What is Coffee Cherry Tea? What Does Cascara Mean? What's the Ideal Water Temperature for Brewing Coffee? How to Control Concentration?

Green tea, black tea, oolong tea - none compare to the simple joys of life we share together!

As we all know, coffee is the seed from coffee cherries. When roasted, it can produce thousands of aromatic compounds, which is why our brewed coffee tastes so delicious. But did you know that besides the seeds, the fruit skin of coffee cherries can also be brewed? In Europe and America, it has a resounding name - "Cascara" - while we're accustomed to calling it "coffee cherry tea."

What is Coffee Cherry Tea?

Coffee cherry skin naturally comes from coffee cherries, which are fruits produced by coffee trees. Due to their deep red color when ripe, resembling cherries, they earned the name "coffee cherries."

Although they may appear small in size, their organizational structure is quite complex. The processing of raw coffee beans not only involves fermentation but also requires removing all substances surrounding the beans. The skin, pulp, mucilage, and parchment are precisely these materials that need to be removed, with the skin naturally being the outermost layer of the fruit.

Generally, coffee cherry skins removed during processing are used by workers to make fertilizer. By mixing the skins with other materials for decomposition, they create fertilizer used for cultivating coffee trees. However, this has certain requirements for the cherry skins. If the skins are not thoroughly dried or if problems occur during processing (such as over-fermentation), the skins can develop high acidity! Excessive high acidity can "contaminate" the soil, raising its acidity levels and producing negative effects instead. Such skins cannot be used for fertilizer applications and can only serve as waste. Regardless of which option is chosen, the value of the skins is minimal. Until one day, Aida Batlle, a Salvadoran coffee plantation owner, smelled the sweet aroma emitted from cherry skins dried by the sun. This aroma carried a full-bodied sugarcane sweetness, with a hint of rose's calm fragrance. So she boldly tried brewing the skins! The result was that the brewed taste had none of coffee's bitterness, was extremely sweet, and had a refreshing cleanliness similar to tea. Thus, coffee cherry tea was born! Aida Batlle named it "Cascara," which in Spanish means "skin, husk."

The Production of Coffee Cherry Tea

The emergence of cherry tea brought about a tremendous change in the value of cherry skins, so more and more coffee farmers began producing and selling coffee cherry skins. Although cherry skins don't require as many tedious and complex processes as tea leaves, to produce high-quality coffee cherry skins, strict control over the process is still necessary. Once the skins are removed from the coffee beans by machine, we need to place them on drying beds for complete drying. During the drying process, workers must manually remove parchment, raw beans, stones, branches, and other impurities, because the skinning machine doesn't have a filtering function - it simply piles together everything removed from the raw beans. After all, the main character is the bean, not the skin. Therefore, manual selection is needed to ensure the purity of the cherry skins. (Finished cherry skins)

The entire drying process typically lasts 4-5 days, depending on the abundance of sunlight. During the drying process, ambient temperature and humidity are also important, which is equally true for coffee beans. When temperature is too low and humidity too high, cherry skins are very prone to spoilage. Under normal circumstances, the deep red color of cherry skins gradually transitions to deep purple as drying progresses. However, if the skins spoil, they turn brown and develop a strong sour taste. Such skins represent failed products. Therefore, supervision during drying is particularly important. Besides impurities, workers also need to select out cherry skins that have turned brown due to failed drying. (Normal finished cherry skins)

The Flavor Profile of Coffee Cherry Tea

What does coffee cherry tea taste like? Different coffee varieties carry different base flavors due to genetics, and this is also true for cherry skins. The flavors of skins produced from fruits of different varieties have certain distinctions, but they all share a common characteristic: "sweetness."

Regardless of the variety, all cherry skins exhibit abundant sweetness after brewing. This sweetness can be clearly perceived from the skins even before brewing, as the skins themselves contain very rich sugars. Although FrontStreet Coffee has its own plantation, since it's not yet harvest season, the eager FrontStreet Coffee purchased a batch of cherry skins online to sample! The brewing method for cherry tea is no different from brewing tea leaves. For a quick cup of hot cherry tea, we can use slightly hotter water for brewing. The water amount can be adjusted according to our preferred concentration. FrontStreet Coffee here uses 94°C water temperature, 20g of cherry skins, and 400ml of water, which is a ratio of 1:20.

This is a batch of Catimor cherry skins. The brewed cherry tea, besides being sweet, has a faint red date aroma! As mentioned earlier, it tastes almost entirely sweet, definitely deserving the title "little sweet water." However, because it only has sweetness, the layers of flavor are not rich, making one feel that something is missing. Besides hot brewing, cherry tea can be brewed like cold-extracted tea or cold-extracted coffee, using cold water for long-term low-temperature extraction. Cold-extracted cherry tea will have a more intense sweetness, but it's still just sweet. This is why many coffee shops, although they sell cherry tea products, often mix it with other ingredients to create specialty drinks with richer flavors and more diverse layers.

The caffeine content in cherry tea is only one-quarter that of coffee, so for friends who don't want to consume excessive caffeine but still need a pick-me-up, cherry tea will be an excellent choice~~

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