Using the dried skin of the coffee cherry to make a “tea” has a long history in Yemen and Ethiopia.
Dried coffee skin (as well as the leaf and the whole cherry
Either a flavor in the coffee, or referring to the fruit of the coffee tree, which somewhat resembles a red cherry.: Either a flavor in the coffee, or...) has been used for centuries to make a hot tea-likeA term used to describe coffees with light, tannic, slighly astringent mouthfeel and tea aromatics. We find it in some Rwandan flavor profiles, among others. beverage in parts of EthiopiaEthiopia, formerly known as Abyssinia, or a coffee cultivar: Ethiopia, or more specifically the Empire under Haile Selassie, was known as Abyssinia. The name is Latin, derived from... and the Middle East. I first encountered QishrQishr is an infused tea beverage that you make using the dried coffee husks of the coffee fruit, a by-product of of the natural dry-process method. Now it... brewed in the city of Harar, and the nearby commercial center Dire Dawa in Ethiopia. Later I found it brewed on my wonderful (an only) trip to YemenYemen has a coffee culture like no other place, and perhaps some of what we enjoy in this cup is due to their old style of trade...: Technically,... in 2007.
Qishr is spelled out with a few variations as is the similar term “Gesher” used in Ethiopia. There are age-old traditions associated with preparing Qishr, sometimes involving the roasting of the skin right before brewing, and making the brew in several different vessels with different steep times. There is then a masterful blending of the different brews and concentrations to create the final cup that is served.
In areas of Harar, the coffee is milled out of the husk to green bean using wooden mortars – an amazing thing to see as two people will pound the coffee in the same mortar in perfect alternating synchronicity. I was told that the reason they don’t hull coffee centrally in Harar, the reason they do it in the village with the wooden mortar, is driven by the desire to keep the Qishr as tea. Send the whole dried coffee cherryOriginally coffee literature referred to the fruit of the tree as a "berry" but in time it became a cherry. It is of course neither. Nor is the... off to a town somewhere for centralized milling, and your Qishr goes with it!
Re-branding as Qishr as “Cascara”
Cascara is the spanish word for skin or husk. It’s a term applied to coffee skin, but not to coffee skin as a fruit tea product. That was an obvious bit of marketing, and it was picked up as a preferred term over Qishr or Gesher. Why? I don’t like to think about all the reasons, but to be charitable, maybe it has more appeal and maybe Qishr is hard to pronounce (?). (Pr. “kish-her”).
There is not a history of widespread use of coffee skin as tea in Latin America that I am aware of. There is an 800+ year old tradition of coffee fruit skin tea in the horn of Africa and Yemen. Yeah, sure, call it Cascara. Better yet, how about some Cascara Geisha
Gesha is a long-bean Ethiopia selection with unique cup character. Gesha is the name of the town in Western Ethiopia where the original samples were collected. Spelling it.... Meh.
In previous years, our cascara fruit tea reviews started out with “coffee, tea..or both!”
We’ve recently tagged onto this…”or a snack?”. That’s right, we’re sitting around eating the stuff, something we just wouldn’t do with previous lots.
The modern-day reinvention of “Cascara” as a food safe beverage involves solving some technical issues. Qishr and Gesher and other traditional local village product are made with the same coffee cherry used to produce the green bean, of course. They are dried in the sun, and milled as usual. That’s fine for coffee that’s inside it’s protective husk. For food grade product though, it’s not good enough to sell the fruit skin, exposed to all kinds of things.
Cascara produced by Beneficio Helsar de Zarcero micro mill in Costa RicaCosta Rican coffee is typically very clean, sweet, with lots of floral accents. hey are prized for their high notes: bright citrus or berry-like flavors in the acidity,... is crunchy, tart, sweet, and tastes a lot like dried cranberries, and not to mention produced to food grade standards.
While Helsar cascara looks similar at a glance, the work behind producing it is substantially different. This isn’t just a by-product of the coffee processingThe removal of the cherry and parchment from the coffee seed.: Coffee is either wet-processed (also called washed or wet-milled) or dry-processed (also called wild, natural or natural...; it is an intentional product, using different methods that belong more to a food processing facility than a rural coffee millA coffee mill might mean a coffee grinder, but we usually use the term to refer to a coffee processing facility, either a Wet-Mill or a Dry Mill..... But I think I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
First, a little background is necessary in order to provide context.
What is “Cascara Fruit Tea?”
Cascara is the Spanish term for the peel or fruit skin. The fruit of the coffee cherry makes up over 50% of the total coffee cherry mass. During the pulpingThe first step in processing wet-process coffee, pulp natural or forced demucilage coffees. Pulping simply refers to removing the skins from the coffee fruit, leaving the parchment coffee... process, this fruit is removed from the seed and exhausts through a channel into an area separate from the beans. That’s quite a bit of potential waste.
But coffee cherry is hardly wasted, often reused for fertilizing the farm, a nice way to complete and then begin a new life cycle, right? But somewhere along the way in Yemen, the potential to dry the cherry and use as a tea-like beverage was realized, and the production of “Qishr” tea was born.
