In this ever-evolving post I'll talk a bit about my connection to yerba mate, discoveries, tips, and a small review of the brands I've tried. Everything is mixed together to ease the narration. If you're new to the mate world, scroll to the bottom where I added a paragraph to get you started.

I had never heard of yerba mate until I've met Irimara. Mara is the reason a lot of things happened in my life. I was about to graduate from a masters program when our paths crossed. When looking at her pictures on Facebook the environment and depiction looked so familiar, yet with an aura of mystery. Mara is from Porto Alegre, Brazil, a country unknown to me. The only connection I had to Porto Alegre was the social forum in the early 2000s I had heard so much about.
Mara's English was shaky so communication was not easy. I decided to learn Portuguese, how hard could it be? with a lot of patience on her side, within a month we were talking in Portuguese with much more ease. This was her first gift to me. Another topic she would bring up from time to time was mate. I decided to try this magical tea. The only seller I found in my town was from Fair Trade. I didn't have any of the proper equipment and couldn't find any shop online. I came up with my own method to drink mate:

How I used to prepare mate, the cringy way
Take a regular pot. Heat up the water with a decent quantity of leaves in it. The water needs to turn green. Once it feels hot enough filter it into a mug. Enjoy. Or not.

How to make Mate Cocido the proper way
What I didn't know back then is that I could actualy make mate this way. Argentinians drink it all the time. Mate cocido is literally (by language and practice) cooked mate. Put a couple of spoons of mate in a small pot with water. Let it boil, once it boils leave it for a couple of minutes. Filter, add sugar at will. Enjoy (for real this time!)

Thinking back. That wasn't even mate. The leaves didn't look like the ones I drink now at all. The preparation process was careless and didn't help. Still, I was drinking "mate" and sharing this connection to a girl from the other side of the world. You don't need all the fancy stuff to make mate when you're starting out, some people use a French press, others put their bombilla into a mug or filter the leaves with a tea ball. Enjoy mate however you can.
A short while after I met another girl from Porto Alegre, Juliana. You should know there's a bit of a race issue in the mate world. Mara is black and she would drink regular yerba mate. When I asked her about tereré (cold mate) she told me only stupid people drink it. Tereré is part of gaucho culture (South American cowboys - but also very common in Paraguay, where it's considered a national symbol). When I asked her about the Farroupilha celebrations of her region she got hostile, and perhaps rightly so. Juliana is white, and like many white people in that region she drinks chimarrão. Chimarrão is powdered green mate. It's powdered, very green and fresh, regular mate is in leaves and dried. It looks like Matcha but the taste is different. It tastes completely different from mate in leaves too. Except I didn't know all that at the time, I thought chimarrão was just the local dialect for mate.

It was Fall 2011. Fast forward a few years. I'm living with my girlfriend Delie, who's Mexican. She has a hard time finding ingredients for Mexican food, so we decide to go to a famous store in Chinatown, Milan. While Delie picks the ingredients, I wander to a corner and there I find a small mate shrine: bowls, bombillas (the filtered straws), and of course, the yerba. I have mixed feelings about trying the real thing after so many years, but Delie talks me into it. I'm very grateful to her for actually initiating this journey, which is ironic because she absolutely despises the taste of mate. I bought a small bowl, a cheap bombilla, and half a kg of minted Campesino. It was Spring 2017.
Coming home I watched every youtube video I could on how to prepare mate, take care of the bowl, the traditional way to drink it.

How to cure a calabaça bowl Calabaça is a fruit that grows in South America. It looks a bit like a pumpkin and you might be familiar with it because it's used as a resonance chamber for the Berimbau. It being nothing more than a dried fruit, you might want to give it a wash before drinking from it. If what you bought is a porongo cuia (that's the traditional brazilian bowl, open on top instead of closing down) you shouldn't need to worry and you can use it straight away.
Check if there are impurities and small pieces of the fruit in your bowl (brush a finger against the inside), if so, you need to "cure it". This is how:
1) gently scrub the inside walls of the bowl with a small spoon. Be careful about the stem on the bottom. Don't break it! What you're scrubbing out is spongy material in excess. In the next steps you'll notice just how spongy this fruit is
2) wash it out with cold water
3) fill it 3/4 with yerba and pour water at 70°. Leave it 12 to 24 hours refilling with cold water when necessary
4) empty the bowl, scrub again, wash again. You're ready!

Some people say that a cabalaça can cure itself and there's some truth to that. If you don't use it for a long time the taste will get more bitter and acid. I do think however that you should scrub it once you buy it.

