Expand your horizon with Brilliant! Use my link brilliant.org/Andong/ to get 20% off the annual premium subscription. Have you ever tried Club Mate and what do you think? Oh and for the record, the company was super nice when I reached out. I have a lot of respect for their brand strategy! 🙌
Yes, Club-Mate was my go-to energy drink during my studies at university (an no, not in Berlin). Still like it very much, the original ist the best. If you want to taste a real ash-tray variant, try Fritz Mate - but I think that's too much. Thanks for the historical background on Club-Mate, very interesting!
I remember when Club-Mate just started getting big and pretty much every Mate Fan back then introduced the drink to me with the same words: "You get used to it"
That‘s how the word spread about the drink at Chaos Computer Club events… I remember my first time, at the Chaos Communication Congress 2003 in Berlin when a good friend of mine told me to try it. He of course assured me that I‘ll "get used to it", and I really did.
@@SylverArc with that attitude, you‘ll never acquire the taste for, well, acquired tastes. Some foods and drinks just need getting used to before they become enjoyable.
A little side story for you: I´m from franconia, and here we drank it as school kids almost every day in our favorite cafe after classes (I was 14 or 15, I think). Years later, after even bringing it to the barracks for my military service time, I decided to move to Berlin for a while. Imagine my surprise and amusement when some friends in this city showed me a bottle of Club Mate stating that "this is something so damn new and cool, you guy from the countryside surely don´t know this stuff".
Thank you for mentioning that! As a fellow Franconian I got to drink it at a youth club for the first time and then it was my go to drink during studying for my A levels. So I really feel the sentiment! While I was going to Uni it became the popular drink, it is now!
If you go out in Berlin (or Leipzig) and order a Wodka-Mate, they give you a whole bottle. You are supposed to open it, drink as much as you like, hand it back to the barkeeper and they fill the empty space with wodka. Just wanted to tell because sometimes I've seen foreigners getting confused by that and just leave the bar without liquor in their drink 😂
First time I went to a techno party when I started my phd in leipzig (almost 6 years ago now), I order a turbomate off the catalogue, the bartender gives me the bottle and my friend says chug. I'm like, sure, OK and I just down half the bottle cause I was thirsty anyway. She takes it back and to my utter amazement fills it back to the top with just wodka. "7 euros please". I think I just stood there for like a couple of mins, trying to comprehend what had just happened, while my friend laughed his ass off.
Dude also looked like a top model in his designer suit, as far as you can make out on that old black & white photo. You could say Hugo looked like.. A boss 🙃
I am a manager of a really big techno club in the Netherlands, and I am also from the south of Brasil! So much to my surprise, when I started working there a few years ago I was shocked that the drink of my people (called Chimarrão in Rio Grande Do Sul) was being drank religiously by the Dutchies! I had always wondered and discussed with people as to what the origins of this bottled version of Chimarrão came from and now one of my favorite UA-camrs did a deep dive, so big big love!!
@@moistschmeckles400 It's the same thing. "Yerba Mate" in Spanish or "Erva Mate" in Portuguese literally translates to "Mate Herb", so it's the name of the actual plant. "Chimarrão" how we call in Brazil the drink (tea) made from Erva Mate. In Argentina, as far as I am aware, they don't have a specific name for the drink itself and just call it Mate.
@@samethingsmakeuslaughmakeuscry ok thanks for explaining, i associate chimarrão with that light green drink from the yerba mate lab YT channel, i imagine that it tastes different from argentinian mate (i only ever drink argentinian or uruguayan mate so i don't really know)
Nice to hear that everyones first encounter with that drink started with an "uh, that tastes like an ashtray" and a friend telling you "you'll get used to it"
When I first went to Uni back in 2012, our canteen was covered in posters in the iconic Club-Mate yellow with minimal branding and the simple statement "Man gewöhnt sich dran.", translating to "You'll get used to it.". Not only is it the most honest and fitting description to the experience of drinking it for the very first time, it is also the one and only marketing campaign I've seen for the brand (I don't even know whether it was official or some DIY stunt) and it has stuck wit me for well over 10 years now.
@@krepieri Smart of them to test it down south first to see if the rest of germany would be cool with mate, because if it lands down there, it will sell anywhere.
@@krepieriit probably isn't as popular and trust me, like 10, 15 years ago nobody has heared of this stuff down here, but that has changed. You can find it almost anywwhere now. Maybe not In a small kiosk, but most supermarkets offer it. To my delight.
Its rumored Club Mate was created when the inventor accidentally drank from the water bottle that everyone was putting their cigarette ash into all night
We have Club Mate in Poland in few shops and it is just like you've said - it takes few tries to get to like it, but when it finally hits you, it quickly becomes one of your favourite drinks to have.
I've heard that Poland is third by scale market for yerba mate after South America and Syria, so Poles shall have their palate ready for yerba-based pop
A german dude made a Club-Mate clone here in Brazil called Baer-Mate, their slogan is "love in the second sip"... We do have other refreshing beverages based on mate but their usually thicker and sweeter, almost like a mate syrup, Baer-Mate is the only one more watery and fizzier, like the german ones
i have tried baer mate its the closest thing to club mate in Brasil but the drink also has some apple flavor (like Apfelschorle), soo i dont really drink it. I wish they had ClubMate in Brasil.
It's so fun to learn about different beverages in Germany! Have you ever considered doing a video on Spezi? As someone outside of Germany, I fell in love with it (particularly the Paulaner variant), and was a bit curious of the history of it and how it became so popular! Tried sharing/promoting it to my friends and none were swayed by it, but I am amazed by the popularity in the German speaking countries. I guess the 'cooking' side of thing are either too simple or too tedious, but still like your insight into its history and popularity would be fascinating for me!
Spezi from my point of view was a mix offered in restaurants and bars first, then came Mezzo (Coka Cola) and Schwipp Schwapp (? I think, or it must have been something else from Pepsi) in typical 1,5 liter PET bottles. I was surprised to find 0,5 or 0,75 liter glass bottles which actually read Spezi in Munich and Bavaria. These days I’m very annoyed by (new?) Krombacher ads with supposedly trendy people implying everyone is „different“ and everyone who is should drink their (new) Spezi. Feels like a Monty Python joke made by gen Z marketers who think of themselves as geniuses for adding orange juice flavor to cola and never having watched Monty Python or would be actually offended by them despite all claims of being so progressive.
As an Argentinian software developer this video was so interesting and comical to see. Mate is the go-to drink for productivity, when working or studying, alone or in a group. You can also see it used by athlets such as soccer players. I'm glad to see another yerba mate is being used and enjoyed in other parts of the world.
That’s so nice to hear. Yes still to this day in German universities, especially amongst the computer science students, you see a lot of (club) mate.. recently a friend from Latin America brought fresh mate for us to taste and it definitely tasted really refreshing and I enjoyed it..
Someone who lives about 15 Minutes from Dietenhofen and 25 Minutes away from Loscher Brewery here. I always wondered why we call Club Mate Bronte so thanks for teaching me the origin of the name! Also there's been an urban legend that Club Mate was invented by a Pharmacist from Dietenhofen who then sold the patent to Loscher for like 150€. I guess this is now debunked. The shot against Loscher beer at the end made me laugh, because there's a "rivalry" going on amongst citizens between Hofmann and Loscher as they're the bigger breweries in the district (Landkreis) and only 5 km apart. There a jokes that Loscher wouldn't survive without Bronte and the beer only used to clean dishes haha.
The owner of Geola in Dietenhofen got really old and retired in the 90s (and he was the husband of the daughter of one of the original Club Mate suppliers from the 30s I believe) so there is a kernel of truth in the legend :)
@@mynameisandong Fun fact, I've done an internship in the Seniorenresidenz Dietenhofen and I met the daughter you are talking about, Frau Sauernheimer there :)
Club-Mate is the goddamned nectar of the gods and it's pissing me off that I've only managed to get my local grocery store here in Sweden to import it ONCE. Aside: Club-Mate have actually made ads here as far as I'm concerned. There are a few images floating around from a skate magazine with a full page spread picturing a bottle with the copy "Smakar som piss filtrerat genom hö", which translates to "Tastes like piss filtered through hay", and then the tagline "Man vänjer sig", or "You'll get used to it" in Swedish.
