HackMate
Recently, we’ve been trying to make our own club-mate at Hackalot. Club-mate is a kind of ice tea that is made using yerba mate from south-america.
The ingredients list is very sort, only three ingredients are required:
- Yerba mate
- Citric acid
- Sugar (Cane sugar is prefered)
- Water
![an overview of the ingredients](/_astro/ingredients.Bk0jgF3c_1moqdd.webp)
The list of required equipment is also on the short side:
- A kettle
- Tea steeping bags
- Coffee filters (or similar fine, food-grade filters)
- A coffee filter holder
- A scale (some precision is required)
- A thermometer
- A CO2 tank
- Some empty soda bottles
- Some Soda CO2 bottle adapters
- Some small containers
- Some large containers
The actual quantities and procedure are still in the experimental phase, and we’ve tried 16+ different variations. Our current best recipe is:
- Put 12 grams of Yerba mate (con palo) in a tea steeping bag
- Put 1.2 grams of citric acid in a small container
- Put 50 grams of sugar in a small container
- Boil 440ml of water, let it cool down to 75C
- Wash the tea for a few seconds using cold water
- Let the tea steep for 5 minutes
- Dissolve the sugar in 60ml hot water
- Dissolve the citric acid in the sugar-water mixture
- Add 500ml of (cold or hot) water
- Filter the liquid through a coffee filter multiple times
- Pour the tea in a soda bottle after it has cooled down a bit (a cold bath helps)
- Pressurise the bottle to 3 bar of CO2
- Let the tea rest for a few days
This will result in a very fresh tasting version of club-mate. Its different from the real deal, but it does taste great.
![The tea while cooling down](/_astro/cooling.CT0c5wNW_Z21q2QL.webp)
We are still actively working on improving the recipe. Our current attempts are focussing on improving the carbonation and fine-tuning the taste. An overview of (almost) all attempts and our findings can be found on the hackalot website