Cascara

Also known as: coffee cherry, coffee fruit

Fruits

Cascara is the dried skin and pulp of the coffee cherry — the fruit that encloses the coffee bean. Long treated as a discarded byproduct of coffee milling, it is now valued as an infusion ingredient in its own right, brewed much like an herbal tea. The name comes from the Spanish cáscara, meaning husk or peel.

Usage in beverages

Steeped in hot or cold water as a fruity, lightly caffeinated infusion; served hot, iced, or carbonated; bottled as a soda; and used as a base or flavoring for fermented and distilled drinks including beers, liqueurs, flavored spirits, and as a distillate layered into wine cuvées.

In depth

Origins in Yemen and Ethiopia

The drinking of cascara reaches back to the Red Sea cradle of coffee itself. In Yemen and Ethiopia, beverages made by steeping the dried skins and pulp of the coffee fruit — known in their traditional forms as qishr and hashara — were consumed long before the roasted, ground bean we recognize today became the dominant drink. Some accounts hold that an infusion of the dried fruit was enjoyed in Yemen even earlier than coffee in its modern sense. These early husk drinks, sometimes flavored with ginger or other spices, established the coffee cherry as something to be brewed and sipped rather than merely a casing to be stripped away and thrown out.^[1]

The coffee cherry as discarded byproduct

As coffee cultivation spread from Arabia to Java and then across the Americas from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onward, the global trade fixed almost entirely on the bean. In the processing of coffee — whether by the dry method, in which the whole cherry is sun-dried, or the wet method, in which the fruit is pulped away before drying — the skin and pulp surrounding the seed were left behind as residue. Across most producing countries, this fruit was treated as agricultural waste, with the result that for centuries the beverage potential of the cherry remained dormant outside its Red Sea homeland.^[2]

Revival as specialty coffee-cherry tea

In the mid-2000s, the discarded husks found a new life as a specialty drink. A Salvadoran coffee farmer, working independently of the old Yemeni and Ethiopian traditions, noticed that the cherry skins commonly cast aside during milling carried a floral aroma, and began drying and steeping them into a tea she named cascara. By the end of the decade it was being poured in coffee shops in the United States, and other growers began drying and selling their own cherry skins and pulp. Demand from large coffee chains grew strong enough that in some places the dried husks fetched higher prices than the beans they once surrounded.^[1]

Brewing and contemporary forms

As an infusion, cascara is prepared much like an herbal tea: the dried husks, whether flaked like loose-leaf tea or left in raisin-like pieces, are steeped briefly in hot water or for many hours in cold water. A common ratio steeps about three tablespoons of dried flaked cascara in ten to twelve ounces of hot water for several minutes. The resulting drink is fruity and floral, with a caffeine level comparable to that of black tea. It is served hot, iced, carbonated, and bottled, and has been turned into a soda, a beer, a liqueur, and a flavored vodka, while the dried whole fruit is also eaten like raisins or milled into flour.^[1]

Place among caffeinated herbal infusions

Within the broader family of herbal teas, cascara belongs to a small group of drinks drawn from the coffee plant rather than from the tea bush. Alongside coffee-leaf tea and coffee-blossom tea, coffee-fruit infusions like cascara are classed as caffeinated tisanes — beverages steeped from plant material that is not Camellia sinensis yet still carries a natural stimulant. Like other tisanes, cascara can be served plain or blended with spices, fruit, and sweeteners, and it can be steeped hot for a quick brew or cold over many hours for a smoother, lower-acidity result.^[3]

Quick facts

Botanical name

Coffea arabica

Classification

Fruits

Origin

Native to the coffee plant's homeland in the highlands of Ethiopia and across the Red Sea in Yemen, where the fruit was steeped into a drink before the modern roasted-bean form of coffee took hold. Today it is sourced from coffee-growing regions worldwide.

Flavor profile

Sweet-tart and fruity, with floral aromatics and notes reminiscent of rosehip, dried cherry, raisin, and tamarind.

Cultural context

In Yemen and Ethiopia, drinks made from the dried coffee fruit are among the oldest beverages tied to the coffee plant, predating widespread use of the roasted bean. In most other coffee-producing countries the fruit was long regarded as waste, until specialty coffee culture revived interest in it during the 2000s.

Also known as

coffee cherry, coffee fruit

Colombian Cascara

References

[1]EncyclopediaCoffee cherry tea — Wikipedia↑§1 ↑§3 ↑§4
[2]EncyclopediaCoffee production — Wikipedia↑§2
[3]EncyclopediaHerbal tea — Wikipedia↑§5