Never forget the Matecalypse where the brewery ran low on bottles as the chaos communication congress basically ordered all of their production and it took some time to get the leergut back.
I can remember 31C3 (Back when it was still in the Congress Center in Hamburg), at the end of the congress somehow ending up in this absolutely huge warehouse type hall under the building where they collected all the empty bottles. I can distinctly remember being completely unable to fathom the amount of club mate bolltes stacked on pallets one after another after another. It was crazy
I was also told that one of the first times they were buying a lot of mate for a congress, the truck hauling it had an accident so there was virtually no club mate in the world for a very short period of time
I think there is no doubt the CCC made Mate big. All the coders were absolutely addicted. Also the people at CCC were the first who mixed it with alcohol.
I think they're afraid that some of their demographic would get turned off by any perceived "commercialization" of their underground beverage. Some people's logic is "if the product is good, it advertises itself". And hey, it seems to work here!
@@kralevic3297 no, its actually a thing of some breweries that they don't want to advertise and sell regional. The biggest beer in germany actually does the same, never saw an Öttinger Add. They have their fanbase, not based on adds but based on just the taste. So there is no ideology behind it, or political views, its just what it is, a tasty bev. Everyone who doesn't drink Öttinger would say its disgusting, but actually its quite good and cheap. There are more of that kind in germany. Schlitzer Schnaps f.e. is the oldest Destille in the world, but i never saw them do any adds out of their region.
@@domingo9679To be fair, the greater part of Oettinger's appeal comes from its low price, rather than its taste. But not advertising definitively helps with keeping the price low
I tried my first Club Mate almost exactly 10 years ago and I made the same experience: First I hated that "liquid ash tray" and then I started to love it. I also thought it was just some silly hipster trend thing from Berlin so it's really fascinating to find out now that this stuff is actually much older.
I am from the region where Club Mate produces their drinks and have been drinking it since I can remember. When I visited friends in Berlin they were like, have you southerner tried this new drink yet? It's very special and not everyone likes it, but *we* love it here. And presented me with a bottle of Club Mate
fun fact: there was an attempt by Coca-Cola Argentina to introduce a yerba mate flavored soda to the market in the early 2000's, but it was a complete and utter failure.
In Estonia its quite common, didn't know its not a pan-europe thing. Here you can buy it in most big stores and a few bars offer vodka-mate which is just a club mate bottle that has like 5cl taken out and a shot of vodka dropped in.
The wodka mate or how we like to call it turbo mate is a thing in some areas like Berlin, Leipzig and other cities too. The difference is that often you get the mate closed and have to drink a few sips from it or as much as you like and then the vodka gets poured in. In a lot of nice and alternative clubs they will just fill up the difference so you chose how strong it will be on your own (given that you're not a greedy one that drinks 3/4 of the bottle beforehand)
@totalmadnesman If you ever had the unfortunate experience of sipping from a beer with cigarette butts in it, you know how an ashtray really tastes. Mate is nowhere near that taste, it's just a bit smoky tasting.
I'm a Sri Lankan working in Singapore. Strange, I miss it too. There was one good Samaritan who brought it down on a small scale, a few years back. Me and my friend bought them in boxes of 12 or 24. But it turns out that was not sustainable. I hear there's one place still stocking it. Gotta pay a visit!
Club Mate also works well in Clubs here because they have multiple uses. You can get a Mate with Vodka right in the bottle: the barkeeper hands you thr freshly opened bottle, you take a sip and he tops it up with Vodka. You then finish your drink and can reuse the bottle as a water bottle, since it's important to stay hydrated during hours of dancing (and possibly taking substances). Beer bottles don't work as well for that, as they leave an unpleasant smell and taste in the tap water you fill the bottle with.
I found the club mate in a local store in sweden and i loved it but that was 5 - 6 years ago and it has not returned :(. I visited germany in 2022 and it was in every store and i just snatched it
I got into Club Mate during my first summer in grad school in Saarbrücken. It was one of the few beverages that the cafes actually refrigerated, so one could always get a cold fresh club mate for the walk across campus.
I’ve never seen or heard of Club Mate before in my life until my new roommate who has a raging Club Mate addiction moved in in March and now it’s everywhere
I drank Mate like two times in school - then I started studying, and there is a machine where you can buy Mate in the uni and I went to a bottle a day in the first semester xD
@@mz8258 one bottle (at least) per day was also my lifestyle for a long while - take my advice and take good care of your teeth! club mate tastes exceptionally good but the caramel is like poison for the teeth ;)
Well considering that most soda alternatives that make you wake up in a similar way taste like liquified gummi bears or contain tons of sugar its the perfect alternative for everyone who hates energy drinks and doesnt want diabetes from cola.
When I camp with friends, we sometimes make "bush mate" - brewed mate, simple syrup and citric acid, mixed in a 20L keg with water ice to chill and a chunk of dry ice to carbonate and maintain head pressure. Divine on the last day of a hot summer music festival
As a CCC member, I’ve been accustomed to this for decades and I make a face whenever someone offers me cola or energy drinks because they taste so extremely sweet. Nowadays, I’m a desk jockey and have CM delivered to my home by the crate once a month. Programs don't write themselves, after all.
I tried club mate first as a new student in Erlangen (near where it is produced) and in my dorm it was the only caffeinated beverage in the drinks machine. So I was almost forced to try it. I hated it (like so many others here). And then I bought it again. And again .And I never stopped. That was six years ago, I still love it :)
there is a traditional soda in brazil, called Mate-couro that was founded by germans in 1947, and is still the biggest selled guarana based soda in minas gerais state to this day, combining yerba mate, guarana and chapeu de couro(another stimulant plant)
Here in Brazil Mate is consumed as a tea too, it's mostly popular in Rio de Janeiro, you can find dozens of people selling fresh Mate tea with lemon juice by the beach and it's amazing. the most traditional way tho, is to consume the leaves packed in a "cuia" using a very specific tool that's a mix between a straw and a tea steeper; there's essentially two forms of this: "chimarrão" done with much finer and less roasted leaves and consumed hot (almost boiling water), and "tereré" which uses cold water (the colder, the better) and coarser leaves that have a longer toast time and a less vibrant green.
As a German (Middle - Franconian) Man I have to say that It´s very much liked here. We even have a Vending Machine in our small Village (Kaff) with it. It has to get restocked every week, we all love it! Thank you Club-Mate :D
For everyone outside of Germany, who reads this: He’s a Bavarian, Bavaria often portrays itself to be something better than the rest of Germany. The company that makes Club Mate is also from Bavaria. Who is surprised now that a small village there has the drink in a vending machine? Should be nobody. For comparison go to Thuringia and ask for Vita Cola. Every one knows it there because it’s the local specialty, and it even managed to remain dominant and fight Coca Cola. Ask a rando there about Club Mate, they might know it, or they may shrug or think you want to go drinking with them when pronounced in English. Thuringia is not some remote state, it’s right around the corner from Bavaria in the center of Germany. You can’t miss it, I’m not particularly affectionate with it, I just moved here. And mind you, who except absolute nerds and Bavarians would watch a video about the drink and comment here that it is super popular?
@@LiveWireBT Oh yes, ignorance is a disease, especially when you confuse Franconia with Bavaria and walk away proudly with your head held high. Honey the Franconians are not Bavarians and they are not proud of Bavaria. Most of the time they are rather proud when their place is mentioned, on the contrary they would like to have their own federal state back instead of standing in the shadow of Bavarians. Everyone who is proud of their heritage, their country, their state would be proud and comment. Seems like you neither value any of those things, but tat's fine, however don't spoil others people's feelings with your hatred, ignorance and negativity you grumpy cat.
@@LiveWireBT Vita Cola mit Club Mate zu vergleichen ist ja absolut dämlich. Club Mate ist bei weitem bekannter, aber wundert mich nicht wenn jemand aus Dunkeldeutschland noch nie davon gehört hat, da wurden vor 4 Jahren ja auch erst die Bananen eingeführt😂
OMG, I accidentally stumbled upon this soda in Google search like two days ago when I was looking for local Yerba Mate clubs! And now you made this video! Gonna watch now.
