Cascara Costa Rica Hacienda Sonora

A sweet, juicy cascara that tastes of cherries and dried apples. It is beautifully light and refreshing and reminds us most of hibiscus tea.  It tastes great as a warm infusion, but also in a cold version! 

We have a new cascara for you, which for the first time in a long time is not from Panama as you have been used to! This time it comes from Costa Rica from the Hacienda Sonora farm, located near the town of Alejuela in the Grecia district of central Costa Rica. Again, this husk comes from naturally processed cherries of several varieties grown on this farm, so they really don't lack sweetness. 

The cascara itself is a by-product of the processing of the coffee beans. It is a crushed coffee cherry that offers a fresh fruity taste, plenty of caffeine and antioxidants. In the same volume, cascara has about half the caffeine content of coffee. 

After the ripe cherries are hand-picked and washed with clean water, they travel to drying facilities where they are dried on African beds or patios. The fully dried cherries are then stored in sacks for two months to stabilize them before they are de-puled.

The final part of the processing, the actual separation of the husk from the grain, also takes place on the farm. After this process, the husks are collected, packaged and stored as cascara.

The cascara extract is prepared similarly to herbal tea. For 1 liter of drink, use 50g, pour hot water (about 93℃, but boiling water is also not a problem) and let it infuse for up to 10 minutes, then drain. Anyway, don't be afraid to experiment and be surprised how cascara develops more and more flavours with a different style of preparation!

Dried coffee husks