Now is the Time for Cascara

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By Anne-Marie Hardie

Cascara is a new beverage brewing in indie and chain coffee shops.  Although consumed primarily as a tea, it is made from the hulls of coffee berries. High in flavonoids and fiber, cascara has the potential to be the next superfood. Opportunities are seemingly limitless, cascara can be used to make flour; to enhance the flavor of chocolate; it can be steeped or even extracted and reduced as a syrup.

Dan Belliveau, founder and c.e.o. of Seattle-based CoffeeFlour, (www.coffeeflour.com) says “the main benefit as a beverage is that it seems to be a good bridge between coffee and traditional teas.” CoffeeFlour is used as a base for coffee cherry tea. It doesn’t taste like coffee, but rather expresses more floral, citrus, and roasted fruit notes, he explains. “We have found that both coffee and tea drinkers who don't like the other’s category, seem to both like coffee cherry tea or cascara,” said Belliveau.

Market research firm Mintel International cites cascara as a leading product in the reduce, reuse, upcycle trend, part of its 2017 Foodservice Trends report. TV personality Dr. Oz praised it as an example of “found food.” Starbucks launched a cascara latte in 2017 and drew attention to the new beverage at its bi-annual investor conference.  This summer it followed with an iced cascara coconut milk latte.

“The fruit of the coffee cherry gives our latte a subtle, lightly sweet flavor,” said Erin Marinan from Starbucks beverage research and development team. Cascara syrup is added to espresso to make the drink. “Hot teas, iced teas, blended teas, sodas, and spritzers are great, and with its tartness cascara is a great element of a cocktail,” says Nanelle Newbom a coffee lifer and co-founder of Barefoot Coffee Roasters, Finca Coffees, and Brew El Salvador. “Breweries are also very receptive to using cascara as an ingredient,” she said.

ALSO: Superheated Solution for Processing Cascara

Newbom, co-founder of San Diego-based Oddity consulting, says that adding this unique product in your offerings can really open discussions on how coffee is grown and processed.

Belliveau adds that utilizing cascara as a food or beverage, has helped to remove coffee cherry fruit, which is a by-product of green coffee, from the landfill and water streams. The coffee bean represents only 55% of the cherry on a dry weight basis.

The remaining 45% (skin, pulp mucilage, partridge) is commonly discarded.  Cascara, pulp, and skin, represent 28.7% of the coffee berry on a dried weight basis. Cascara is sustainable, providing coffee farmers and the mill workers at the origin additional revenue and jobs.

Finding new vehicles of income for coffee farmers utilizing more of the berry, offers sizable humanitarian, environmental and monetary gains for the coffee industry.

Not yet legal in Europe

Purchasing high-quality cascara is not without its challenges.  “It isn't always easy to determine how ‘clean’ or of what quality the cascara will be outside of really knowing both your market and your producers well,” said Newbom. “Communication is key. Even the word ‘cascara’ to describe the product doesn't necessarily mean that you are talking about the same thing.”

In Europe coffee retailer Aida Batlle first began serving cascara in 2008, according to a report by Max Dodd in The Blend Magazine. It was soon transformed into cold brew and a host of other products such as Square Mile’s cascara chocolate and cascara tonic.

“Joost Bakker, the Melbourne poster-boy for zero-waste cafés, has promoted the use of this coffee by-product due to his mantra of there being “no excuses for waste when there is potential to produce a quality product.” He finds a range of uses for it as a beverage and in food, promoting this to his clientele in Australia who are as environmentally concerned as he is,” writes Dodd.

It was subsequently withdrawn from menus due to confusing language in UK import legislation, which categorizes ‘any husk or substitute product containing any strain of coffee’ as a novel food. The remedy is bureaucratic, he explains. Food and beverages introduced since 2002 must receive a safety certification. The authority then decides if an additional assessment by the European Food Safety Authority is necessary.  “These applications are bureaucratic, cascara is a grey area – it’s not illegal, but the process of legalizing it has not yet been finalized. It will take an unknown length of time for the legislation to be amended, making cascara legal for sale.”