After I cured the bowl, I obviously wanted to try the Campesino. Little did I know that Campesino is made for tereré and it tastes a bit funny with hot water. I figured it was an acquired taste and finished my half kg in a few weeks. One problem I had at the beginning was that the yerba would get "lavado", meaning I wasn't able to leave dry leaves on top to make the drink last longer. One thing you might not realise is that one drinks one liter or more of mate each sitting. You pour and pour and pour until you either had enough or the leaves taste bland. Little secret: this works for most teas, if it's not cheapo tea bags you can have multiple cups.

Enter Bianca. Bianca was a colleague from an Argentinian family. She's not an hardcore mateira but her mom is. I asked her about my lavado issue and she provided many insights. She also relayed a lot of good information from her mother. It's funny to think about now but I was pretty frustrated about my lavado issue, her tips kept me going in this journey.
What you need to understand is that making mate is an art. One needs to practice and practice until they get decent at it. Even the way I pour water in the bowl changed over time. This is what I like about it: it's not just something you drink, it's something you make and it can be different every time depending on how much yerba you use, water temperature, the position of the leaves in the bowl and who knows what else. I still wonder if the yerba prepared by someone brought up in this world would taste the same. Perhaps there's something small but yet so important I'm missing?

How I prepare mate in a calabaça
1) fill 3/4 of the bowl with yerba. I like to use a small funnel for this not to make a mess
2) prepare a small quantity of cold water in your thermos. It's important to have a thermos that allows to pour a small quantity of water, not just an aluminium bottle with a cap
3) start heating up a pot of water. Use a thermometer, don't let the water get past 75°C
3) put a hand on the opening of the bowl, turn it upside down and shake it shake it baby!
4) turn the bowl at a 125° angle and remove your hand. You should see the opening of the bowl sort of divided in half by the yerba. If not repeat from 3, but don't worry too much about it, if it's a small bowl it's bound to get lavado at the second pour anyway
5) start pouring water at room temperature from the opposite side, trying to have it trickle down without hitting the yerba. This will allow the water to sit below most of the yerba and lift the dry leaves (this part is extremely difficult so no stress)
6) turn the bowl straight slowly as the water fills it up
7) take your trusty bombilla, close one end with a thumb and insert it in the calabaça until it hits the bottom (unless you have issues with your bombilla getting clogged, the thumb is not necessary)
8) the cold water should have disappeared by now, fill the bowl with hot water, try not to hit the dry yerba on top
9) enjoy! Mate doesn't require any infusion time, but the first draw might be a bit too strong

In summer 2017 Delie gifted me a small trove of mate stuff: half a kg of Cruz de Malta, half a kg of Nobleza Gaucha, a wooden cuia, a plated cuia, a bombilla.
By this time I had realised that Campesino was supposed to be drank as tereré but I didn't want to alter my calabaça by putting lemon juice (more on tereré later) so I was very excited to try Cruz.

Memories of Cruz de Malta
Cruz is a very famous brand among mateiros. A past boyfriend of Delie used to drink this brand exclusively. As most Argentinian brands it's very smoky and one needs to be careful with infusion time and water temperature. I probably tried it in both madeira (i.e. wood) and calabaça but it's been too long to recall. I suspect the taste would get too strong in calabaça while it's most enjoyable in wood. I remember experimenting with water temperature, reaching the conclusion that 72°C was the threshold for a good Cruz (I tried from 68° to 82°), but I know people who drink it past 75°C. Ultimately I was too inexperienced in the preparation to fully enjoy it.
Update, a new version of Cruz is out
I've recently had the chance to try the new version of Cruz. What changed? What the company claims is that they only changed the leaf size to make it larger. I'm not sure about the impact of this, to me it also tastes less smoky while lasting a bit longer. The intensity I remember is gone, the new Cruz is much more well rounded and enjoyable. Even more proof of that is that I'm currently drinking it alongside a package of Nobleza and I'm not sure I would be able to pass an AB test.

Let's talk a bit about wood.

