New offerings are what make our days here at Kuma. We love offering you all the latest and greatest, and it’s not so bad getting to drink it ourselves on the way through :) So when this year’s crop of cascara from the famed Los Pirineos came sealed in vacuum packed aluminum sleeves, I knew we had something everyone would be clamoring to get their hands on. Cascara is the dried fruit husk of the coffee cherry. It ends up being the byproduct of coffee depulping, but it has its own merits for sure. You steep it in hot water to make a super tasty tea.
Los Pirineos looms large in the El Salvador coffee scene; Gilberto Baraona’s farm has placed in the COE multiple times, and regularly sells to some of the most elite coffee roasters across the world. This is our first year working with Gilberto, and we have two of his coffees currently in our green room, in addition to the cascara. We will be releasing those coffees in the coming weeks, but for now it's all about the cascara. It is pretty forgiving to brew, either by steeping like you would tea, or by boiling for minutes, it extracts pretty nicely. Don't forget it has quite the caffeine kick though, it can really sneak up on you.
For those of you that live in Seattle, you can head over to Neptune Coffee to get a Cascara Fizz, a cascara reduction syrup and soda water with a touch of sweetness. And we are in the midst of working out a cascara collaboration beer with our friends at Reuben’s Brews, but that is still in the works (in the meantime, you can head over to Reuben’s to get a pint of our Kenya Cream collaborative beer. Really worth it, they sell out so quick of that one). Happy drinking!