The brewery that invented "Club Mate" and produces it, is from the Nürnberg Area though (in northern bavaria). Club Mate has been very popular in this area for a long time. As mentioned in the video at 10:30. Calling it a Berliner traditional drink seems a bit weird.
literally me at 18; although I liked American spirit more. Can recommend halfzware like Drum if someone wants to try that; it’s similar: love on second inhale. 😅
As someone who's been living in Germany since 14 years and has lived in different regions, I would say that the drink is known by many but remains popular rather only in niched communities. If you go to a bar/restaurant you would almost never find it on the menu. It's mostly an alternative crowd who consumes it on a regular basis and I personally saw this drink the most at some concerts and alternative clubs. Would never actually say that this drink has a huge following. Most of the people who I know including myself were drinking it occasionally just because it felt special and had an uncommon taste but now it happens once in a year or so
From Germany myself only all kinds of leftist and university students drink it. I never saw other people drinking it that are not part of one (or often both) of these two groups.
62 year old living in Germany since 25 yrs. This carbonated drink isn't only prized by wealthy & obnoxious hipsters! It's existed here since the 1920s. Think of it as THE German soft drink!
This has to be my favourite Andong episode ever. I had no idea that Club Mate and CCC were a thing! Now that you mention it, I've never actually seen an ad for Club Mate, ever. Awesome work on this video!
In den Subkulturen des KOMM (Nürnberg) in den frühen 80ern gab es Bronte in der Kneipe, der Teestube und der Disco. Habe ich damals geliebt, schon sehr lange nicht mehr getrunken. Sollte ich mal wieder tun. Danke fürs Erinnern!
My first encounter with the drink was in 2006 at my first startup right after university, we had several crates of Club Mate, a pinch of RubyOnRails and the dream of becoming the next StudiVZ..
I live in Prague, and Club Mate is also very popular here. You can get it in almost any minimarket, small stores typically owned by Vietnamese people, known as Večerka or Potraviny in Czech. There is one of these stores every 3-4 blocks in urban areas. It is also well-known among students and people who study/work in arts or humanities. You could say it is connected to the hipster and alternative lifestyle.
Born in 1987 I was introduced to Club Mate only called „Bronte“ due to my Grandmother after a sunday walk in a Biergarten in about 1990. She was living in Großhabersdorf, a small town next to Dietenhofen. Loved it since! 😊
As a first time viewer: I much appreciate your very good english combined with the german pronunciation of german city names :D I find it disturbing how some german people butcher german words when speaking english (or trying to...). And, btw, the story is told very entertaining and informativ. Thank you.
first time I had club mate was when I went to the CCC in Muttenz (CH) (I think it was called The Raiff back then?) when I was 15 and they had their own mate vending machine with a self made payment system. it was THE drink for nerds but I've never seen it sold in any store there.
In Brazil we have a regional mate based soda called "Mate Couro", produced to this day in Minas Gerais state, in the city of Belo Horizonte. They say production started in 1947, I wonder if it was influenced by "club mate".
I'm an embedded engineer and occasional hardware hacker, so of course I know of Club Mate. It was a big thing in our student union. Although I personally never liked it.
fun fact: the original 0.5l Club Mate bottle that is usually sold in clubs to this day is basically the only bottle you know in advance will come with a lid you can screw back on which makes it ideal for keeping it throughout the night refilling it with tab water and to that extend as a method of consuming/sharing water soluble drugs such as mdma without the need to leave the dance floor to hide or line up at the toilets. so even if its not your fav drink you might end up getting one anyway. probably very unrelated fun fact: i remember it being really hard to get your hands on club mate in summer/festival season 2011 and when i asked at my local shop why they stopped selling it they told me they didnt but the factory ran out of empty bottles (in germany empty bottles are usually returned to factories via a buy-back system in shops). but this might just be an urban legend.
I‘m amazed you did not mention the story how Club Mate got to Berlin as famously told by Tim Pritlove to Holger Klein in Not Safe For Work around 2009. Because they pretty much pinpoint the introduction to one guy driving from Berlin to Löscher and back to introduce it into the techno scene.
I can understand the "no publicity/marketing" approach, since investing in those things can be a gamble more than an investment. In Costa Rica we have a brand that's been making root beer for decades and decades. Still popular, you can still find it in a lot of shops... but you don't see any ads, no ads, no marketing, no signs. Last thing I can think of is some ad on the telly 40 years ago. And it is still about the same price of almost any other fizzy drink. They also make syrups, usually used for snowcones, which is also just the snowcone vendors scraping a chunk of ice, not a product that is mass produced or advertised (other than the lad walking around with his cart).
Do you have the name of the drink/brand? Always interesting to know, any maybe sometime I will be at that place and remember the name when I read (and propably try) it)
I'm an Argentine and I'm drinking mate 🧉 right now, and in our markets we don't even have mate fizzy pops, mate soda is not a thing here, they tried once but flopped hard. I would like yerba mate drink ready to go, we don't even have those. It's either buy yerba mate as grounded leaves and you go through to the whole process of making a decent mate 🧉 or in tea bags, that's all there is, lol 😂.
I'm not Argentine, but loved it ever since a friend who's been to Paraguay and befriended a German-speaking local introduced it to me. Making a decent mate doesn't take so long, does it? compared to a decent tea or coffee.
If you have a SodaStream or something similar you can make it yourself. Make a mate, sweeten it to your taste, filter the leaves out when strong enoungh, cool down, then put it in the SodaStream bottle together with water. I would mix somewhere between 1:1 or 1:2 but thats more of a trial and error. Then carbonate with the SodaStream.
I think I you expect it to taste like real yerba mate you'll be disappointed. Club mate has a little of the mate tea taste, but it's like iced tea and black tea. Love both tho.
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 I mean is not a super long process but it is a little long, you are supposed to let the yerba saturate with water before taking the first sip, so you pour water in the yerba until it can no longer hold water, that takes like a good 8 minutes or longer, once all the little bits of yerba are fully hydrated (except for the little amount you leave in on top that purposefully stays dry) you start to drink, that's called waiting for the yerba to swell, in Spanish it's "esperar que la yerba se hinche", because once the thing is rehydrated properly the leaf literally swells up a little, and that's the boring waiting part. It's more like a Chinese tea ceremony type thing than a coffee thing. Hence why I'd love for a ready to go bottle that you can purchase in a store.
My band‘s practice room used to be next to a band called Stahlmagen who are such fans of Loscher that they even dedicated some songs to the beer. They had it in their practice room and ordered it on pallets.
Once I made a taste-test with 25 Mate versions and still likes the OG one most. And much more than other “Energy” Drinks, that taste like a bad Gum. But Yea, the first time I have drunk Mate, I was also thinking: “ugh, what's that taste” but since it was opened, I had to empty it, and thereafter, I was hooked. And it's much better than supporting an extreme right Bull.
Wien hier... ich kannte Mate dank den Panflöten-Bands, lange bevor ich das erste mal die Club Varietät kostete und verliebte mich, nicht in den Geschmack, aber die schöne Monica, die Schwester eines der Panflötenspieler, in ihr bestes Chili der Welt und echten Yerba Mate, samt Ritual mit Stahlstrohhalm und Kürbis. Leider war ich noch jung und dumm und sie mit Heimweh gesegnet, was die Beziehung leider enden ließ. Aber jeder Schluck Mate, ob als Club oder Tee, "sends me down Memory Lane" wie man so schön sagt
The New England region of the USA has something similar called 'Moxie', and I love it. When newbs ask me what it tastes like, I say; "it's like a cross between Root beer and evil." 😂
I got used to is during EuroPython (a programmers' conference) in Berlin, where there was unlimited supply for the participants. Now I get a couple of bottles every time I find them when visiting Germany or Austria.
Interesting video! I love these types of products with an interesting backstory which you don't usually get to know. I'm gonna try to get my hands on a bottle, so their marketing strategy of "no marketing" has worked
I did hear of Club Mate and it it sold sometimes here in Poland. The problem is that is is rather expensive when compared to coca-cola or other drinks.
