Preparing the Mate
Gently shake to move the fine particles to the top and larger ones below. Insert your bombilla, pour in hot water carefully. The bombilla acts as a filter. After inserting the bombilla, don’t move or use it to stir, doing so will clog the filter. Experiment with different bombillas to find the one suits your taste. Regularly clean your bombilla to prevent residue buildup.
Ease of Preparation
Making amazing mate is very easy. Takes minutes after some practice. Everyone has different advice. The traditional way uses a gourd and bombilla straw to filter out leaves and fully appreciate flavor. Controls flow while drinking too. You can still prepare mate without these tools using a strainer to remove leaves.
Purpose of the Bombilla
Bombilla purpose is preventing drinking leaves and stems. The Guarani used hollow stalks as straws originally. Bombillas evolved into fine metal straws. When drinking traditionally, mate goes into a gourd. Drink with bombilla, not directly from gourd. It acts as straw and filter.
Insert bombilla into gourd’s mate reservoir, wiggle to make room. Compress mountain to help retain shape. Every water refill is a "wash". Pour in hot water from kettle leaving mount dry. Let diffuse then drink up!
Bombilla acts as sieve too. People carry thermoses to keep refilling water hot.
Best Practices for Drinking Mate
Traditional Method
For the sake of this article, I’ll describe how to prepare mate in the three most common and practical ways. Centuries of the Guaraní drinking mate, European colonization coercing indigenous people into forced labor, the newly aristocratic bourgeoisie adopting the ancient customs as their own. Today, folks can drink mate out of aluminum cans, little energy shots, “just add water” cups and more. Spoon bombillas are the best straw for filtering and most practical for drinking mate. I suggest everyone drinking mate to have at least one on hand.
Step 1: Heat water to 140o-170oF (60o-77oC). Never use boiling water. Boiling water scalds the leaves and makes the mate taste extremely bitter. You also risk cracking your glass or wooden gourd. When it comes to mate, there isn’t a specific temperature to drink it. Different brands taste better at different temperatures.
The traditional way to drink mate is from a mate cup or gourd using a bombilla straw. This allows you to easily filter out the leaves while drinking and fully appreciate the flavor of the beverage. The bombilla also allows you to easily control the flow of the mate as you drink. If you don’t have a mate cup or gourd, you can still prepare and drink mate in a regular cup or mug using a spoon or small strainer to remove the leaves before drinking.
Here’s a simple illustration on preparing mate. Fill gourd roughly 1⁄2 capacity. Cover the top with palm, invert 180o bringing fine particles to the top and leaving the larger ones below, to act as a natural filter.
Never use boiling water to brew your mate. This recipe uses a blend of cool and hot water to make your mate taste awesome.
Alternate Methods
The traditional way to drink mate is from a mate cup or gourd using a bombilla straw to easily filter out the leaves. If you don’t have these, you can prepare mate in a regular cup or mug using a spoon or small strainer to remove the leaves before drinking.
Mate Etiquette
When it comes to drinking mate, there’s more to it than just the ideal temperature and serving size. Drinking mate is a social experience that involves sharing with friends, passing the gourd. As someone who enjoys this beverage regularly, I believe that understanding these etiquette practices is crucial for fully appreciating the cultural significance of mate.
Step-by-Step Guide
By far, the most popular (and authentic) way of preparing mate is to follow the centuries-old style using a bombilla (filtered straw) and maté (gourd or cup). Here, we’ll cover the step by step process for preparing mate the traditional way.
General Tips
Yerba mate tea is brewed using leaves harvested from the yerba mate plant. The traditional way to enjoy mate tea is to share the gourd (bowl) with a circle of friends.
Never use boiling water to brew your mate, because that will make the resulting brew much more bitter.