Yerba mate harvesting?

[kadakuda]

I have gotten some platns over teh past couple years from SAB shop, and they are growing along nicely.

One of our future projects is to open up a little coffee shop on our farm here near teh mountains and serve home grown brews. right nwo we grow things liek cacao, cofee, cinnamon and other herbal tea stuff. too hot here for tea tea, but lots grown in higher mountains here so thats easy to get.

One thing that is fairly unknown here is yerba mate and it grows good here.

I am not fully into it yet as my oldest platns i think are only 2-3 years, but i want to start learning adn experimenting with harvesting.

From what i haev read so far (online) it seems older growth is used and trees that are harvested are not harvested again for 1-2 years to let leaves grow back. So far it all seems easy.

teh one thing i read that was new to me was the heat treatment. they said they heat teh elaves to some temperature (forget now) to kill an enzyme on the leaf surface. or may to kill teh outer waxy layer protecting the leaf? there was talk of oxidyzation. guilty of a really bad memeory.

I am thinking of planting a fairly large amount of land in this plant because i think local tea lovers, who have accepted coffee shops like they laced cafe with heroin, will be right into mate. Asians love their stimulants. just want to know how to do it right.

[Justin Credible]

Cheers for starting this thread.

I have one of these babies ( Ilex paraguariensis ) growing happily at home, also purchased from the SAB store

Unfortunately I know nothink about harvesting but am keen to learn too.

Do they benefit from a good prune in their younger years or best not too?

[kadakuda]

honestly i have been layering mine so have not let them grow up. but i will be pruning when i plant in ground for abotu 3m bushes i think.

So far, all the little plants i got from the SAB have done excellent.

The processing with heat part is now what i am curious about.

[Jamunji]

Mate leaves we're processed traditionally by the guarani Indians by holding the branches over the heat of a fire. This also let a smoke flavour infuse into the leaves. I'm not sure if they experimented with different woods to change the flavour but probably. I definitely would. The leaves need to be dried quickly as this destroys an enzyme which would deactivate the mate and keeps it green.

After this I believe is when they chop it. Some mates you buy will have very neatly cut leaves with no stems while others will be coarser and have stems in them, it rings a diferent character as you'll find. Just cut it in a way that you are happy with.

The next step was curing and while I'm not sure as to how long the traditional mates were cured, today a good mate like rosamonte they store in bags for up to a year letting it stew in its own juices. Lower quality mates ship out only 5 days after drying. I see the curing stage asa being one of the most important parts. They leaves ned to be in a dark, very dry cool room.

That's pretty much all there're is. I think the modern mate company's have a heat barrel that rotates and roasts the mate leaves lightly inside while they infuse some with smoke as desired.

Happy curing.

J

[planthelper]

nice opening post, welcome to the forums!

[Jamunji]

Cheers. This place is AWESOME!