Only makes sense, Loscher is a small company and it’s only produced there plus it needs to be shipped to poland. Coca cola and the likes are big global companies with a tight distribution net and factories everywhere. I’m sure there a cool local sodas in Poland as well that are cheaper.
@@murti1565 one point of the polish border, yes but poland is bigger than just it's border to Germany. also typically the distribution is taken over by other companies who also want their share, all that makes it more expensive
I lived in Berlin for a while in 2014 and we almost always had a Club Mate before going out for a night at the bars. I found it once after coming back to Canada and it definitely brought the nostalgia
So essentially the first rule of Club Mate is you don't talk about Club Mate. The second rule of Club Mate is you don't talk about Club Mate. Got it. :)
I have to admit that I like MioMio Mate better. But I still don't regect a delightful Club Mate. (Preferably the ice tea version) I'am happy that someone finally did a video about the history of the Mate Soda in english so other parts of the world can here from it.
I came into contact with it 10 years ago in an alternative music bar in my hometown Vilnius, Lithuania. It was a very trendy drink and every hipster place would have it.
that stuff cant be killed in germany anymore, it just doesnt go away and any corner store, cafe, club or bar that doesn't serve it will feel that in their cash register.
@@weazelzinacan8866 Yerba Mate is from the entire Guaraní region (Named after the Guaraní natives) of the Paraná, Iguazú and Uruguay rivers, the Guaraní region includes the entire Paraguay, South of Brasil, west of Uruguay (they are the most drinkers per capita) and north of Argentina. The paraguayans drinks cold mate, but Argentinians, Brasilians and uruguayans drinks hot mate.
bin zum ersten Mal auf Club Mate gestoßen als ich 2004 zum ersten Mal zum Berliner Wikipedia-Stammtisch in die C-Base (Chaos Computer Club) gegangen bin. War eigentlich auch sofort sehr angetan von diesem Getränk :) Hätte nicht gedacht, dass Club Mate da schon so lange Bestandteil der "Szene" war.
i remember coming back from 2 years australia to germany in 2012 and everybody was suddenly drinking this in the clubs so i tried and i seriously coulndt believe. im one of those people that only taste cigarette water in this. disgusting.
So, I didn't know club mate was German! Having lived in Switzerland, this is where I encountered it (and even then, my personal go-to is El Tony, a mate fizzy drink brand worth trying!) but that being said, it's so cool to see how a drink uniquely symbolises the evolving identity that characterises Germany in a simple and sociable way! Alcohol-free, weee!
I already drank the traditional mate tee before tasting club mate, so for me it was like a much milder version and I instantly loved it. I remember one summer when they had a supply and demand issue for a while. The brewery decided to not deliver to the big stores like Real and Kaufland in favor of supplying all ths small Spätis. I really appreciated that. Thank you for exploring it´s history.
I am from Zurich and I have 10 cases of Club Mate at home. Most beverage deliveries these days carry it and you get them at Coop. At work they provide Mate as well but it is the El Tony brand that is making a lot of marketing.
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Have you ever tried Club Mate and what do you think? Oh and for the record, the company was super nice when I reached out. I have a lot of respect for their brand strategy! 🙌
club mate tastes like cigarette tray. miomio mate tastes much better
Imho, it tastes like a** and no one out of Berlin ever drinks it 😅
I think it tastes atrociously disgusting. But tastes famously differ
Yes, Club-Mate was my go-to energy drink during my studies at university (an no, not in Berlin). Still like it very much, the original ist the best. If you want to taste a real ash-tray variant, try Fritz Mate - but I think that's too much. Thanks for the historical background on Club-Mate, very interesting!
I am from North America. I had club mate in Berlin over a decade ago and have been missing it ever since.
I remember when Club-Mate just started getting big and pretty much every Mate Fan back then introduced the drink to me with the same words: "You get used to it"
Not really that odd, considering "... man gewöhnt sich daran!" was a common slogan they used for a while.
That‘s how the word spread about the drink at Chaos Computer Club events… I remember my first time, at the Chaos Communication Congress 2003 in Berlin when a good friend of mine told me to try it. He of course assured me that I‘ll "get used to it", and I really did.
@@SylverArcYou want to get used to it you just don't know it yet.
@@SylverArc with that attitude, you‘ll never acquire the taste for, well, acquired tastes. Some foods and drinks just need getting used to before they become enjoyable.
@@SylverArc that was also my first impression. Like an ashtray filled to the brim after heavy rain
First sip: "Ugh, it's like licking an ash tray!"
Second sip: "Ah yes, flow right into me, you heavenly refreshment"
Just like unsweetened Cocoa or Coffee
Too real honestly
@@2failepiconly horrible cocoa and coffee tastes like that, it happens when the roast gets fucked up
drinking coffee and beer for first time is kinda similar experience
I never understood that ashtray reference.
A little side story for you: I´m from franconia, and here we drank it as school kids almost every day in our favorite cafe after classes (I was 14 or 15, I think). Years later, after even bringing it to the barracks for my military service time, I decided to move to Berlin for a while. Imagine my surprise and amusement when some friends in this city showed me a bottle of Club Mate stating that "this is something so damn new and cool, you guy from the countryside surely don´t know this stuff".
Thank you for mentioning that! As a fellow Franconian I got to drink it at a youth club for the first time and then it was my go to drink during studying for my A levels. So I really feel the sentiment!
While I was going to Uni it became the popular drink, it is now!
last sentence called your story out bullshit sorry dude =)
i got his e mail and old adress he is lying :D :D
@@pentu7738 Who do you talk about? And why should anyone lie
I kumm a aus Mittelfranken und mia nenna des immerno Bronde und wehe es bringt anner so an Mio Mio wisch mit
If you go out in Berlin (or Leipzig) and order a Wodka-Mate, they give you a whole bottle. You are supposed to open it, drink as much as you like, hand it back to the barkeeper and they fill the empty space with wodka. Just wanted to tell because sometimes I've seen foreigners getting confused by that and just leave the bar without liquor in their drink 😂
Turbomate is the correct term😘
@@dh-qp5it trinkt lieber Tschunk
Tastes even better with Polish Żubrówka - marketed in Germany as Grasovka (Büffelgrasvodka). Probier's mal aus! 🙂👍
First time I went to a techno party when I started my phd in leipzig (almost 6 years ago now), I order a turbomate off the catalogue, the bartender gives me the bottle and my friend says chug. I'm like, sure, OK and I just down half the bottle cause I was thirsty anyway. She takes it back and to my utter amazement fills it back to the top with just wodka. "7 euros please". I think I just stood there for like a couple of mins, trying to comprehend what had just happened, while my friend laughed his ass off.
Arent there people who leave just a sip of mate to have full bottle of Wodka? Just curious how they handle stuff like that.
Hugo Obst is a great name for a producer of soft drinks.
Dude also looked like a top model in his designer suit, as far as you can make out on that old black & white photo.
You could say Hugo looked like.. A boss 🙃
Well yeah, but a Hugo isn't a soft drink.😊
@@tubybubiBut Obst means fruits in German.
@@raempftlbut Obstler is a hard liquor.
"Spezialitäten und Geheimmittel" klingt wie ein Buch, in dem auch der Zaubertrank von Mirakulix drin steht
Har jemand das Buch zuhause? Bin interessiert.
I am a manager of a really big techno club in the Netherlands, and I am also from the south of Brasil! So much to my surprise, when I started working there a few years ago I was shocked that the drink of my people (called Chimarrão in Rio Grande Do Sul) was being drank religiously by the Dutchies! I had always wondered and discussed with people as to what the origins of this bottled version of Chimarrão came from and now one of my favorite UA-camrs did a deep dive, so big big love!!
Isn't chimarrão completely different from argentinian yerba mate?
@@moistschmeckles400 It's the same thing. "Yerba Mate" in Spanish or "Erva Mate" in Portuguese literally translates to "Mate Herb", so it's the name of the actual plant. "Chimarrão" how we call in Brazil the drink (tea) made from Erva Mate. In Argentina, as far as I am aware, they don't have a specific name for the drink itself and just call it Mate.
@@samethingsmakeuslaughmakeuscry ok thanks for explaining, i associate chimarrão with that light green drink from the yerba mate lab YT channel, i imagine that it tastes different from argentinian mate (i only ever drink argentinian or uruguayan mate so i don't really know)
You're a big guy
Waar zit je club?
