Search for a chlorogenic acid drink recipe and the results all point the same direction: brew unroasted green coffee beans like tea.

There's a reason almost nobody does this twice. Green coffee is vegetal and sour. It tastes like a lawn. That's precisely why green coffee is sold as capsules and extracts rather than as a beverage — the compound is desirable, the flavor is not.

But green coffee isn't the only place chlorogenic acid comes from. Here's the full picture, with actual numbers, and three drinks that are worth making.

What chlorogenic acid is

Chlorogenic acid (CGA) is a group of plant polyphenols — phenolic esters of caffeic and ferulic acids. It's found across many plants, fruits and vegetables.

The nutrition literature studies it as a dietary antioxidant. In published human trials, intakes have typically ranged from roughly 140mg to 1g per day.

That range is the reason the "how much am I actually getting" question matters more than it might seem.

The roasting problem

Here's what almost every article about coffee and chlorogenic acid skips: heat destroys it.

Research published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry measured green coffee beans at 61–86 mg of total chlorogenic acid per gram. After commercial roasting, the same beans measured 2–7 mg per gram. Beans roasted at 250°C for 21 minutes dropped to near-trace levels.

Translated into cups, a 2019 review in Beverages put brewed coffee at roughly 50–200 mg of chlorogenic acids per cup, with light roasts landing near 92–188 mg and dark roasts dropping to around 20–81 mg.

So the darker and more comforting the roast, the less chlorogenic acid survives. Which puts anyone chasing the compound through coffee in an awkward position: drink it green and unpleasant, or drink it dark and get a fraction of what you came for.

Yerba mate: the source that doesn't need roasting

Yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) is a South American plant whose leaves are naturally dense in chlorogenic acids. Research has reported CGA content as high as 8–10% by dry weight in yerba mate–derived materials.

Two things make it useful here.

First, mate's phenolic profile is dominated by chlorogenic acids. A study in Food Research International found that hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives — the chlorogenic acid family — made up around 90% of mate's total phenols, with flavonols accounting for the remaining 10%. The most abundant individual compounds were 3-caffeoylquinic, 5-caffeoylquinic, 4-caffeoylquinic and 3,5-dicaffeoylquinic acids.

Second, mate doesn't have to be roasted to be drinkable. Coffee has to be roasted, and roasting is what wrecks the compound. Green, unsmoked mate is drunk exactly as-is across Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil — and has been for centuries.

For scale: a comparison of herbal infusions found yerba mate came in highest for chlorogenic acid at 52.6 mg per 100 mL of infusion, ahead of white tea and green tea. A separate figure in the Journal of Food Science put a 150 mL cup of mate brew at roughly 72 mg.

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Three chlorogenic acid drinks

1. Tereré (the ten-second version)

Tereré is mate served ice-cold instead of hot — Paraguay's national drink, and the reason Teko exists. Traditionally it's loose leaf in a guampa with cold water poured over. This is the same idea without the equipment.

What you need

• 1 stick Teko Limõ
• 16–20 oz cold water
• A few sprigs of fresh mint
• 2 lime wheels
• Plenty of ice

Method

1. Fill a tall glass or bottle with ice.
2. Add the cold water, then tear in one stick of Teko Limõ.
3. Stir or shake 5 seconds — it dissolves clean, no clumping.
4. Add the mint and lime, press the mint lightly against the side of the glass first to wake it up.

100mg+ chlorogenic acid. 0 calories.

2. Pineapple mint agua fresca (pitcher, serves 4)

A pitcher drink for heat. Paraguayan summers run past 100°F, which is exactly the climate tereré was invented for.

What you need

• 3 sticks Teko Anana
• 1.5 liters cold water
• 1 cup fresh pineapple, cubed
• Juice of 1 lime
• A small handful of mint
• Ice

Method

1. Blend the pineapple with the lime juice until smooth, then strain into a pitcher.
2. Add the cold water and tear in all three Teko Anana sticks. Stir until fully dissolved.
3. Add the mint, chill 20 minutes, serve over plenty of ice.

3. Frozen peach-orange slush

What you need

• 1 stick Teko Melokotón Narã
• 6 oz cold water
• 2 cups ice
• ½ fresh peach, optional

Method

1. Dissolve the Teko stick in the cold water.
2. Add to a blender with the ice and the peach if using.
3. Blend on high until it comes together as a slush, about 30 seconds.
4. Pour into a chilled glass.

Per stick:

Because the mate is unsmoked and never roasted, and because Teko is built from an extract rather than a leaf that gets steeped and thrown away, the compounds end up in the glass instead of in the strainer.

The floor figures are floors, not averages. Batches test above them. Teko publishes the number that holds in every stick.

And it tastes like fruit — Limõ, Marakuyá, Melokotón Narã, Anana — rather than like a lawn.