How to take care of wooden cuias
Wood and calabaça give completely different tastes to your mate. There's been a period when I drank from wood exclusively and still prefer it for most Argentinian brands. People will tell you that wooden bowls need to be cured with milk and butter. Being vegan, I refused to go down this path. Wood is generally easier to use, it's easier not to have lavado issues and cleaning them is much faster. There are, however, two issues: mold and dryness.
I thought mold was something that only happened to dirty people until I lost a good cuia to it. Here's a few tips to avoid mold:
- don't leave yerba in the cuia - bowl overnight
- clean your cuia - bowl with a spoon (the bombilla might scratch it) and dry it with a piece of cloth
- it won't be dry-dry, so leave it on the table until it's properly dry. I leave my calabaça bowl upside down on the dish rack, but for wood I prefer to leave it on the table
In case mold actually happens you need to act fast:
- pour a small shot of vodka inside, shake it so that it gets soaked, remove the excess
- light it up and move the bowl so that it doesn't burn down and all the walls get a proper roasting
- put out the fire (way before the wood actually turns black!) and cure it  use it
- the taste might not be great at first
I was able to save a wood cuia with this method for a few weeks until mold regrew with a vengeance and had to trash it. It was not palo santo thank god. Let's talk about dryness now.
When you feel your wooden cuia is particularly dry to the touch, you need to treat it with vegetable oil. I like to use coconut oil like so:
- soak your hands with a table spoon of coconut oil
- pass it on the cuia, outside and inside
- leave it to soak for a couple of hours
- clean it off with a dry cloth

The vegetable oil acts as an insulator, so that the wood doesn't absorb too much water and thus temperature changes don't affect it as much. In so many words, it helps preventing the wood from breaking.

Palo santo Palo santo is a particular type of wood that requires extra care when being handled, both during the cure and during its use. I've only recently bought a palo santo cuia, so I'm not exactly an expert, but here's how you're supposed to cure it:
- wash the inside with warm water and leave it to dry, avoid direct sunlight or strong sources of heat
- take any edible fat substance, oil or margerine, the higher the fat percentage the better
- soak the inside of the cuia and leave it for 24h
- with a piece of paper, remove the excess fat (it might have created a sort of coating, clean it off). Don't use water!
- for the next three days, fill it with yerba (used yerba is ok) and hot water (75-80°C), in cycles of 24h
- never ever wash it with cold water under the sink. Take a piece of cloth or paper and clean it off
- when removing excess leaves, never hit the wall of the cuia against the bin

Palo santo is extremely fragile both to temperature change and fall. For this reason one should never use cold water to wash it and should obviously not hit it or let it fall. It's preferable to use it often so it does never become bone dry.
If you're wondering what type of wood is palo santo, well, it's just sandal wood.

Memories of Nobleza Gaucha (special guests: Rosamonte and La tranquera)
After I finished my Cruz, I tried Nobleza Gaucha. I was told both were very good and I was surprised by how different they were. Cruz is a heavy hitter, sometimes it tastes like an ashtray. At this point, after the hot Campesino and the Cruz, I thought all mate tastes like this. Nobleza however is much more round and enjoyable to me. It's rarely harsh and fills you up nicely without leaving you hyperactive  overcaffeinated. In this regard it reminds me of Rosamonte. Both are perfectly fine in calabaça and wood, but I prefer wood. If you're new to mate these are probably the two brands I would recommend.
At this point you might be wondering what do I actually drink from calabaça. Well, La Tranquera. Tranquera is another Argentinian brand similar to Rosamonte that I find much better brewed in calabaça. It probably has a bit more caffeine than Rosamonte and the taste is thicker (although any mate brewed in calabaça will have a stronger taste).

A couple of words on Rosamonte Special
I was once at a shop where I usually buy mate and the only good one they had was Rosamonte Special. It also has a special price. I wasn't convinced, thinking it was just marketing, but I decided to give it a go. Boy was that a good decision. What makes it "special"? It's dried in the traditional method of Barbacua, where the leaves are placed in a moving drum over an open fire. It's pretty scary to look and accidents do occur, which is why the places where this method is employed are usually next to a small canal. The difference is hard to describe and I won't try to sound like a wine expert, it just tastes richer and more woody. There's many brands that have a "Special" variant, I'm not sure if it's because of the drying method or not.

Let's get real by talking about substance abuse. Mate can be abused just like coffee. It's a stimulant. The effects are fairly different from coffee. For example I can drink a liter or more of mate at night and get a good sleep, while it wouldn't be possible after an americano. I grew in Italy and started drinking espresso at about 11, at the family table, for breakfast. Some people get shocked when I tell them this, but it's fairly common. There was a time when I was drinking way more coffee than I should have, but ultimately it never impacted my life that much.
Coffee is strong and short-lived, mate is weaker but lingering. Some people have trouble drinking it, they feel their heart pounding. Others drink it every day only until 3pm. My regular mate drinking pattern is: a small gourd on Friday night to celebrate the incoming weekend, dry on Saturday (perhaps a bowl of matcha for breakfast), chimarrão on Sunday. In the summer I have some tereré after work to freshen up. If it's a long weekend I drink more, or if I'm home sick or on holiday I might take advantage of it. In each sitting I drink from 1 to 2 liters depending if I'm drinking in gourd, cuia, the state of the yerba and my schedule.
Establishing a pattern like this made it easier for me to realise how much I was drinking.