Nice to hear that everyones first encounter with that drink started with an "uh, that tastes like an ashtray" and a friend telling you "you'll get used to it"
When I first went to Uni back in 2012, our canteen was covered in posters in the iconic Club-Mate yellow with minimal branding and the simple statement "Man gewöhnt sich dran.", translating to "You'll get used to it.". Not only is it the most honest and fitting description to the experience of drinking it for the very first time, it is also the one and only marketing campaign I've seen for the brand (I don't even know whether it was official or some DIY stunt) and it has stuck wit me for well over 10 years now.
According to an episode of Karambolage by arte, they advertised Club Mate in Bavaria with this slogan before it became a thing in Berlin
@@krepieri Smart of them to test it down south first to see if the rest of germany would be cool with mate, because if it lands down there, it will sell anywhere.
@@Dave1507 Apparently it is, to this day, not successful in southern Germany (even though, you can buy it at least in bigger cities)
@@krepieri Do they know it's basically traditional, I mean, 100 years old and all that?
@@krepieriit probably isn't as popular and trust me, like 10, 15 years ago nobody has heared of this stuff down here, but that has changed. You can find it almost anywwhere now. Maybe not In a small kiosk, but most supermarkets offer it. To my delight.
Its rumored Club Mate was created when the inventor accidentally drank from the water bottle that everyone was putting their cigarette ash into all night
hehe you never tried schlenkerla rauchbier from bamberg- obviously :D
@@tygrr5854 Ah yes, bacon in a bottle…
i did that, once
@@tygrr5854 Yeah but that doesnt taste like cigarettes ripened in a gallon can, but like smoked ham/bacon in a bottle which is actually pretty decent.
My neighbor did that and he had to be hospitalized
We have Club Mate in Poland in few shops and it is just like you've said - it takes few tries to get to like it, but when it finally hits you, it quickly becomes one of your favourite drinks to have.
I've heard that Poland is third by scale market for yerba mate after South America and Syria, so Poles shall have their palate ready for yerba-based pop
it's also being served in a lot of .. clubs here. Kept me going for more than one night out
That's what you call Coffeine addiction.
A german dude made a Club-Mate clone here in Brazil called Baer-Mate, their slogan is "love in the second sip"... We do have other refreshing beverages based on mate but their usually thicker and sweeter, almost like a mate syrup, Baer-Mate is the only one more watery and fizzier, like the german ones
i have tried baer mate its the closest thing to club mate in Brasil but the drink also has some apple flavor (like Apfelschorle), soo i dont really drink it. I wish they had ClubMate in Brasil.
It's so fun to learn about different beverages in Germany! Have you ever considered doing a video on Spezi? As someone outside of Germany, I fell in love with it (particularly the Paulaner variant), and was a bit curious of the history of it and how it became so popular! Tried sharing/promoting it to my friends and none were swayed by it, but I am amazed by the popularity in the German speaking countries. I guess the 'cooking' side of thing are either too simple or too tedious, but still like your insight into its history and popularity would be fascinating for me!
Spezi from my point of view was a mix offered in restaurants and bars first, then came Mezzo (Coka Cola) and Schwipp Schwapp (? I think, or it must have been something else from Pepsi) in typical 1,5 liter PET bottles. I was surprised to find 0,5 or 0,75 liter glass bottles which actually read Spezi in Munich and Bavaria. These days I’m very annoyed by (new?) Krombacher ads with supposedly trendy people implying everyone is „different“ and everyone who is should drink their (new) Spezi. Feels like a Monty Python joke made by gen Z marketers who think of themselves as geniuses for adding orange juice flavor to cola and never having watched Monty Python or would be actually offended by them despite all claims of being so progressive.
That's the true trendy soda and a Bavarian national (guilty) pleasure.
As an Argentinian software developer this video was so interesting and comical to see. Mate is the go-to drink for productivity, when working or studying, alone or in a group.
You can also see it used by athlets such as soccer players.
I'm glad to see another yerba mate is being used and enjoyed in other parts of the world.
That’s so nice to hear. Yes still to this day in German universities, especially amongst the computer science students, you see a lot of (club) mate.. recently a friend from Latin America brought fresh mate for us to taste and it definitely tasted really refreshing and I enjoyed it..
From what I know from Argentinians, mate seems to be the go-to drink for every single thing.
Greetings from a German software developer who got stuck on Piporé some years ago.
Someone who lives about 15 Minutes from Dietenhofen and 25 Minutes away from Loscher Brewery here.
I always wondered why we call Club Mate Bronte so thanks for teaching me the origin of the name!
Also there's been an urban legend that Club Mate was invented by a Pharmacist from Dietenhofen who then sold the patent to Loscher for like 150€. I guess this is now debunked.
The shot against Loscher beer at the end made me laugh, because there's a "rivalry" going on amongst citizens between Hofmann and Loscher as they're the bigger breweries in the district (Landkreis) and only 5 km apart. There a jokes that Loscher wouldn't survive without Bronte and the beer only used to clean dishes haha.
The owner of Geola in Dietenhofen got really old and retired in the 90s (and he was the husband of the daughter of one of the original Club Mate suppliers from the 30s I believe) so there is a kernel of truth in the legend :)
I am from Dietenhofen and i always asked where "Bronte" comes from, too😅
Nearly everyone in our region calls it like this 😂
@@mynameisandong Fun fact, I've done an internship in the Seniorenresidenz Dietenhofen and I met the daughter you are talking about, Frau Sauernheimer there :)
Club-Mate is the goddamned nectar of the gods and it's pissing me off that I've only managed to get my local grocery store here in Sweden to import it ONCE.
Aside: Club-Mate have actually made ads here as far as I'm concerned. There are a few images floating around from a skate magazine with a full page spread picturing a bottle with the copy "Smakar som piss filtrerat genom hö", which translates to "Tastes like piss filtered through hay", and then the tagline "Man vänjer sig", or "You'll get used to it" in Swedish.
"piss filtered trough hay" 😂 you got me rolling there on the floor😂
ICA Focus at korsvägen in Gothenborg sells it, or at least sold it a while ago.
In Stockholm it's sold in lots of places. Not that I would buy it though. "Tastes like piss filtered through hay" is a spot on description 😄
do you remember which skatemagazine it was?
@@maroon2k nah you'll eventually love it
Never forget the Matecalypse where the brewery ran low on bottles as the chaos communication congress basically ordered all of their production and it took some time to get the leergut back.
That was a very dark time for me. I was writing my bachelors thesis and there was no mate in and around the city.
Lol. Mate prohibition hits hard @@cx019
I can remember 31C3 (Back when it was still in the Congress Center in Hamburg), at the end of the congress somehow ending up in this absolutely huge warehouse type hall under the building where they collected all the empty bottles. I can distinctly remember being completely unable to fathom the amount of club mate bolltes stacked on pallets one after another after another. It was crazy
I was also told that one of the first times they were buying a lot of mate for a congress, the truck hauling it had an accident so there was virtually no club mate in the world for a very short period of time
I think there is no doubt the CCC made Mate big. All the coders were absolutely addicted. Also the people at CCC were the first who mixed it with alcohol.
"I tired talking to em and they didn't want to do any advertisement"
"Hue hue hue he will do free advertising for us"
Yeah, you'd think that. But they're actually not advertising at all, nowhere.
4D Marketing
I think they're afraid that some of their demographic would get turned off by any perceived "commercialization" of their underground beverage. Some people's logic is "if the product is good, it advertises itself". And hey, it seems to work here!
@@kralevic3297 no, its actually a thing of some breweries that they don't want to advertise and sell regional. The biggest beer in germany actually does the same, never saw an Öttinger Add. They have their fanbase, not based on adds but based on just the taste. So there is no ideology behind it, or political views, its just what it is, a tasty bev. Everyone who doesn't drink Öttinger would say its disgusting, but actually its quite good and cheap. There are more of that kind in germany. Schlitzer Schnaps f.e. is the oldest Destille in the world, but i never saw them do any adds out of their region.
