Preparation
Never use boiling water. Temperatures of around 140-170oF work best. For every 8 ounces of fluid, use 1 tablespoon of leaves.
First, a tea strainer, tea infuser, or teapot.
This herbal drink is POSSIBLY UNSAFE when taken in large amounts or for long periods of time.
Sharing Etiquette
Of course, you can always prepare the herbal tea in your gourd and drink it yourself. But sharing is a traditional way of drinking it, and you should never bring your gourd to such gatherings.
Alternative Preparation Methods
The simplest method for many is to treat it like any other loose tea; steep it in hot water and then filter out the leaves before drinking.
I can tell you right now the gourd is unnecesary. People seem to prefer gourds for some reason, but having drunk mate from gourds I can tell you that it makes no difference in taste whatsoever.
I’ve been safely traveling with this South American drink for almost a decade and I’ve never had any serious problems carrying it either directly on the plane in my carry-on luggage or my stowed-away luggage beneath the plane.
Traditional Tools
The tools for making and drinking mate are simple: a hollow gourd, a thermos and a metal straw. While the gourds were traditionally a hollowed calabash, they now come in various materials, including wood, glass, ceramic and even silicone.
To prepare it, you need a gourd, a bombilla (metal straw with built-in filter), and hot water between 70-80°C. First, fill the gourd with leaves. Put your hand on top, cover it completely and turn it twice to evenly distribute the leaves. Then insert the bombilla.
The gourd can be refilled with hot water 10-20 times before needing new leaves. The tea gets less potent with each refill. Some seasoned mate drinkers reuse leaves several times a day.
You can also make it using a coffee maker. Add 1 tablespoon of leaves per cup of water into the filter and brew as normal coffee. This lets you prepare mate in bulk to last the entire day.
In Paraguay, they make their mate with cold water, called tereré and drink it from an animal horn instead of the gourd.
But the most common way of drinking yerba mate is to continuously sip it, for several hours and adding more leaves or water as necessary. Each steep releases more flavor and nutrients from the mate.
About Yerba Mate
Yerba Mate is a small bush that produces evergreen leaves used to make yerba mate tea. The plant is native to southern South America and is popular in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil and Chile.
First, water is heated. While it heats, the mate is filled with “yerba”. Covering the opening, it is shaken gently to bring stems to the bottom so as not to clog the bombilla. The vessel remains tilted, the bombilla inserted into the mate.