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tags: [] - coffee/drinks - coffee/processing aliases: - Coffee cherry tea - Qishr - Cascara tea

Cascara

Tags: #coffee/drinks #coffee/processing Aliases: Coffee cherry tea, Qishr, Cascara tea Related: Coffee Drinks MOC | Coffee Cherry | Natural Processing | Coffee By-products | Fermentation Status: 🌱 Stub

Overview

Cascara is a beverage brewed from the dried husks of the coffee cherry — the fruit skin and dried pulp remaining after the coffee seed (bean) is removed during processing. The dried husks are steeped in hot water to produce a tea-like drink with a naturally sweet, fruity character, moderate caffeine content, and a distinctly different flavour profile from brewed coffee. Cascara has traditional roots in Yemen (where it is known as qishr) and Bolivia, and has gained broader commercial interest as a specialty café beverage and as a means of adding value to coffee by-products.

Key Facts

  • Cascara is brewed from dried coffee cherry husks, not from roasted coffee seeds — it is a tea-like infusion, not coffee
  • Flavour profile: naturally sweet; notes of tamarind, dried hibiscus, rosehip, and dried fruit; light body; low bitterness
  • Contains caffeine at lower concentrations than brewed coffee; typically 100–150 mg per standard serve depending on steep ratio and time
  • Traditional in Yemen (qishr — cascara with spices including ginger and cinnamon) and in Bolivia as sultana
  • In specialty coffee, cascara is commonly produced as a by-product of washed processing; natural-process operations generate less recoverable husk
  • The EU classified cascara as a novel food in 2022, limiting commercial sale in some European markets

References

Changelog

Date Change
2026-05-02 Compliance review: rebuilt from near-empty file — original had brief bullet points, ../ wikilinks, and external CDN image URLs; replaced with compliant stub

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