This fall, we we’re brewing two unique beverages: cascara tea and an oatmeal raisin cascara latte. You’ll notice these have one thing in common: cascara. Which begs the question, what is it?
The short answer? It’s a tea, sort of. It’s more like dried fruit. When brewed, it’s as caffeinated as black tea, but as sweet and fruity as hibiscus tea. The long answer? It’s a byproduct of coffee...
You may think of coffee as a bean. After all, that is what we all call it. It may surprise you to know that the small “bean” is actually the seed of a cherry! These grow on trees all over the world, and the seeds are removed, fermented and dried in a myriad of ways. That process produces the morning brew you grind and drink every morning.
Cascara is the pulp, the leftover fruit that surrounds the seed, and it often gets discarded. In spanish, it literally means the “peel” or “husk” of a fruit. To make cascara, this husk is dried carefully, and often brewed hot, like a tea. Though, some have used it to make soda, beer, or even flavored vodka!
History
In principle, this is an old practice going back centuries. Hashara in Ethiopia and qishr in Yemen are both traditional beverages made from coffee husk. Some have theorized that brewing the coffee cherry this way goes back even further than brewing the beans. Still, most countries see the husk purely as a waste product or compost.
Cascara’s renaissance in the US actually dates back to 2005. A Salvadoran coffee farmer named Aida Batlle noted the sweet smell of the discarded cherry and experimented with it. At first, she used cherries from natural coffees, where the fruit is already dried out as part of the fermentation process. Though, she found better results when drying the fruit out separately. Reportedly, she is the one who coined the name ‘cascara,’ rather than the (much worse) english word ‘pulp.’
Batlle sold her cascara to Counter Culture in 2009, and the drink began to receive media attention around that time. It hit the mainstream in 2017 when Starbucks released its Cascara Latte.
Characteristics
People usually describe cascara as fruity and botanical, with notes like hibiscus, apricot, raisin or even tobacco. The cascara we sourced from Tierra Bendita in El Salvador has a very strong cranberry and raisin flavor. It has a very mild sweetness, but it is often brewed with sugar or honey to excellent results.
The caffeine content is lower than coffee. Some studies have compared it to black tea, though other studies have posited that it has even less caffeine than that.
Advocates of cascara often point to the product as a way to reduce waste, which makes some intuitive sense. Though, the fruit pulp is a very natural byproduct of the coffee cherry, and it is usually incorporated back into compost. There’s not much “waste” to save, but it still makes for a unique product!
Cascara at Solid State
It’s generally brewed like loose leaf tea, steeped in hot water for a period of time. We’ll be serving it that way, but we decided to get creative too! We made a house syrup, and we developed a brand new oatmeal raisin latte. The new beverage is made only with cascara, no coffee or espresso. It’s cozy, warm and perfect for the incoming Autumn weather.
We’ve partnered with Tierra Bendita for this release, a family enterprise of growers in El Salvador. Tierra Bendita grows cacao, sugar cane, coffee, tea and many other commodities. They focus on crop diversification and land reforestation projects in its various crops. They’ve been a contributor to 8-Track Blend in the past, and we can’t wait to work with them again.
Let us know what you think of the new drinks! This could be the beginning of an ongoing offering, and it could expand to more drinks, or even retail bags. Let our baristas know what interests you!