Kraus and "organic" mate
During my latest mate order (2020 meant shipping rather than buying in shops) I decided to give in to another trend in the mate world: organic mate. I'm guessing the meaning of organic is the same as for other fruits and vegetables: no pesticides, smaller farms, more focus on quality. The best mate in the world is said to be Anna Park, which is organic.
The organic label always puzzled me. I'm not an expert in mate at all, but legend says bugs don't attack ilex paraguanensis so no pesticides are needed. Besides, looking at youtube videos of mate growers, I cannot think of a smaller scale than this. I live near corn fields and the difference is striking. Mate needs to be cut by hand (with tools, but no tractor or similar) which means the scale will always be smaller than for other products.
Besides my doubts on the organic label, I decided to try Kraus. I expected to be hit by rich and long lasting flavors, but I was hit by... nothing. Kraus tastes like hot water. There is something for the first half liter at most, dissipating in a mild smoke aftertaste. The taste, when present, didn't leave me wanting for more and I was happy to see the last bits in the bag.
I'm still curious to try Anna Park, but I'm not holding my breath at this point.

"Fake" mate
Since we're on the topic, let's talk about energy drinks, mate de coca, and the acclaimed mate for weight loss. When I first went to Germany, Delie introduced me to Club Mate. It's a very popular drink especially amongst programmers. It's bitter, fresh, and fizzy. It tastes nothing like mate and that shouldn't be a surprise if you look at the label, since there's like 0,01% of actual mate in it. The kick comes from all the caffeine they put. I still enjoy it and drink liters of it whenever I go to Germany, but I wouldn't call it mate.
Some colleagues who went to South America brought mate de coca back. I'm sorry to say it has nothing to do with yerba mate. Mate de coca is a tea made with coca leaves, yerba mate is from Ilex Paraguanensis, a completely different plant that does not release alcaloids.
Mate is also sold in tea bags for weight loss. I'm not sure why someone would think that they can reduce their weight by drinking a cup of green tea, but I do feel a bit less hungry when drinking it, so there might be something to it.

All in all, as I said, what I enjoy is the preparation process and the contemplative nature of drinking mate while studying, programming or playing a strategy game. The bottled or tea bagged versions don't attract me the same way. I don't drink mate to lose weight either, I'm not sure why I do drink it at this point. It's just a small vice I picked up I guess. Mate can be drank in various forms and ulimately it's up to you if you want to turn gaucho all the way or drink it like any other regular tea. There are pictures of guarani drinking mate and their method obviously didn't involve silver filters and thermometers.
Two more ways in which one can drink mate is as tereré and chiamarrão.

Tereré (and a few words on Campesino, Pajarito, and CBSE)
Tereré is cold mate. That's it. Well, not really. There's a whole imagery of gauchos on their horses drinking tereré from a guampa (a horn), but as mentioned people in Paraguay drink it just as much. Being vegan, I avoided the guampa and started with a regular mug. If you have a mug that's a bit slanted it will help with the lavado issue. There's many reasons why one might like cold mate better:
- you don't have to wait for the water to heat up to 72°C
- you can drink a little and put it in the fridge for the next day (if you drink in ceramic)
- it's refreshing, a great pick-me-up for the summer days

Speaking of brands, Campesino is a common one in Paraguay and one can find it in different flavors. These flavors however are sprayed on the leaves and once you open it the quality can decay quickly. The first cup is usually very tasty. For this reason I like to add lemon juice and mint to my tereré. I even tried to add cocoa but I was scolded by a gaucho who told me it's a "gringo shit". So I stopped.
Pajarito is not specifically a tereré brand but can certainly be drank this way. Pajarito is one of the bigger Paraguayan yerbas and is very enjoyable both cold and hot in wood. I find its taste softer and rounder, I would call it a Paraguayan Rosamonte. Pajarito also has a "Premium" version. In contract to the Rosamonte Special, I didn't find this particularly special and would not recommend spending extra money on it.
One other popular brand is CBSE. The yerba has an Argentinian cut with a lot of powder and is usually mixed with mint and other herbs. It's very tasty both cold and hot in calabaça. I recommend it if you find Campesino too bitter.
Since I didn't want to alter the taste of my other calabaça or wooden cuias, I've only tried tereré in ceramic mug, ceramic bowl, and in fruit (more on this later). The procedure to prepare tereré is the same as regular mate except you add cold water and ice cubes. I was told that any mate can be drank cold, but I'm not that convinced.
In my experience the taste of a hot mate is fairly monodimensional. It gets blander after each pour but that's it. There's not hints of this, aftertaste of that. It's just a green tea. Tereré is bit richer in this regard due to the added scents and ingredients.

