Hopefully the book Hacker Brause will one day be translated to English for those unable to comprehend German to read about the historical development of mate hacker drinks.
However, in the meanwhile, a short summary:
Club Mate, first produced near Munich by a small family brewery in the 1920’s, is slowly taking over Coca-Cola in Berlin’s drink scene, with a strong presence in most cafes, clubs, shops and sub-cultural scenes. Other hacker spaces in the USA and Australia have also started to import Club-Mate, while the European, especially German market has widened its range of Mate-Limos, with drinks like Flora Power, BioZisch Mate, Buenos Mate, etc… and underground drinks inspired by open-source culture such as #muntermate, 1337Mate and Kolle-Mate to name a few.
Despite their subtle taste differences, all of these drinks share a higher caffeine content, come in the convenient to-go shape of a bottle and are in some ways the antithesis of a traditional Mate circle; however the spirit of sharing is inherent in open source business models such as the Premium Collective and their consumers are highly involved in the interent sharing community and are as passionate about their Mates as the Gaucho is about his.
This transparent approach to the drink industry inspired Meta Mate in 2012 to createMier, an open-sourced, CC licensed Mate beer that has been brewed in several places.