@@domingo9679To be fair, the greater part of Oettinger's appeal comes from its low price, rather than its taste. But not advertising definitively helps with keeping the price low
I tried my first Club Mate almost exactly 10 years ago and I made the same experience: First I hated that "liquid ash tray" and then I started to love it. I also thought it was just some silly hipster trend thing from Berlin so it's really fascinating to find out now that this stuff is actually much older.
to be fair, that fits the whole hipster thing^^
I am from the region where Club Mate produces their drinks and have been drinking it since I can remember.
When I visited friends in Berlin they were like, have you southerner tried this new drink yet? It's very special and not everyone likes it, but *we* love it here. And presented me with a bottle of Club Mate
fun fact: there was an attempt by Coca-Cola Argentina to introduce a yerba mate flavored soda to the market in the early 2000's, but it was a complete and utter failure.
Why did it fail?
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 It tasted like liquid dirt.
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 Think about it, would the british buy an English Tea flavored soda? Don't think so, people are used to drinking the real thing
@@erzsebetkovacs2527We like to drink the real stuff.
My Argentinan friend loves club mate, fortunately they export to costa rica by now😁
In Estonia its quite common, didn't know its not a pan-europe thing.
Here you can buy it in most big stores and a few bars offer vodka-mate which is just a club mate bottle that has like 5cl taken out and a shot of vodka dropped in.
The wodka mate or how we like to call it turbo mate is a thing in some areas like Berlin, Leipzig and other cities too. The difference is that often you get the mate closed and have to drink a few sips from it or as much as you like and then the vodka gets poured in. In a lot of nice and alternative clubs they will just fill up the difference so you chose how strong it will be on your own (given that you're not a greedy one that drinks 3/4 of the bottle beforehand)
I’m on holiday in Germany (but unfortunately not as far as Berlin) in August and now I have something else I need to try. Perfect timing.
Don´t worry you can get it in every cornerstore
Don' it tastes like a wet ashtray.
@@totalmadnesman But it's a wet ashtray you'll eventually want to taste again.
Make sure to drink it ice cold, that's when it's at its best
@totalmadnesman If you ever had the unfortunate experience of sipping from a beer with cigarette butts in it, you know how an ashtray really tastes. Mate is nowhere near that taste, it's just a bit smoky tasting.
I am a German working in Sri Lanka and I miss my Club Mate almost every day!
So sad that we can’t get it here.
Awesome video!
I'm a Sri Lankan working in Singapore. Strange, I miss it too. There was one good Samaritan who brought it down on a small scale, a few years back. Me and my friend bought them in boxes of 12 or 24. But it turns out that was not sustainable. I hear there's one place still stocking it. Gotta pay a visit!
Club Mate ist einfach nur göttlich. Bestes Getränk für das ganze Jahr, kann aber ziemlich süchtig machen!
Bah Digga 🚬
Club Mate also works well in Clubs here because they have multiple uses. You can get a Mate with Vodka right in the bottle: the barkeeper hands you thr freshly opened bottle, you take a sip and he tops it up with Vodka. You then finish your drink and can reuse the bottle as a water bottle, since it's important to stay hydrated during hours of dancing (and possibly taking substances). Beer bottles don't work as well for that, as they leave an unpleasant smell and taste in the tap water you fill the bottle with.
Club Mate, just the name brings me back to some industrial warehouse rave in Berlin ca 2010.
Same but with punk concerts in an alternative collective.
There were still warehouse raves in 2010 Berlin? I thought they already were extinct in the late 2000s.
for me it is around 5-7 years later in berliner cafes and in the park. good old nostalgia
Als Raucher ist der Aschenbecher Taste eigentlich wirklich göttliche Geschmackswahl für Club Geher mit doppelabhängigkeiten xD
I found the club mate in a local store in sweden and i loved it but that was 5 - 6 years ago and it has not returned :(. I visited germany in 2022 and it was in every store and i just snatched it
I got into Club Mate during my first summer in grad school in Saarbrücken. It was one of the few beverages that the cafes actually refrigerated, so one could always get a cold fresh club mate for the walk across campus.
I’ve never seen or heard of Club Mate before in my life until my new roommate who has a raging Club Mate addiction moved in in March and now it’s everywhere
I drank Mate like two times in school - then I started studying, and there is a machine where you can buy Mate in the uni and I went to a bottle a day in the first semester xD
@@mz8258 one bottle (at least) per day was also my lifestyle for a long while - take my advice and take good care of your teeth! club mate tastes exceptionally good but the caramel is like poison for the teeth ;)
Im from Argentina and blows my mind that a yerba mate drink is so popular up there.
Well considering that most soda alternatives that make you wake up in a similar way taste like liquified gummi bears or contain tons of sugar its the perfect alternative for everyone who hates energy drinks and doesnt want diabetes from cola.
no it isn't, soda is popular. The ssssherba is just secondary, kurepa.
When I camp with friends, we sometimes make "bush mate" - brewed mate, simple syrup and citric acid, mixed in a 20L keg with water ice to chill and a chunk of dry ice to carbonate and maintain head pressure. Divine on the last day of a hot summer music festival
As a CCC member, I’ve been accustomed to this for decades and I make a face whenever someone offers me cola or energy drinks because they taste so extremely sweet.
Nowadays, I’m a desk jockey and have CM delivered to my home by the crate once a month. Programs don't write themselves, after all.
Fellow hackers in the comment section, nice
I tried club mate first as a new student in Erlangen (near where it is produced) and in my dorm it was the only caffeinated beverage in the drinks machine. So I was almost forced to try it. I hated it (like so many others here). And then I bought it again. And again .And I never stopped. That was six years ago, I still love it :)
there is a traditional soda in brazil, called Mate-couro that was founded by germans in 1947, and is still the biggest selled guarana based soda in minas gerais state to this day, combining yerba mate, guarana and chapeu de couro(another stimulant plant)
I don't understand, why so many people compare Club Mate to ashtrays. It tastes a lot more like a carbonated sock extract.
Don’t you mean cardboardated
nah, smoky prune juice
@@tuffandco3745ha you're the first commenter, that said what I always thought: it tastes like sucking on a cardboard that was left in the rain
Here in Brazil Mate is consumed as a tea too, it's mostly popular in Rio de Janeiro, you can find dozens of people selling fresh Mate tea with lemon juice by the beach and it's amazing. the most traditional way tho, is to consume the leaves packed in a "cuia" using a very specific tool that's a mix between a straw and a tea steeper; there's essentially two forms of this: "chimarrão" done with much finer and less roasted leaves and consumed hot (almost boiling water), and "tereré" which uses cold water (the colder, the better) and coarser leaves that have a longer toast time and a less vibrant green.
As a German (Middle - Franconian) Man I have to say that It´s very much liked here. We even have a Vending Machine in our small Village (Kaff) with it. It has to get restocked every week, we all love it! Thank you Club-Mate :D
For everyone outside of Germany, who reads this: He’s a Bavarian, Bavaria often portrays itself to be something better than the rest of Germany. The company that makes Club Mate is also from Bavaria. Who is surprised now that a small village there has the drink in a vending machine? Should be nobody. For comparison go to Thuringia and ask for Vita Cola. Every one knows it there because it’s the local specialty, and it even managed to remain dominant and fight Coca Cola. Ask a rando there about Club Mate, they might know it, or they may shrug or think you want to go drinking with them when pronounced in English. Thuringia is not some remote state, it’s right around the corner from Bavaria in the center of Germany. You can’t miss it, I’m not particularly affectionate with it, I just moved here.
And mind you, who except absolute nerds and Bavarians would watch a video about the drink and comment here that it is super popular?
@@LiveWireBT it was information for anyone outside of Germany, Our Village has 15 people, it's the only vending machine here...
@@LiveWireBT Oh yes, ignorance is a disease, especially when you confuse Franconia with Bavaria and walk away proudly with your head held high.
Honey the Franconians are not Bavarians and they are not proud of Bavaria. Most of the time they are rather proud when their place is mentioned, on the contrary they would like to have their own federal state back instead of standing in the shadow of Bavarians.
Everyone who is proud of their heritage, their country, their state would be proud and comment.
Seems like you neither value any of those things, but tat's fine, however don't spoil others people's feelings with your hatred, ignorance and negativity you grumpy cat.
