Holy Mate

In a previous Article we’ve made our own yerba meta icetea at Hackalot. That article recipe was written when we had only executed a handful of tests, we have since conducted 50 more tests. These different tests have all kinds of intertesting deviations from the ‘base recipe’ descriped in the previous article. We have since decided that we want to start ‘exploiting’ our efforts. This is partly because Hackalot ran out of Club-mate, and partly because it presents all kinds of new challenges.

The recipe

The first exploitation of our recipe will allow visitors of Hackalot to get a cold glass of mate straight from a dispenser. We have never created more than 1 litre of Mate at a time, time we are creating an entire keg. This are the ingredients to make 12 litre of mate icetea:

• 120 grams of Playadito yerba Mate
• 540 grams of white sugar
• 12.96 grams of citric acid
• 0.5 grams of E150A
• 6 litres of water at 70 °C
• 6 litres of cold water, near 0 °C

Creating the tea

The first step is to create the tea. This is done using a large teabag, which is soaked in 6 litres of 70°C water while it is constantly agitated for 7 minutes. This will create a very strong, dark tea that is quite dusty. When the tea is created, dissolve the sugar, citric acid and E150A into the mixture.

⚠️ The E150A colouring does not dissolve easily, and likes to create lumps. Be sure to dissolve the E150A slowly in a seperate glass before mixing it with the rest of the batch.

When the tea is created, pour it into a keg, but be sure to pour it through a coffee filter. The tea is dusty, so the filter needs to be replaced frequently.

The tea should be very dusty by the time you are filtering the last few ml’s, it is recommended to discard the last drops. When all tea is filtered, add the cold water and cool the entire keg down to temperatures where CO2 can carbonate the ice tea. Connect the CO2 to the keg, and pressurise the mixture to 2 bar. Shake the keg to increase the rate of carbonation significantly.

When the keg is carbonated, its ready to be connected to a dispenser and consumed. Even though the mixture is sour (~4 ph), has been heated to 70°C for a while and is stored without oxygen, we expect the shelf life to be a couple of weeks at max.

The name

Holy mate is made at hackalot which recently moved into an old church. The name of the drink is a reference to the current location. A friend of me has drawn some possible directions for a logo; they are shown below. if you have any suggestions, feel free to submit them!