts for second breakfast.

I didn’t fall asleep till late and my boyfriend of course wakes up at 8:30 and makes me eat breakfast. Then I discover the world juniors gold medal game is on. I fall asleep during the end, but wake up in time to hear bad anthem singing. USA!

And now I am still not awake. This was the only mate I brought over with me I think, and it is a teabag, so I cannot remember who gave me this because I never put them in my spreadsheet if there’s just one.

I put milk in the mug first then added enough hot water for a cup total, and let it steep probably 10 minutes.

This definitely isn’t how I thought it would taste. I was expecting just chocolate but there’s spices in here that make it seem more like chai. It’s also disgustingly sweet, and I see on their website that is thanks to stevia. Glad they could make that clear anywhere, I was looking all over the place and finally realized the ingredients are in a fake looking nutritional facts chart.

I’d probably really like this if it wasn’t for that stevia. It just ruins it. Cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove wouldn’t be something I’d match with chocolate, but it seems to work until the sweetness hits.

Originally published at The Nice Drinks In Life: http://thenicedrinksinlife.blogspot.com/2012/08/guayaki-organic-traditional-yerba-mate.html

Origins: Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil
Type: Yerba Mate
Purveyor: Guayakí
Preparation: Two teaspoons put into an empty mug (about eight-ounce size), no bag or steeper, a little cold water added, stirred with a bombilla, rest of mug filled with approximately 150-degree water, sipped with bombilla

Yerba mate is really cool. It is a tisane in that it is not Camellia sinensis, but it is naturally caffeinated, and it certainly tastes more like a beverage that was meant to be brewed than like a dessert tray pureed with a little too much water and sugar, as many herbals are apt to taste. The traditional drink (or, at least, a traditional drink) of the Native Americans in sub-tropical South America, yerba mate remains a staple there, and has found its way to much of the rest of the world as well.

Yerba mate is traditionally drunk out of a hollowed out gourd. I have one, but it is a pain in the neck to clean, so I use a mug. I do, however, use the bombilla, also part of the tradition, which is a metal straw through which the liquid is drunk. (For those wondering, it is indeed possible to burn one’s lips on it, but that is unlikely to happen more than once.) Preparation should be as described above when using loose tea. The cold water helps manifest many elements of the tea, including not only compounds such as caffeine and anti-oxidants, but also those that give the tea is lovely flavor. After the hot water is poured in, there is no need to wait more than a few seconds for the tea to steep. It is ready to go.

Guayakí has done some remarkable stuff with yerba mate, but I generally prefer the simple and original things in life, and therefore keep the “traditional” version in my home. The leaves are chopped in all ways, with some fragments the size of a SIM card, and others practically powder. They are pale greenish tan, not at all unlike the color of American military uniforms between Desert Storm and the present day.

Yerba mate has an aroma and flavor all its own, and it is much more difficult to describe than the notes of coffee or black tea. The steam coming off of the tea smells very earthy, very malty, and very woodsy, with a tinge of smokiness. The color of the liquid, which is a little bit thinner and lighter in body than a brew made from Camellia sinensis, is the same as the color of the leaves. The flavor is bitter, but smooth, consistent, almost tannic even. It has plenty of malt, and a hint of the floral. Both the aroma and flavor, but especially the aroma, will make one reminisce about spending time outside in a wooded area after a rain, though one will not be able to put his finger on exactly what situation that was. (This has been confirmed by many.) The liquid has minimal structure, just enough so that the flavor can do all the heavy lifting; and indeed, while the body is light, the flavor is rich. It goes down easy, being so light in body, and leaves an aftertaste as smooth and consistent as the tea itself. The sipper will want more.

The good news about wanting more, by the way, is that yerba mate can be re-steeped much more often than Camellia sinensis. The mug or gourd can be refilled three times without too much effect on the flavor’s strength.

In the middle of making some notes on the flavor, I realized that I had forgotten to note the aroma of the dry leaves. Imagine my shock to discover strong fruity tones where the liquid offers only malt. The dry leaves are earthy, and even woodsy, but where with the brewed liquid there are flowers growing wild, here there is only fruit to decorate the flora.

Yerba mate is hardly unknown or unheard of in North America, but it still does not get the attention that it deserves. To tea lovers, people who like variety in what they consume, and anyone who would not mind an alternative pick-me-up for the morning or afternoon (its caffeine is quite effective), I definitely recommend getting some of this delicious beverage right away. Enjoy.