Coffee grows inside a fruit, a red cherry sweet enough to eat, and almost everything we drink stops at the seed in the middle of it: an espresso in the morning, a mug of filter next to the keyboard, at most the curiosity of working out which of the two suits you. The skin of that cherry can be drunk too. Dried and steeped, it's called cascara, and it reaches the cup closer to a fruit tea than to anything you have ever poured out of a bag of coffee.
What it is, what it tastes like, whether it belongs with your tea or with your beans, how much caffeine it carries and how to brew it hot or over ice: here are the questions in the order they usually arrive, answered by people who roast coffee for a living and keep a bag of cascara open on the shelf.
What is cascara?
Cáscara is Spanish for husk, skin, shell, and that is exactly what this is: what remains of the coffee fruit once the seeds, the ones we all call beans, have been taken out. The pulp and the fine skin of the cherry are left to dry until they turn into something close to a dried fruit, dark, smelling of raisins.
For a long time that husk counted as a byproduct of processing, when it actually carries a good share of the fruit's sweetness. In the countries that grow coffee it has been going into the cup since long before the specialty world rediscovered it, and it now travels with an identity of its own, a drink that stands on what it is.
Is cascara a tea or a coffee?
Both words get attached to it, and the confusion is honest. Cascara is born on a coffee plant, so by family it belongs to coffee; it behaves like a tea in every practical way, since you steep dried plant material in hot water and pour it into a mug, and no part of it asks for a grinder or a machine. Coffee cherry tea is the description that gets closest.
The practical answer matters more than the label: keep it next to your loose leaf rather than next to your beans, brew it the way you brew tea, and expect a cup with the sweetness of dried fruit instead of the bitterness of a roast.
What does cascara taste like?
The first surprise arrives at the nose, where roasted coffee leaves no trace: hibiscus, rose petals, date, raisin, a point of ripe mango. In the mouth it keeps the character of a fruit infusion, sweet and round, with a live acidity that reads as red berries and a lightly tannic trail that closes the sip and leaves it clean.
Is cascara bitter?
No, and anyone expecting bitterness is picturing a coffee, which is a different drink. Cascara starts out sweet, and bitterness has no place in its vocabulary: what you can meet, if the husks sit in the water too long, is a drier tannic note, the same sensation as a tea left in the cup while you were doing something else. Shorten the steep and the sweetness goes back where it belongs.
The cascara we keep comes from Yemen
Ours is a Cascara Qishir from Yemen, in 100 g bags: fruity, floral, spiced, with the notes of date, raisin, mango and rose that make the infusion sweet without anything added to it.
The name already tells the story. In Yemen the drink has a word of its own, qishir, brewed with ginger and cinnamon, and it has been keeping conversations company since long before coffee became a matter of machines and pressure. It comes from the same mountains as the Khawlani Odaini we roast, grown by the Marwan family in the north of the country: berry, honey, mango and chocolate in the cup.
Hot or over ice: how to drink cascara
The beauty of cascara sits in how far it stretches. Hot, in a teapot that fills the kitchen with fruit and spice, it comes out enveloping, with more body than a fruit infusion has any right to carry. Cold, left to steep overnight and served over ice, it turns refreshing and surprisingly rich, the kind of glass that empties sooner than you meant it to.
How much caffeine is in cascara?
There is caffeine in cascara, and the honest answer to how much is that it depends. It changes from harvest to harvest, because the husks don't all carry the same concentration, and it changes with the time they spend in water, so the precise percentages that circulate online claim more certainty than anybody actually has. What we can tell you is that a cup of cascara usually sits lighter than a coffee of the same size, and that it works in the afternoon, when an espresso would be too much and you still want something good to hold.
How to brew cascara
Brewing cascara asks for very little and a bit of attention to the clock, exactly like a tea made properly.
Ingredients
- 6 to 8 g of cascara
- 200 ml of hot water, between 90 and 95 °C (194 to 203 °F)
- Spices to taste: a piece of fresh ginger, a cinnamon stick, or both
Method
- Put the cascara in a teapot together with the spices.
- Pour in the hot water: ginger leaves a sharp note, cinnamon brings warmth and sweetness.
- Let it steep for 5 minutes for a delicate cup, 7 for a fuller one, longer if you're after more intensity.
- Strain the infusion and serve.
For the cold version use the same dose, leave the husks in cold water for 24 hours in the fridge and serve in a glass with ice and a strip of lemon peel: the slow steep pulls out a deeper sweetness, and it's the version that converts the people who arrived sceptical.
Between one brew and the next, keep the bag properly closed, away from air, light and damp, the same enemies that go after whole beans: how to store coffee properly is a piece of its own.
The whole fruit, not only the bean
Cascara is a hidden gem of the coffee world, and the part we like best is what it says out loud: a fruit that is worth something from one end to the other, and a cup that comes out of what was written off as waste for years. It's an invitation to explore, to try something new, and to find that even what looked like a leftover can turn into an excellence.
Next time you want something different in the cup, brew a cascara: ours is in the shop, Cascara Qishir from Yemen, 100 g bag, and it travels anywhere in the European Union. We're fairly sure it will become one of your favourites.
Enjoy your tasting, coffee lover!