@@LiveWireBT Vita Cola mit Club Mate zu vergleichen ist ja absolut dämlich. Club Mate ist bei weitem bekannter, aber wundert mich nicht wenn jemand aus Dunkeldeutschland noch nie davon gehört hat, da wurden vor 4 Jahren ja auch erst die Bananen eingeführt😂
OMG, I accidentally stumbled upon this soda in Google search like two days ago when I was looking for local Yerba Mate clubs! And now you made this video! Gonna watch now.
Every time someone asks me "is that beer?" in a video call, I'll reply "that's a Berlin's traditional drink"
So Berliner Weisse?
@@ArthurKhazbs _other_ Berlin's traditional drink
@@mynameiswhm So Berliner Luft? ;)
@@crazy-tommy nice addition to (after) Club-Mate ;)
The brewery that invented "Club Mate" and produces it, is from the Nürnberg Area though (in northern bavaria). Club Mate has been very popular in this area for a long time. As mentioned in the video at 10:30. Calling it a Berliner traditional drink seems a bit weird.
Any German student: Club Mate, beige corduroys, Gizeh filters, Pueblo tobacco
literally me at 18; although I liked American spirit more. Can recommend halfzware like Drum if someone wants to try that; it’s similar: love on second inhale. 😅
I was like: Club Mate, Gizeh Filters, camo shorts and Pepe tobacco. Pepe still is my favorite
It's literally the same in Poland. Cheers from Kraków ❤
@@arbuz_kawon we love you bobr kurwa from berlin my fellow european
Blue corduroys, no filter, Drum, but yeah, basically. Yeah.
As someone who's been living in Germany since 14 years and has lived in different regions, I would say that the drink is known by many but remains popular rather only in niched communities. If you go to a bar/restaurant you would almost never find it on the menu. It's mostly an alternative crowd who consumes it on a regular basis and I personally saw this drink the most at some concerts and alternative clubs. Would never actually say that this drink has a huge following. Most of the people who I know including myself were drinking it occasionally just because it felt special and had an uncommon taste but now it happens once in a year or so
From Germany myself only all kinds of leftist and university students drink it. I never saw other people drinking it that are not part of one (or often both) of these two groups.
I drink two bottles of Mio Mio Mate every day for the last 10 years and probably until I die.
62 year old living in Germany since 25 yrs. This carbonated drink isn't only prized by wealthy & obnoxious hipsters! It's existed here since the 1920s. Think of it as THE German soft drink!
This has to be my favourite Andong episode ever. I had no idea that Club Mate and CCC were a thing! Now that you mention it, I've never actually seen an ad for Club Mate, ever. Awesome work on this video!
In den Subkulturen des KOMM (Nürnberg) in den frühen 80ern gab es Bronte in der Kneipe, der Teestube und der Disco. Habe ich damals geliebt, schon sehr lange nicht mehr getrunken. Sollte ich mal wieder tun. Danke fürs Erinnern!
In Frankonia it's still called Bronte sometimes
Ah, yes! Food history lesson with Andong is back!
My first encounter with the drink was in 2006 at my first startup right after university, we had several crates of Club Mate, a pinch of RubyOnRails and the dream of becoming the next StudiVZ..
I live in Prague, and Club Mate is also very popular here. You can get it in almost any minimarket, small stores typically owned by Vietnamese people, known as Večerka or Potraviny in Czech. There is one of these stores every 3-4 blocks in urban areas. It is also well-known among students and people who study/work in arts or humanities. You could say it is connected to the hipster and alternative lifestyle.
Very cool to know more of matte outside of south America, I drink matte tea everyday in here, never thought it would be a thing in Germany
Born in 1987 I was introduced to Club Mate only called „Bronte“ due to my Grandmother after a sunday walk in a Biergarten in about 1990. She was living in Großhabersdorf, a small town next to Dietenhofen. Loved it since! 😊
As a first time viewer: I much appreciate your very good english combined with the german pronunciation of german city names :D I find it disturbing how some german people butcher german words when speaking english (or trying to...).
And, btw, the story is told very entertaining and informativ. Thank you.
Club Mate is big thing in Czechia and Prague for more than 10 year, i love it too :)
first time I had club mate was when I went to the CCC in Muttenz (CH) (I think it was called The Raiff back then?) when I was 15 and they had their own mate vending machine with a self made payment system. it was THE drink for nerds but I've never seen it sold in any store there.
In Brazil we have a regional mate based soda called "Mate Couro", produced to this day in Minas Gerais state, in the city of Belo Horizonte. They say production started in 1947, I wonder if it was influenced by "club mate".
I looked it up and it also has e chapéu de couro (Echinodorus grandiflorus) listed as an ingredient. I wonder what it tastes like.
Belo Horizonte was also the place where the German national team stayed during the World Cup.
I'm an embedded engineer and occasional hardware hacker, so of course I know of Club Mate. It was a big thing in our student union. Although I personally never liked it.
fun fact: the original 0.5l Club Mate bottle that is usually sold in clubs to this day is basically the only bottle you know in advance will come with a lid you can screw back on which makes it ideal for keeping it throughout the night refilling it with tab water and to that extend as a method of consuming/sharing water soluble drugs such as mdma without the need to leave the dance floor to hide or line up at the toilets. so even if its not your fav drink you might end up getting one anyway.
probably very unrelated fun fact: i remember it being really hard to get your hands on club mate in summer/festival season 2011 and when i asked at my local shop why they stopped selling it they told me they didnt but the factory ran out of empty bottles (in germany empty bottles are usually returned to factories via a buy-back system in shops). but this might just be an urban legend.
I‘m amazed you did not mention the story how Club Mate got to Berlin as famously told by Tim Pritlove to Holger Klein in Not Safe For Work around 2009. Because they pretty much pinpoint the introduction to one guy driving from Berlin to Löscher and back to introduce it into the techno scene.
I can understand the "no publicity/marketing" approach, since investing in those things can be a gamble more than an investment. In Costa Rica we have a brand that's been making root beer for decades and decades. Still popular, you can still find it in a lot of shops... but you don't see any ads, no ads, no marketing, no signs. Last thing I can think of is some ad on the telly 40 years ago. And it is still about the same price of almost any other fizzy drink. They also make syrups, usually used for snowcones, which is also just the snowcone vendors scraping a chunk of ice, not a product that is mass produced or advertised (other than the lad walking around with his cart).
Do you have the name of the drink/brand? Always interesting to know, any maybe sometime I will be at that place and remember the name when I read (and propably try) it)
@@kleator That'd be Cruz Blanca, zarzaparrilla (that's the name for root beer in Spanish)
I'm an Argentine and I'm drinking mate 🧉 right now, and in our markets we don't even have mate fizzy pops, mate soda is not a thing here, they tried once but flopped hard. I would like yerba mate drink ready to go, we don't even have those. It's either buy yerba mate as grounded leaves and you go through to the whole process of making a decent mate 🧉 or in tea bags, that's all there is, lol 😂.
I'm not Argentine, but loved it ever since a friend who's been to Paraguay and befriended a German-speaking local introduced it to me. Making a decent mate doesn't take so long, does it? compared to a decent tea or coffee.
If you have a SodaStream or something similar you can make it yourself. Make a mate, sweeten it to your taste, filter the leaves out when strong enoungh, cool down, then put it in the SodaStream bottle together with water. I would mix somewhere between 1:1 or 1:2 but thats more of a trial and error. Then carbonate with the SodaStream.
I'd like to have it as an option, but drinking a traditional mate every day is a must!
I think I you expect it to taste like real yerba mate you'll be disappointed. Club mate has a little of the mate tea taste, but it's like iced tea and black tea. Love both tho.
@@erzsebetkovacs2527 I mean is not a super long process but it is a little long, you are supposed to let the yerba saturate with water before taking the first sip, so you pour water in the yerba until it can no longer hold water, that takes like a good 8 minutes or longer, once all the little bits of yerba are fully hydrated (except for the little amount you leave in on top that purposefully stays dry) you start to drink, that's called waiting for the yerba to swell, in Spanish it's "esperar que la yerba se hinche", because once the thing is rehydrated properly the leaf literally swells up a little, and that's the boring waiting part. It's more like a Chinese tea ceremony type thing than a coffee thing. Hence why I'd love for a ready to go bottle that you can purchase in a store.