How to drink tereré from fruit
On instagram you see people drinking mate from any medium possible, including fruit. I was curious to try and thought that pomegranade would be great. Their skin is thick and the size is similar to that of a calabaça. I looked online to see if other people tried but couldn't. I assume this is a personal recipe then.
1) get a pomegranade and make a small hole on top, on the opposite side of the branch (the branch can be used to have the bowl sit straight, experiment with this)
2) using a swiss knife and a tea spoon remove all the contents into a plate and enjoy some fresh fruit (this is going to take much longer than you expect, I promise)
3) since I was stubborn I wanted to have it dry naturally under the sun. After 2 weeks I gave up and used the oven. Don't be like me and just put your fruit into an oven at max 40°C for a few hours (also note that you don't need to have it dry, more on this soon)
4) don't leave it in the oven until it's super dry, have it cool down outside and repeat. You don't want the skin to turn into mush or shrink too much
5) scrub as necessary
6) the pomegranate will never turn as dry as your favorite calabaça so as long as it's thickish to the touch, feel free to try it out
The only thing to be careful about using dry fruit is that after drinking from it you need to dry it in the oven all over again. It's a bit of a pain. When the summer was over I left it on a desk and it eventually turned into a ball of mold and had to be trashed, but I plan to experiment more with fruit in the coming months.
Is it worth it? Absolutely. Fruit will add even more flavor to your tereré and drinking from a bowl I made was a small victory for me.

One can drink hot mate in oranges or grapefruit as well. If you're at the end of a bag and the taste is getting harder to find or you're simply looking for a kick, you can try this:
1) take an orange or grapefruit
2) cut a small portion of the top where the branch was
3) carefully make an incision between the pulp and the skin, then cut in 4 and extract with a spoon
4) enjoy some fresh fruit
5) with a spoon peel out the remaining pulp until the inner skin is predominantly white
6) put some mate and hot water
7) enjoy!

The best part of drinking mate from fruit, besides the taste, is that you don't have to clean and dry the gourd. Just trash everything and be done with it :)
So far I've tried tereré in: pomegranade, orange, pink and yellow grapefruit, pineapple. Curious to try apples.

Memories of Rosamonte in pink grapefruit
Rosamonte is great, one of my favorites, but I was getting rather bored with it. I was at the end of the package where it's mostly powder and not so enjoyable (more on powder later). I decided to have a grapefruit and drink mate from it! The grapefruit is mostly an aftertaste and helps tone down the Argentinian smoke, one gets hints of the fruit at unexpected moments, it's not a main feature. The smell of grapefruit is stronger than its taste and very enjoyable. It sticks to your hands.
In case you were wondering: all the vitamin C will probably get destroyed by the hot water.

A small tale about ceramic
One word of caution about ceramic. I once bought a ceramic mate thinking that it would be much better than organic material since:
- it probably keeps the temperature better
- it doesn't absorb my precious hot water
- it's generally bigger than a calabaça bowl
- it's much faster to clean and can't mold
Oh boy I was naive. I didn't consider one small con: the leaves don't stick to the walls. Unless you have a very, very good bombilla, this is a problem. I do see some people online who can drink from ceramic bowls and I honestly don't know their secret. Care to share? Currently I only drink tereré from it so I can mix other herbs and juices without worrying about ruining the calabaça  wood.

Let's talk about chimãrrao now.
When the student is ready, the mate meets the student. It wasn't long until I had run out of all the mate Delie gifted me and had to go back to Milan. On our way to Chinatown we found a small Brazilian shop. It's honestly the size of my living room and everyone inside spoke Portuguese. To my surprise they were selling Barão and I bought one kg. I was finally going to drink chimarrão the way gauchos do! Or so I thought.
As mentioned, chimarrão is powdery (nothing to do with the powder some Argentinians complain about, more on this later) and fresh, that means that special care needs to be taken regarding the cuia and bombilla, not to mention proper erva storage. Keep your chima in the fridge either in its original container (unles it's paper) or in a glass jar or tin box. You don't want rotten erva, believe me. Regarding preparation, at first I was using my wood cuia. It's not slanted and the surface on top is narrow. The powder was choking the filter and it was impossible to drink properly. I tried many times changing the quantity of erva, the water temperature, bombilla position etc. Eventually I was able to drink a good half liter with a normal bombilla. Please don't suffer the way I did and buy a proper bomba for chimarrão.
There are many ways to drink chimarrão, here are a few from easy to experienced. We start with some general tips in order to explain the finer details.