The steeped coffee cherry tastes tart and sweet, a bit weightier in bodyAssociated with and sensed by mouthfeel, body is sense of weight and thickness of the brew, caused by the percentage of soluble solids in the cup, including all... than most teas, and considering that the entire Coffea
The botanical genus colloquially referred to as the “coffea genus,” which is comprised of over 120 individual species. These are generally opposite-leaved, evergreen shrubs or small understory trees... ArabicaArabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the taxonomic species name of the genus responsible for around 75% of the worlds commercial coffee crop.: Arabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the... plant has caffeineAn alkaloidal compound that has a physiological effect on humans, and a bittering taste. It is found throughout the coffee plant but is more concentrated in the seed..., Qishr/Cascara provided a nice (if not less expensive) alternative to coffee beans.
Issues with typical sun-dried cascara:
Traditionally, cascara is sun dried. Because of this, dry times vary depending on sun exposure and heat. Keep in mind, coffee cherry has a very high moisture content, and requires a lot of sun energy to dry in a reasonable time frame; And by reasonable, I mean faster than the growth of mycotoxins, which can potentially lead to mold.
With the majority of cascara that’s produced, concerns about health risks are at least partly founded, and in the UK have resulted in cascara bans. Coffee cherry comes into contact with all sorts of contaminants during its time maturing on the shrub, when its plucked from the branches, and finally while drying on the patios.
Chemicals such as pesticides and fungicides are sprayed directly on the plant and cherry (though fungicides are typically applied before the cherry’s formed), and coffee handled by pickers and during milling are exposed to germs from the worker’s hands. If it takes too long to dry the cascara, there’s an increased chance that mold spores propagate along with the harmful mycotoxins that come with them.
Without a method for removing these contaminants, there is a higher probability that trace elements of these germs, chemicals, and toxins make it into your cup. And unlike roasted coffee, cascara doesn’t undergo a high-heat “cooking” process that effectively kills most toxins living in your green beans, and so cascara’s cleanliness and food-safety are tied to a step in sanitation that is typically lacking.
A path to a food-grade product:
Similar to dry-processing coffee, some regions are better candidates for meeting the basic requirements – maximum sun, minimal rain. So we see the movement of this rather tasty, tea-like beverage from Africa to areas such as PanamaPanama coffee ranges from medium quality lower altitude farms to those at 1600 - 1800 meters centered in the area of Boquete in the Chirqui district near the..., El SalvadorEl Salvador coffee had an undeservingly poor reputation for years, marred mostly by the inability to deliver coffee of high quality in an unstable political climate. Unfortunately, agriculture..., and even Costa Rica.
By and large, cascara products have been a byproduct of coffee processing. In most cases there’s not a lot of intention behind the final product, with a general lack of consideration for factors such as cherry ripeness, cleanliness of machinery, sortingCoffee is sorted by size, density, and color in its preparation for export.: Sorting refers to several steps performed in the preparation of coffee for export. Coffee is..., etc.
There are exceptions to this rule, which we’re seeing more and more of as cascara finds its way into the global spotlight. But a lot of this shift in production best practices can be traced back to the ingenuity of Helsar.
Costa Rica is not necessarily the best climate for producing cascara “naturally,” especially in the often rainy West Valley where Helsar’s milling operations are located. But Helsar found a way to not only produce cascara fruit tea without ample sunshine, but also come up with the best tasting cascara fruit tea we’ve tasted.
Their journey started off as a joint project with the University of Costa Rica looking to isolate the red pigment of coffee cherry for dying fabrics. But after closer analysis of the nutrient-rich coffee cherries, their directives shifted to optimizing production of a food-grade, dehydrated, cascara fruit tea product.
The research team at the University of Costa Rica discovered the health benefits of coffee cherry, containing 50% more antioxidant than cranberries. This would eventually lead to what is one of the first innovations in a very long tradition of producing cascara tea.
Addressing quality control through dehydration and a standardized approach:
In order to produce a cascara that achieved food grade standards, the research team recognized the need for cleanliness during the production process. They also saw how the time it takes to dry cascara affects the overall shelf stability. With Helsar’s help, together, they developed a system of cherry collection, processing, and drying that allowed them to reach their goals.
Producing a good tasting cascara, starts with the raw materials – the coffee itself. This isn’t dissimilar to the aim for a good cup of coffee. Only peak-ripened cherries are selected, and in this case, picked from the three certified OrganicGrown without the use of artificial fertilizers, herbicides, etc.: Organic coffee has been grown according to organic farming techniques, typically without the use of artificial fertilizers. Some farms... Helsar farms surrounding the mill.
Cleanliness is of utmost importance, and baskets used by pickers are cleaned for each day’s use, as are the bags and trucks used to transport the cherry to the mill. Before the cherry is pulped from the seed, they are soaked in filtered water, a first stage of cleaning the fruit. Then the cherries are run through a machine used to both separate out any over and under ripe coffee that were missed, as well as perform a three-stage hydro-wash to remove any dirt that remains post-soaking.
