Piporé Sin Palo

First look

Nose

You can tell that Piporé Sin Palo is a typical Argentine despalada just by its smell. It shares a lot of common notes with Taragüi Sin Palo — burnt cookie dough, slight hint of tobacco and dry fruits.

Cut

The cut of Piporé Sin Palo is quite interesting — I would say that it lays somewhere between despalada and traditional con palo cut. It is not a completely pure leaf yerba mate — there are a lot of thin but long stems. The cut of the leaves is quite coarse and the amount of powder is low to medium.

Preparation

As with any other despalada yerba mate, it’s a bit trickier to prepare Piporé Sin Palo than its con palo brother. First few refills will be dedicated to molding the mountain of yerba. However, I found that this mate is easier to handle than Taragüi Sin Palo, mainly because of the unusual cut — larger amount of stems give Piporé Sin Palo a better “grip”, so it’s a bit easier to maintain the mound, and more coarse leaves make it friendlier to much bigger variety of bombillas because it is harder to clog the filter.

One of the pros of Piporé Sin Palo is that it’s not too “picky” about the water — very hot water didn’t seem to destroy flavors of this mate (still never try to brew it with boiling water!). Anywhere from 70°C - 85°C / 160°F - 185°F is fine for Piporé Sin Palo. However, if you want to get the most out of the flavor of this mate, I would recommend to aim for higher temperatures when you prepare your water, around 80°C - 85°C / 175°F - 185°F  — in my opinion colder water will make this mate too weak and uninteresting.

Most convenient way to get ideal water temperature is to use an electric kettle or a stovetop kettle with temperature control. If you prefer traditional kettle you can use a infrared thermometer or a food thermometer .

Taste

Piporé Sin Palo is quite savory mate, mainly because the flavor of cookie dough transfers to taste very nicely. This is an honest mate — you can expect to taste everything that you smell in Piporé Sin Palo. It is strong and pleasantly bitter. This mate has more “brown” rather than “green” taste and smell — expect flavors like wood, bark and even cardboard. It sounds weird but those flavors combined with bitterness and slight sourness work out pretty well. The stems also don’t ruin the taste by adding a touch of sweetness. Overall, Piporé Sin Palo is relatively simple but strong, clear and robust mate with medium to full body.

Finish

The thing that I liked the least about this mate is its finish. It is flat, uninteresting and sour. Aftertaste of Piporé Sin Palo makes it harder to enjoy a single sip of this mate — I started to feel tickle in the throat after a few rare pours. If that sourness bothers you, my advice would be to compliment Piporé Sin Palo with a glass of water to drink between the sips.

Durability

Piporé Con Palo impressed me with its durability, so I was looking forward to see if the sin palo version holds the standard. And boy it didn’t disappoint! I managed to get around 25 to 30 refills every time I drank Piporé Sin Palo. This is a long durability in my book.

The last thing you want while drinking mate is to constantly re-heat your water or add more ice to it. No matter if it's hot mate or cold tereré, use a vacuum bottle or a very popular in South America mate thermos with sprout.

Effect

I often read that for many people mate acts as a hunger suppressant, but in my experience it is not always the case. I would even say that most varieties of yerba mate make you want to eat something! However Piporé Sin Palo is a very good example of mate that completely eliminates the hunger. If you are interested in losing some weight and looking for something to eliminate the cravings, look no further — Piporé Sin Palo is an ideal addition to your diet and fitness plan.

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What are your thoughts on Piporé Sin Palo? Comment below!