Chima tips and tricks from sphaso
Please note that making chima is particularly difficult. Frustration and disappointment will hunt you, you will second guess yourself to no end because nothing seems to work. Keep going!
1) cuia selection: there are cuias made especially for chima, they're bigger, made of porongo (=calabaça), and have a wide slanted area on top. If you don't have one a wooden cuia could theoretically work. Avoid gourds or ceramic
2) bombilla selection: there are bombillas made especially for chima, they look a bit like a sigmoid and have an oval-shaped filter, kinda like a Go stone
3) without the proper equipement and expertise the filter will choke immediately. What one can do to prevent it is to wrap something around the filter. Some tea bags work, people in South America use a "camisinha" (watch out, this can mean condom) which is a small bag of tissue. I sewed a linen camisinha once and it worked OK for a couple of weeks until it broke. There's also a sort of "separator" that keeps the erva on one side of the cuia however I've never tried it. After getting a proper bomba I never needed a camisinha anymore
4) even assuming you have the proper cuia, making a chimarrão that lasts more than half a liter is a challenge, why? it's all a matter of physics. The idea is that you create an inverted pyramid on one side of the cuia. From the top, it can look a bit like a cave. The idea is that most of the erva is either stuck at a side or on top, leaving ample space on the bottom for clear water. That's the difference from the mate mountain you're probably used to make. This ample space on the bottom is where your filter will be, free and happy not to be choked by the powdered erva. The challenge then is this: too little erva so the filter won't choke? the pyramid won't stay up. Too much erva and you won't have space on the bottom. Erosion is another factor. Maybe your pyramid is perfect for a couple of sips, then the outer part of the pyramid gets wet dragging the whole thing down. It's a bit of a nightmare to be honest and I'm still to perfect my technique
5) if the pyramid collapses (it will at some point no matter what) you might be thinking you lost a lot of good erva. Well, yes. But you can salvage it by pouring the chima into a glass from the cuia. It's not the same thing but at least you can keep drinking it. Watch out, it's bound to be VERY strong, it's not just green water. If the pyramid doesn't collapse completely just add water and depending on your bomba you might be OK
6) if you realize you've put too much erva or the bottom is muddy, you can dig some out with a tea spoon. No shame, people do this
7) sometimes the filter chokes and you want to take it out to clean it. As it breaks the surface, water could come spitting out of the filter, watch out
8) instead of taking it completely out (you can't for invertido) sometimes just lifting it a little and letting it fall unclogs it
9) the erva is beautiful but it can also make an absolute mess, I always have some tissues around me when I drink it
10) chima is strong, don't underestimate the chima. If you feel your eyes are popping out, it's probably time to end your sitting
11) if you have trouble with the pyramid collapsing, try puttin your bomba at a 90° angle from it. This way when you drag you won't exort as much pressure on the base of the pyramid

Chimarrão invertido
This is the absolutely easiest way to make chima. "Invertido" means inverted  upside-down. It's called like this because the bombilla ends up surrounded by the erva mountain instead of among water like in usual mate.
1) take your faithful porongo and put a spoonful of erva inside
2) put hot water up to the neck
3) insert the bombilla
4) fill the top with erva
5) take a spoon or something else to push some erva away from the border on the opposite side of the bomba. Special tools are sold for this but honestly a spoon is fine. One variant is to dig a hole away from both the bomba and the border. It really depends on the diamater of your porongo
6) the erva will mount on top the the one you previously poured. You can put it back into the bag if it's too much AND if it's dry
7) before breaking the surface and reach the water, pour some to strengthen the walls of your new water hole
8) finally break the surface. Have a spoon handy to push the wall back if you see it's about to collapse
9) enjoy!

Chimarrão do buraco
I don't think it's its actual name. However, the only difference with the ones explained before is that before pouring the erva on top you hold the bomba at the center of the cuia. The water hole will be in the middle just around the bomba.

These past variants will help you save some erva, next one is bound to be stronger as more erva will be used.

