Wild yerba mate / cassina mead

[tlacualchiuhqui]

Howdy. This is my first post after lurking these forums for a little while. I'm happy to be here, and look forward to sharing tips with you all.

A few days ago, I started a batch of cassina mead. Cassina is a tea made from yaupon holly, which is a wild plant here in the Southeastern United States that's closely related to Ilex paraguariensis, the South American holly that produces yerba mate. The two plants aren't identical, but we can talk about 'em pretty much interchangeably here. Both contain caffeine, and both have sort of a roasted grassy flavor once prepared for use. So I'm hoping for tips from anybody who's made yerba mate mead—or any sort of tea mead, really, although cassina is a lot lower in tannins than black or green teas, which makes some difference.

For my first one-gallon test batch, I made a tea using 5 tbsp. ground holly leaf and 3 quarts water. I would have used more yaupon if I'd had it. Then I strained the tea and added 1 quart honey. Now I'm vigorously stirring the mixture a few times each day to help wild yeasts take hold. (That method, which I took from Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation, worked beautifully for my recent batch of wild strawberry mead. Granted, those strawberries probably brought some yeasts to the mix, but I have faith that I'll be able to get this to ferment within a week or so.)

My issue is that, pre-ferment, I really can't taste the cassina tea at all. The flavor will probably come through better when some of the sugars have fermented out, but I'm also worried that some of that cassina flavor will ferment out as well. I just came into a few big carboys and want to do a serious batch over the next couple of weeks, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to ensure maximum cassina flavor.

Should I leave the ground leaves in the tea-and-honey mix for the week or two of primary fermentation? Because cassina doesn't contain as many tannins as black tea, that's less likely to make the final product undrinkable. Maybe the only way to find out is to make another test batch. Or should I add another infusion of leaves to the secondary? If so, any guidance on how many? I'm not using tea bags, so I'll have to measure by volume or by weight.

Any thoughts, or recipes for past yerba mate meads, will be very much appreciated.

 

[fuelish]

Any thoughts, or recipes for past yerba mate meads, will be very much appreciated.

Am intereted in seeing how this goes and any other info folks can offer....I'm a regular yerba mate drinker, buy it by the kilo(s), and the idea of a ym mead has crossed my mind more than once Am going to try a one gallon batch when my gallon jugs get freed up from the experiments that are now finally clearing... I don't know how yerba compares to cassina in terms of flavor per tablespoon, but I would use a lot more than 5 per gallon, but then I see that's all you had, unfortunately....perhaps you can get more and cold infuse it in the fermenter and then rack off when flavor is achieved?

 

[tlacualchiuhqui]

Thanks, fuelish.

I can absolutely get more. I harvest yaupon holly about an hour from home, and just didn't realize how little I had this time around until I dried it. Figured I'd go ahead and try a small batch of cassina mead anyway, although I realized the minute I stirred in that quart of honey that I should have waited. Hate that. I'm planning to head back out to the woods over the weekend, and I'll try something like 1 tbsp of tea/cup for the next test batch. Or at least 1 tbsp/2 cups. I'll cold-infuse this first test batch with a little more tea as well.

I'm guessing that you know a little more about all this than I do. How much yerba mate would you add to a gallon, and when would you add it? In my experience, mate is pretty comparable to cassina in terms of intensity of flavor.

 

[fuelish]

Well, I haven't started one yet, but am thinking (for a 1 gallon batch) I might cold infuse 12 or so tablespoons in a couple of quarts of water (terere is my favorite way of drinking the yerba mate...I prefer cold beverages... ) add honey, top off with water to make a gallon, ferment, sample, and add more ym (kinda like dry hopping beer) to taste, then rack to secondary to get it off the leaves...might have to go out and get a couple more gallon jugs for experiments, as I'm now itching to do this and my gallons are full atm (waiting on my pseudo-Skeeter Pee Mead and pseudo-Skeeter Pee w/added lime mead to clear so I can blend them - the lime is kinda overbearing in the lemon-lime batch, so I'm just gonna blend them to have 2 gallons final). Might have the yerba batch end up a sweet mead as well, dunno how well yerba and dry mead will play together...only time will tell

 

[neilpcraven]

Living in one of the numerous regions that claim to be the home of yerba (erva) mate drinking, I'm definitely interested in how this turns out. Here you can get a few beers that have been brewed or flavoured with it.

I have a gallon of JAOM that has been brewing for a couple of weeks. It needs topped up so perhaps I will fire some mate through the aeropress and top it up with that to see what happens?

 

[JRW1]

I have been fascinated with a yerba mate mead for a while now. I made only one, which was a sweet mead with a good amount of honey. I used the canned yerba mate's which turned out pretty great, although not tasting too much like yerba mate itself. I will indeed do more, my next planned yerba mate brew will have boiled yerba to the amount where I get 1 coffee cups worth of caffeine in under a cups worth of liquid. I think that will be stellar to get caffeined out and drunk with and i think when its finally drinkin time i'll be drinkin yerba mate in a gourd with the whole mix.
I say go strong, and test the boundaries of the brew's taste. Thats how i've been brewing, finding the upper limits first because i have a lot of life in me and desire to get a great result.

 

[neilpcraven]

Don't boil the Yerba, it will ruin the flavour. It should be extracted at about 72C, which I think is twelvty Fahrenheit.

 

[fuelish]

It can be cold infused as well, just takes longer

 

[BioChemUndrGrad]

I'm about 9 months into a Yerba mate mead ferment. I wanted it to be similar to the traditional mate drink so I added 3 cups of dried Yerba mate leaves and stems to 1/2 gallon of water that was slightly under boiling temperature and let it cool overnight. The next day I filtered out the Yerba mate and added 1/2 gallon of unfiltered raw honey then put foil over the top. I waited about two weeks for the yeast that was in the honey to really build up then I put an air lock on it. The first two months it bubbled so hard that it literally looked like it was boiling with clumps of yeast floating around. Then one night it suddenly turned a perfectly clear golden color and stopped rapid fermenting which I assume means all the simple sugars had been consumed. Seven months later it's still on the yeast happily bubbling away those more complex sugars. I'm hoping for a very dry mead so I plan to let it continue to ferment for at least another year and 3 months for a total of two years. The wait to taste it is killing me! Can anyone that did something similar to this tell me how theirs turned out???