Yerba Mate Pure Endurance

I got a bag of this one in a swap and I feel terrible because I don’t remember who it was from! Usually I can tell from the handwriting but obviously there’s none on a teabag. I’m thinking… Kallieboo? Anyway, I don’t have that much experience with mate so I am always happy to try more!

no-tea related rambling below!

The name of this tea brought back so many memories. I majored in cultural anthropology in college, and a book about the Guayaki Indians was the first ethnography I read in my very first anthro class. My college required two courses in the social sciences as part of the core: I took sociology and hated it (but anthro and socio people notoriously don’t get along haha), and decided to give an intro anthropology class a shot for my second.

Looking back, that was the book that got me hooked. It dealt with incredibly complex and decisive topics that often wouldn’t even be touched upon even in a college class: homosexuality in native groups, coming-of-age rituals that involve mutilation, and endocannibalism. I knew anthropology was the major for me when it could get me to see something as foreign and “scary” as cannibalism as a beautiful process. In case you think I’m crazy endocannibalism is not eating random people, but usually includes death rituals in the tribe where a passed member is eaten so they live on forever. In their society, no person is truly dead: they live on forever in the bodies of their friends and family. Kind of beautiful, and very strange.

Anyway, I ended up digging up a lot of my old books because of this tea and flipping through them. I miss my old classes so much! I honestly have half a mind to contact some of my old professors and ask them for reading lists for their classes haha.

end rambling

And now, the tea! Though really, there’s not much to say about this one. It is nice, though unfortunately the top fell off of my honey while I was squeezing a little in so there is WAY too much and it kind of just tastes like honey. The cherry and orange are present but in the background, a very mildly flavored blend.

And the mate… well, I’m still not sure how I feel about mate. It tends to taste like hay to me (unless it is of the roasted variety). Which is funny, because I love guayusa because it tastes like the forest. But hay… not really sure how I feel about this. I need to expand my mate education!

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 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

When I tried this hot I hated it. But when cold brewed in the fridge… Now that’s a different story. It’s so much better! It has lovely notes of orange and a light cherry flavor. Very refreshing.

i like to have this with mint mate to make orange mint mate… delicious!

This could possibly be one of the worst tasting teas I’ve had – ever. I don’t know what it is, it could very possibly be just me. But I can’t even finish a glass of this! Which is sad, because I bought a box I now have no use for. Something about the citrus and this almost burnt green flavor, I just can’t. Sorry to all the people who really like this one, but I guess not all teas work for all people. I have a box up for grabs, if anyone wants to trade.

Great citrus-y taste, but the overall taste is somewhat on the weaker side for me.

A good alternative to traditional tea. It has an herbal flavor with a light bit of orange on top.

I like this tea with a slice of organic lemon.

I guess I just need a little energy today :D

Giving it another whirl…