Chimarrão de verdade
1) with your faithful instruments put the erva in the method and quantity that you would usually put for normal mate
2) shake it the same way you would with a normal mate, except you'll need a viramate (your hand is most probably too small) 3) with the porongo slanted, take a spoon and push the walls so to make it more compact. This is vital
4) with a small glass and without putting the cuia back in the vertical position, pour lukewarm water inside
5) keep the cuia slanted, erva on the bottom hemisphere, for about a minute. Some people use proper support tools for this
6) pour hot water being careful to have it trickle down on the inside wall. We don't want to disturb the pyramid in any way!
7) put your bomba between water and erva. Enjoy!

Memories of Barão
Barão is a popular tea brand in Rio Grande do Sul, aka chima land. It's usually sold in vacuumed bags of 1kg and comes in two varieties: green bag is traditional, orange bag is a bit less bitter. I've only tried the green bag. The erva is extremely fresh and smells of cut grass, which is actually what it is. The tone is a dark green, so if you're into chima competitions (yes, don't get me started...) you won't have that crazy neon green you see on instagram. The first time I tried it, I must have had a higher temperature and it tasted a lot like coffee. At the correct temperature it tastes less bitter, thick, very different from usual yerba. There's no ashes undertone like an Argentinian yerba and it's thicker and stronger than a green tea you might have at a Chinese restaurant.
If you ever had Matcha (made traditionally with a bamboo brush, not the starbuck crap) you might be reminded of that not only for the color, the white foam, and the smell, but the degree of bitterness as well.

Memories of Chimarrão Gaucho
When Delie's sister came to visit, I asked Delie if they could detour to buy me some mate since they were in Milan. To my surprise they found this chima brand I had never heard of before. There's a reason I've never heard of it before, it's because it's not really chima.
If you're into Matcha tea, you should know that the leaves need to be grinded to a particular size to be called Matcha. Nothing like this happens in chima, the most important aspect is that it's powdery, green, and fresh. The Chima Gaucho however was grinded very coarsly and it looked dried. I'm not sure if this is a regional difference or not, but I was surprised to see it sold in a paper bag to begin with. I don't think it dried in storage because it would have rotten and broken the bag, I can only assume it was prepared this way.
I wouldn't say it's bad, it's just not what's traditionally called a chima. The taste is not as vibrant, it tastes more like a mellow Argentinian yerba. I tried it in wood and porongo. I wouldn't buy it again.

Memories of Laranjeira
I ran out of Barao and visibly sad when Yurick from the Italian Mate Club wrote to tell me that there was this brand of Chima on sale and that I should really try it. So I did. The first taste was a revelation, it really does taste like oranges. With time the sweetness brushes off but the bitterness never really comes in. It's a solid Chima from a serious company it just... tastes different. I'm almost at the end of my 1kg bag and still look forward to my Sunday chima every week. I don't know if I would buy it over the familiar Barao, but it was a nice change of scenery. I imagine the taste must be similar to a Barao orange bag.

Memories of Gaucha da Serra
This chima was suggested to me once again by Yurick. He told me it's his favorite brand but I'm sorry to disappoint. It's a very good chima, honest and very foamy, but I don't understand how it is exceptional. As with every mate, the first taste is special. It's a bit sweeter than Barao but that let go quite soon. After half a bag I woudn't know if I could tell it apart from Barao.

Nowadays, everywhere I go I look for mate shops. I know there's 3 or 4 in Milan, although I've only been to two. There's Amazon and online shops but the shipping cost is a bit prohibitive. I know a guy who has 10kg packages shipped to him from Brazil, but he told me the shipping cost is more than the actual yerba cost. When I went to Mexico I thought I would find mate everywhere, but I couldn't find any. Same in Spain. Imagine my surprise when I was grocery shopping with Delie and she came back with a bag of Taragui!
For many Italians, Tarangui is the first introduction to yerba since it's now sold in many supermarkets. It's an Argentinian brand that comes in different types: blue and red bag, with or without stems (palos). It's convenient to have mate readily available in my home town, but as you'll read, I didn't like it one bit.

Memories of Taragui (blue bag, elaborado con palos)
I was excited to find mate in my small town, but my excitement lowered on every sip. I first tried Taragui in a calabaça. It honestly tasted like aspirin. I've never had a mate so acid. After half a liter it would turn into a more familiar ashtray, to soon disappear into bland hot water. It's better in wood, where it loses a lot of the acid. As you know by now, I prefer round mates like Nobleza and Rosamonte. Taragui is very sharp without having the richness of a Cruz. I was very surprised to hear that one of Delie's friend's boyfriend, who's from Uruguay, buys Taragui sin palos (he drinks sin palos exclusively). I don't know if it's an aquired taste or it's just bad, but I'm not going to buy it again.
Bonus: Amanda
I've found a small Argentinian shop in Cologne while taking refuge from the carnival crazyness. To my surprise they sell mate, bombillas, and gourds! Their selection of mates is very small, among them there was one I had never tried: Amanda. I picked a bag and left happy. I would say Amanda is not as harsh as Taragui, it does however that aspirin taste and short lifespan. After one sitting I decided to just use it for mate cocido or to cure my palo santo. This goes on the long list of "never again" mates.