My band‘s practice room used to be next to a band called Stahlmagen who are such fans of Loscher that they even dedicated some songs to the beer. They had it in their practice room and ordered it on pallets.
Just ordered one bottle for next weeks groceries. The Albert Heijn in the Netherlands sells it😂.
I am from a city close to the "Loscher"-Brewery. My friends an I still say today: Vodka-Bronte to name this party drink ;)
turbo mate
Honestly, vodka is terrible in club mate. If you want a deep dive into hacker culture, Google Tschunk
I first came into contact with Club Mate in 2003. It was sold in the computer science institute (or rather it's cafeteria) where I studied.
original from southeast brazil, paraguay, northeast argentina and uruguay
Once I made a taste-test with 25 Mate versions and still likes the OG one most. And much more than other “Energy” Drinks, that taste like a bad Gum. But Yea, the first time I have drunk Mate, I was also thinking: “ugh, what's that taste” but since it was opened, I had to empty it, and thereafter, I was hooked. And it's much better than supporting an extreme right Bull.
I have been regaling unwilling listeners who never asked with these facts for years, it's just such a unique and fascinating drink
6:47 reading this advert with 100-year Polish grammar hurts me so bad.
Dietenhofen is a small village next to my hometown.
I think i was three years old when i tried bronte for the first time and nowadays i'm addicted.
Wien hier... ich kannte Mate dank den Panflöten-Bands, lange bevor ich das erste mal die Club Varietät kostete und verliebte mich, nicht in den Geschmack, aber die schöne Monica, die Schwester eines der Panflötenspieler, in ihr bestes Chili der Welt und echten Yerba Mate, samt Ritual mit Stahlstrohhalm und Kürbis. Leider war ich noch jung und dumm und sie mit Heimweh gesegnet, was die Beziehung leider enden ließ.
Aber jeder Schluck Mate, ob als Club oder Tee, "sends me down Memory Lane" wie man so schön sagt
Das englische Zitat am Ende hat bestätigt, dass du Wiener bist...
For anyone in the US who would like to try it, it's sold at World Market
The New England region of the USA has something similar called 'Moxie', and I love it.
When newbs ask me what it tastes like, I say; "it's like a cross between Root beer and evil." 😂
It genuinely helps not the breathe when drinking it.
I drink Moxie like water and I’m from NH.
As a Brazilian, you can imagine my surprised when I moved to Germany and realized that mate drinks are as popular here as they are in Brazil
It's available online in the US. I'm tempted to order myself some.
get the "Ice-T" edition, that should do the trick for your sugar levels over there. and you'll need to drink a few until you can really enjoy it!
Do it!
Ice T version sucks!
@@oOZanlanOo correct. Way too sweet.
@@oOZanlanOo It's disgusting.
I got used to is during EuroPython (a programmers' conference) in Berlin, where there was unlimited supply for the participants. Now I get a couple of bottles every time I find them when visiting Germany or Austria.
Interesting video! I love these types of products with an interesting backstory which you don't usually get to know. I'm gonna try to get my hands on a bottle, so their marketing strategy of "no marketing" has worked
I've had it in Berlin a few years ago and liked it. This summer, I've noticed it everywhere in Amsterdam. In a few months, it'll be all over here
I did hear of Club Mate and it it sold sometimes here in Poland. The problem is that is is rather expensive when compared to coca-cola or other drinks.
in germany its 0.75€ - 0.85€ + 15 Cent deposit (Pfand) at the supermarkets and maybe like 1.50-2.00€ at a gas station
Only makes sense, Loscher is a small company and it’s only produced there plus it needs to be shipped to poland. Coca cola and the likes are big global companies with a tight distribution net and factories everywhere.
I’m sure there a cool local sodas in Poland as well that are cheaper.
@erlannderrantem6972 I mean its only 400 km away from the polish border
@@murti1565 one point of the polish border, yes but poland is bigger than just it's border to Germany. also typically the distribution is taken over by other companies who also want their share, all that makes it more expensive
I lived in Berlin for a while in 2014 and we almost always had a Club Mate before going out for a night at the bars. I found it once after coming back to Canada and it definitely brought the nostalgia
And for the record, I quite like it
So essentially the first rule of Club Mate is you don't talk about Club Mate. The second rule of Club Mate is you don't talk about Club Mate. Got it. :)
I started Uni in 2005 in Berlin. Information Science. Every IT student was drinking it. So nostalgic to me. :D
I have to admit that I like MioMio Mate better. But I still don't regect a delightful Club Mate. (Preferably the ice tea version) I'am happy that someone finally did a video about the history of the Mate Soda in english so other parts of the world can here from it.
Hey, Iam student from the Czech Republic and I love club - mate, it is really popular among students, my school even had some for us to buy
Funny that there is a Club Mate shortage Right now at my Rewe Supermarket in Berlin
REWE also sells Maya Mate and I can't decide which one I like better.
Judt go to Getränke Hoffman.
I came into contact with it 10 years ago in an alternative music bar in my hometown Vilnius, Lithuania. It was a very trendy drink and every hipster place would have it.
Hope you didn't kill the brand by giving it some kind of unofficial marketing because I want to try it out
that stuff cant be killed in germany anymore, it just doesnt go away and any corner store, cafe, club or bar that doesn't serve it will feel that in their cash register.
As a Argentinian software developer my fuel is real Mate.
Yes! More videos like this, PLEASE! This is the Andong I remember!
2:32 Uruguay you got overlooked again
🇺🇾🧉♥️
... How about Paraguay? I mean, it's called Ilex paraguarensis after all...
In the one book excerpt shown it even calls it "Paraguaytee" in German
@@weazelzinacan8866 Yerba Mate is from the entire Guaraní region (Named after the Guaraní natives) of the Paraná, Iguazú and Uruguay rivers, the Guaraní region includes the entire Paraguay, South of Brasil, west of Uruguay (they are the most drinkers per capita) and north of Argentina. The paraguayans drinks cold mate, but Argentinians, Brasilians and uruguayans drinks hot mate.
bin zum ersten Mal auf Club Mate gestoßen als ich 2004 zum ersten Mal zum Berliner Wikipedia-Stammtisch in die C-Base (Chaos Computer Club) gegangen bin. War eigentlich auch sofort sehr angetan von diesem Getränk :) Hätte nicht gedacht, dass Club Mate da schon so lange Bestandteil der "Szene" war.
i remember coming back from 2 years australia to germany in 2012 and everybody was suddenly drinking this in the clubs so i tried and i seriously coulndt believe. im one of those people that only taste cigarette water in this. disgusting.
You might want to try mio mate or (better) flora mate, they taste waaaay better :D
Long nights of studying have been made possible by this drink. Thanks allot!
Probably the worst Drink to ever touch my tastebuds.
but you still wont stop drinking it.
For me it's the best
Drink it again
Very relatable, you try it once and are hooked. Love the stuff!
4:50 It's German "Fatherland", not Motherland
So, I didn't know club mate was German! Having lived in Switzerland, this is where I encountered it (and even then, my personal go-to is El Tony, a mate fizzy drink brand worth trying!) but that being said, it's so cool to see how a drink uniquely symbolises the evolving identity that characterises Germany in a simple and sociable way! Alcohol-free, weee!
Well, it doesn’t have to stay alcohol free 😅
I'm British and love it - I really don't understand why it isn't more popular across Europe! It definitely helps you on a night out.
I am so glad I found your channel. Loved the previous one I watched where you shared instructions with how to make it.
I already drank the traditional mate tee before tasting club mate, so for me it was like a much milder version and I instantly loved it.
I remember one summer when they had a supply and demand issue for a while. The brewery decided to not deliver to the big stores like Real and Kaufland in favor of supplying all ths small Spätis. I really appreciated that.
Thank you for exploring it´s history.
I am from Zurich and I have 10 cases of Club Mate at home. Most beverage deliveries these days carry it and you get them at Coop. At work they provide Mate as well but it is the El Tony brand that is making a lot of marketing.