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Guatemala Jalapa Cascara Nano Lot
Flavor note: Rosehip, plum, honey, clean aftertaste
Area: New Oriente, Colis, Jalpa
Variety: Pache
Altitude: 1750~1867m
Barista's comment: "Unbelievably sweet and clean Cascara, achieved due the careful handling, care, and “dry bicycle” de-pulping.
Available in 60g, 150g and 500g (500g comes in a wholesale bag)
Cascara, also often referred to as "coffee cherry tea", is dried outer skins of coffee cherries. It has been considered a by-product of coffee making process, and often discarded in mass, if not used as a compost. Recently, however, cascara is gaining its popularity in specialty coffee scene as an exciting, new and tasty ingredients. After all, beautiful coffee comes from beautiful cherries- why waste?
This dark red, sun-dried fruit peel has a shell-like, leathery texture, and makes a tea-like infusion. The flavor is quite different from roasted coffee beans- sweet and a bit tart like rosehip or plum, and mellow as honey. Although it is caffeinated, the caffeine content is less than a brewed coffee for about 1/4 to 1/8.
You can explore quite a lot with it as well- you can make a syrup, or dried cascara can also be used as a "coffee flour", ground and mixed with wheat flour to be used in baking. Playing around with some spices like cinnamon and nutmeg to make it warmer and more fragrant infusion is also a known way to enjoy it.
What we love about introducing cascara at Kurasu is not just because it is especially high quality, gorgeous cascara, but because we feel that it is a wonderful way of up-cycling. As mentioned, cascara has been discarded most of the time, sometimes even causing a water pollution. Consuming cascara means less waste, less pollution, pioneering a new revenue source for the coffee farmers, all while enjoying a wonderful and curious encounter with coffee cherries.
GOOD COFFEE FARMS, run by Mr. Carlos Melen is an organization that supports small sized farmers in Guatemala to produce great coffee, in sustainably and eco-friendly way.
Amongst their numerous intriguing activities and novel ideas, there is their Dry Bicycle Pulping method. The pulping machine runs simply by pedalling, and it requires no electricity, no water, and causes no pollution.
Brewing delicious cascara is really quite simple and doesn't require any techniques.
The only adjustments are ratios and duration of brew which you can adjust depending on your flavor palate. The exceptional quality of the does not give astringency or negativity even when steeped for a longer time.
Here's how we're doing it in our cafes:
We roast all of our coffee in Kyoto, at our Fushimi Inari roastery, twice a week on Thursday and Sunday.
We then pack and ship the freshly roasted beans out as early as on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (please note that our fulfilment operation closes on weekends.).
The roasting date on your coffee will be between 14 days prior to your order, and while we try our best to ship as younger roast as possible, we actually recommend you waiting at least 1 week after the roasting date to enjoy the fully developed flavor, so if you receive a very fresh roast please let the coffee rest for about a week and give it a try!
*Any order made after 12pm on Wednesday and Saturday will likely to be fulfilled on the next week’s roasting day.
We understand the quality of the raw material determines most of the quality of the end product. That is why the selection of green beans, and knowing the source and traceability is so important to us.
We work with only reputable green bean importors - Cafe Imports, Nordic Approach, Umi no muko, along with directly sourcing from mirco lots from around the world. We make sure to understand as much as possible the farmers, their approach to harvest, processing, and logistics to reach Japan.
At Kurasu we roast with a 6 kg semi-hot blast type roaster made by a Dutch manufacturer, Giesen.
The roaster helps us roast a coffee with a soft, complex flavour and texture.
Coffee beans are naturally fragrant and have fresh and juicy acidity and sweetness of fruits. We make sure not to develop the roast too long and conscious to find the perfect balance to maximize the potential of each coffee.
We roast 2-3 times a week - at each session, right after roasting and on the day before the roasting, we check the quality of our roasted coffee.
We pay close attention to the batches we adjusted the roasting profile for and any batches that show readings with any difference to usual.
Roasting is an ever evolving process for us. There's always some small adjustments that can be made and we strive for ship out the best roasted coffee we can possibly produce.