At this point the cleaned cherry is pulped using a pulping machine solely dedicated to this project. Next, they move it to a steaming chamber in order to kill any mycotoxins that could potentially lead to molding. And finally, the cherry is spread out on racks and put into a large dehydrator where nearly 100% of the water is removed.
Fruits of their labor are tasted in the cup:
The Helsar method is truly unique, and the only of its kind that we’re aware of. The cascara they produce comes out crispUsually used as a modifying flavor term, such as "crisp acidity" : Crisp can have several meanings, since it modifies other flavor terms. Crisp acidity might mean bracing,..., crumbling even, and brews up the sweetest, cleanest tasting tea we’ve tried. And yeah, we’re eating it! OK, partly because we were told to by the producer. But after the novelty wears off, you’re left with a really unique dried fruit not all that far from a dried cranberry in flavor, and a crunchy texture that’s more in line with toasted grain than dried fruit.
Great on its own, the cascara also can be used in place of dried fruit on cereal, granola, or in trail mix (though you need to be careful since there’s a fair amount of caffeine too!). A couple people here in the office have made cascara syrup for sodas, as well as oatmeal cookies with cascara, we’ve tried beer brewed with it, sauces…the options are endless!
We were so impressed by the initial test batches we tried, and the fully-realized operation is quite a sight to behold first-hand (which I was able to do on a couple of my visits). Beyond intention, it’s their attention to detail that distinguishes this from the rest.
Yes its coffee, but it tastes like tea!
Helsar cascara fruit tea has a raisin-prune smell, clean and clearly fruitedIn some coffee taster’s lexicon, “fruity” means the coffee is tainted with fruit, and “fruited” means a coffee is graced by positive fruit notes. We don't exactly see.... It shares many light, and tart smells and flavors with dried hibiscus, the flower used to make jamaicaJamaica coffee can be excellent mild, lush coffee... sometimes. Like Kona and Puerto Rican coffee, it is soft, mild, clean and well balanced when it is good.: Ah... tea in MexicoMexican coffee originates from South-central to Southern regions of the country. For that reason, coffees from Coatepec and Veracruz are much different from Oaxacan Plumas, which are in.... When wet, you’re hit with a scent of tamarind, accompanied by delicate floral
Floral notes in coffee exemplify the connection between taste and smell. Describing the taste of a specific flower is near impossible...we always default to “it tastes like it... to herbalA flavor descriptor in coffee reminiscent of herbs, usually meaning aromatic, savory, leafy dried herbs. Usually, more specific descriptions are given, whether is is a floral herb, or... smells. And so many flavors of dried fruits come out in the brewed tea: hibiscus, tamarind, raisin, dried apple
An acid that adds to favorable perceptions of cup quality; malic acid often adds apple-like acidity, and perhaps other taste aspects recalling apples. Malic acid is yet another..., dried passion fruit, and mango.
We are shipping 3 oz batches in air-tight bags in order to keep the cherry crisp. 3 ounces works out to be roughly 10 – 15 cups depending on brew strength.
Our best results were with French pressA simple coffee brewer also called a Press Pot: grounds and hot water are added to a carafe, allowed to sit for several minutes, and then a filter..., Clever Dripper-type brewers, and mason jars, using 12 grams cascara to 350 ml water, and steeping for around 8 – 12 minutes. This is a fairly long steep time for a ‘tea,’ but technically this is not tea, and you won’t achieve the tannicHaving the bitterness or astringency of Tannins. Tannins are plant polyphenols found across the flora kingdom. The term Tannins refers to the use of wood tannins from oak.../bitterness of some over-extracted black teas. Fool around with ratios until you find what works for you.
Since it’s completely dry, it doesn’t take long for some level of reconstitution depending on relative humidity where you live. So if you want to keep crisp (best for eating), store in a sealed, air-tight bag or jar when not in use.
Our Cascara is currently sold out! We will update this post when we are able to source another option.
A footnote to bloggers and writers about Cascara: I hope you understand the point of our introduction to this article and do a little research on Qishr and Gesher as a well-established tradition. I also hope you do not repeat false ideas about Cascara being some sort of newly invented re-use for a coffee by-product that otherwise goes to waste. This is untrue because not all coffee skin should be recovered to produce cascara, as doing so takes a ton of resources and requires sizeable investment to handle as a food product. If you go to a coffee farm and walk around tasting cherry, you are going to notice some little white things lodged in the ends of ripe cherry under the skin. That’s fly larvae. And in case you aren’t aware, coffee pulp skin does get used in very appropriate and important ways, generally as an ingredient in compost. Compost from coffee is not only greatly needed for the health of the coffee plant, in many origins lacking enough organic material to feed the trees, it is very very valuable. See RwandaA Bourbon cultivar variant from Rwanda and Burundi. Bourbon coffees are named for the island in the India Ocean where French colonists grew it. Some history from the....
Call-out on Cascara (and cultural stereotyping) – I have no trouble shaming this example. I would like to see photos of the landfills where all the wasted coffee skin ends up, please?