Memories of Canarias
Since we're talking of palos, let me recall my experience with Canarias. Canarias is a Uruguay style mate and as such it's made sin palos. I was very curious to try it because I was told it also has a peculiar cut that makes it easier to sit in the cuia  calabaça, however this is something I haven't noticed. The taste is very fresh which I think results from the absence of palos and lasts for a good liter. I mostly drink it during work as a coffee substitute both in wood, calabaça and as mate cocido, where it's really excellent. Overall I find it both less smoky than an Argentinian brand, not fruity like a Paraguayan, fresh but not creamy like a chima. It is, well, an Uruguayan mate. I'm happy I've finally tried it and discovered a new type of mate. I would suggest this to a beginner as the taste is not overpowering while being enjoyable.

A couple of words on mate powder
Mate powder is not erva mate for chima. In any bag of mate you will find powder. Argentinians generally hate it for some reason and filter it out. Sometimes they end up choosing the brand with least powder. Their argument is that the powder is what makes the mate taste more acid and ends up hurting your stomach. This is a matter of taste. As most things in mate world, do as it pleases you. People in Argentina drink different brands and possibly in different methods than Paraguayans, Poles, and yes, Italians :)

A few words on youtube tutorials. If you're like me, you'll watch hours of youtube to understand all the intricacies of a good mate preparation. The problem is that those tutorials only teach the beginning. Mate evolves on every sip, the leaves get soaked and fall, the erva absorbs water and it grows choking your filter. What to do in those situations? Very little exists on the subject which is however very important. All I want to say is, don't expect your mate to stay the same from beginning to end. Experiment and see what works for you. One example everyone knows, people are very strict about positioning their bombilla and not to have it moved. This is BS. As you grow older in the mate world you discover what you suspected all the way: it's perfectly OK to use the bombilla to mold the yerba to one side, people all over South America do it.

The journey continues. I'll update this post with my new findings.

A few words for mate beginners
Recently a few colleagues showed interest in mate and I directed them to this post. When I came back to update it I realized how crazy it is to go through this mess and absorb all the information at once. I'm thus writing a few words of encouragement and guidance that should get you started.
I imagine you either never tasted mate or did so in passing. Either way, you might be unsure on what to do and where to start exploring. Equipment to start off is very cheap. The yerba comes at around 6€ for 500g, a decent calabaça and bombilla will add maybe 15€ to your budget. I think this is the best way to start as it will get you acquainted not only to the taste itself but also to the preparation. If you don't want to buy the calabaça or bombilla at first you have two options:
- start with mate cocido (note that it tastes very different from mate in wood or calabaça)
- just buy the bombilla and use a ceramic mug (good option for tereré, a bit awkward for hot mate)

I'll detail a few tips on the three components: yerba, container, bombilla.
Good brands of yerba to start are Nobleza Gaucha, Rosamonte, Pajarito, Canarias. Pros of Pajarito is that you can drink it cold, cons of Canarias is that it's only sold in 1kg bags.
For the adventurous: Cruz de malta, CBSE, Campesino. These last two can be drank cold
To avoid due to complicated procedure: all brands of Chimarrao, which you'll recognize because the bag is vacuumed sealed and sold in 1kg bags from Brazil
To avoid as in bad or absent taste: Taragui, Kraus, Piporé, Amanda

Please note that some people swear by the brands I've put in the "bad" category. Ultimately everyone has their own taste and preferences, this list would be my safe bet for a beginner.

Speaking of containers, you have many choices. If you want to drink cold just take out your coffee mug, it's good to start. Otherwise you can either buy a cheap calabaça (you'll have to cure it, not complicated, read this post on how to do) or wood (not palo santo!), more expensive but easier to start. I would stay away from guampas (horns), ceramic mates or imperials (calabaças in a leather jacket, sitting on a metal frame) to start.
Regarding bombillas, you need to be careful only if you want to drink Chimarrao, then you'll need a bomba, otherwise just make sure the size is correct for your container.

That's it really! Mate doesn't need to be complicated, the most important thing is that you enjoy drinking it and sharing it. Mate drinkers are part of a big family around the world, come join us!