Sunday, April 6, 2008

First Mate

Since I still haven't figured out, and refuse to learn, how to put an accent grave over my "e"s, I will simply hope that it can be deduced that I am refering to mate the drink and not mate the friend.

My new gourd is finally conditioned, so I broke it out last night and filled the little guy up with regular yerba mate. It was less than exciting, far more mate-y than I had thought it would be. In previous brews minus the gourd, I've simply used roughly equivalent tea measures. But a third of the gourd! Holy cow.

So after two infusions, I dumped it and tried out some mate chai, which is exactly what it sounds like, except this time I used a bit less. Same sorts of difficulties. I think one of the bigger problems is having bits of the stuff fly into my mouth. Perhaps I should try a new bombilla or something. Who knows? I still like the stuff.