Guayaki

I actually had to go back to the kitchen and see what kind of tea I had in my mug. It is a very smooth cuppa with (for me) just the right balance of spices, yerba mate and a bit of chocolate. The chocolate is mild but together it is striking just the right note. I like the energy level of yerba mate for all the reasons others have already noted. The box said to steep for 5-10 min. I steeped of 6.5. I wonder what it is like if I try a longer steep? More chocolate-y? Guess I’ll have to add more to this note later.

I saw a recipe for lemonade terere recently, which is simply brewed mate, agave, and lemons. I must try this soon!

For today, I made a quick cup of this, straight, because I had to get up brutally early and didn’t have time to make anything nice out of it. It’s smoky and exotic, and it gets the job done caffeine wise, so that’s why I always seem to have a handful of these tea bags tucked into my enormous tea collection.

Ash Wednesday equals fast day for teaqueen. My friend who spent some time in South America once told me that maté helps with hunger, so naturally I reached for this this morning.

Nice and smoky and slightly vegetal. Woke me up and distracted me from thinking about food.

Yerba Maté for the win!

Made a pretty strong brew of this for late breakfast (love snow days) and it was pretty good with a splash of milk. I like how mate gives me a very gentle buzz rather than the up and down roller coaster buzz of coffee. This goes very well with a breakfast of buttered, toasted pound cake.

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.