Coffee is one of the most consumed beverages in the world. But the familiar roasted bean isn’t the only thing that can be consumed from coffee fruits — yes, coffee comes from fruit. The shell of the coffee fruit, known in the industry as cascara — Spanish for “husk, peel or skin” — can be harvested, dried and steeped to make a beverage of its own: a tart, fruity tea.
Cascara isn’t common in Charleston. It’s unlikely you can walk into a local coffee shop and ask for an ice cold cascara tea on a humid day. However, Sightsee owners Allyson Sutton and Joel Sadler have been brewing cascara at their storefront since March 2020, learning and sourcing their tea from local bartender, barista and entrepreneur Michael Mai.
Together, the three launched Huskwell in December, hoping to build a new following and foundation for the sustainable beverage.
“I came to really appreciate cascara and its potential as an ingredient, an agricultural product and an agent of change,” said Mai.
According to the Huskwell team, approximately 40% of the coffee fruit is wasted during coffee production due to poor infrastructure on coffee farms and winding up in landfills. The harvesting of cascara not only offsets that waste, but offers health benefits and an additional revenue stream for farmers.
“For as long as time, coffee farmers pick the cherry, peel off the skin and the pulp of the fruit, just to get to the bean,” Sutton told the City Paper. “But the fruit itself is a superfruit.”
Coffee fruit and its cascara “scores off the charts in its antioxidants content” and contains more polyphenols than blueberries and pomegranates, helping with immunity, stress, sleep, focus and digestion, Huskwell team claims.
“It’s good for the planet,” Mai added. “We’re diverting all this waste … and it makes a really tasty beverage that’s good for you.”
Back in 2016, cascara was already making its rounds in Charleston and in the mind of the Huskwell owners. With a former partner, Mai created Arabica Soda, a half cascara, half coffee concoction that was carbonated and bottled.
“In that process [of making the soda],” Mai said. “We had to taste a bunch of different cascara, figure out how and where to get it, figure out what was good and what was bad, figure out how to treat it, how to store it.”
“We basically became self-made experts on this thing that very few people knew about.”
Production for the soda ended in 2019 when Mai’s partner moved away from the Charleston area, leaving Mai with over 500 pounds of cascara. Fortunately for Mai, Sadler and Sutton were fans of Arabica Soda as well as cascara.
“I didn’t want to throw it away,” Mai added. “So when Sightsee opened its physical location, I had all this cascara left over, and I came to [Sadler and Sutton] and said, ‘If you guys want to just sell it or use it or see what you can do with it, please just take some of this from me.’”
And at Sightsee, others were taking notice of this new tea. Patrons were curious about cascara, wondering what it was and what it tasted like.
“We were kind of on a trial run for a year, seeing how it would move,” Mai continued. “And after a year, the response to the product was going great, so we hired a designer to do our branding for us and freshly launched the product.”
Launching a product is no easy task. With such little awareness of the product, there’s no clear standard for what dictates good versus bad cascara. According to the owners, there is no standard grading system or quality control in place for cascara, despite its close relationship to coffee.
“A lot of people didn’t know that it could taste good, and a lot of people didn’t know it could taste bad,” said Mai.
“With the exception of poisonous, I’ve tasted probably the worst cascara you could taste — it tasted like if you burnt garlic and rubbed it in dirt. It made me want to puke,” Mai continued. “The best ones taste super clean, really fruity — like mangoes, figs, pineapples, apple juice, brown sugar and raisins. Good ones are super complex and have a delicious, light natural sweetness and a bit of acidity.”
Huskwell describes its cascara as “slightly sweet and refreshingly tart with notes of hibiscus, molasses and dried fruit” and can be served hot or over ice. Additionally, Huskwell has developed its cascara into a simple syrup for all the professional or at-home bartenders who want to add a bit of cascara to their cocktails. Plans for more uses are on the way, according to the owners.
But selling brewed cascara isn’t the company’s only goal. Because of the lack of systems in place to dictate prices and quality, the founders also launched Huskwell with a goal to become an agent of change in this new field.
“In terms of our type of intention, it hasn’t really been done before,” said Sadler. “The singular focus on some type of establishment of some standardized evaluation for cascara to help bring some sanity to the market.”
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