Cascara recipes?

Coffee preparation techniques besides espresso like pourover.
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baldheadracing
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#1: Post by baldheadracing »

I just received some Cascara from aidabatlleselection.com and I was wondering if folks had a favourite preparation method? I've never had cascara.

The Internet is all over the place on this ... search has (hot) brewing ratios from 20g/litre to 105g/litre; one, two, or three steepings; brew times from 4 minutes to 10 minutes ... and that's from sites that appear to have actually brewed the stuff. There are all kinds of 'coffee' sites that obviously have never brewed cascara and are just copying other sources and practicing tacky SEO (search engine optimization).

As an aside, I feel for people getting into coffee and searching the Internet for information. Out of curiousity I would look at the coffee portion of each website. Sooo much just plain wrong information ... with the worst being espresso information, and within espresso, the worst being grinder information.

I feel more sympathetic to people getting into espresso now :oops:.
-"Good quality brings happiness as you use it" - Nobuho Miya, Kamasada

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baldheadracing (original poster)
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#2: Post by baldheadracing (original poster) »

Just an update:

Taste:
You know the sweetness that you taste in a great coffee? People use descriptors like various berries, stone fruit, etc.

Take that sweetness that you taste in a clean filter coffee, and put its essence in hot water. That's what this cascara tastes like. I have coffee from the same farm, and I can taste this cascara in the washed coffee. [Spock]It is interesting.[/Spock]

Brew methods:

1. As Aida Batlle recommends: 16g to 1 cup 200F water, steeped 6-10 minutes. https://aidabatlleselection.com/products/cascara
This extracts everything into one strong cup. Flavour concentration is less like tea and more towards a juice.

2. Multiple steepings. If you like to steep tea multiple times, then I think that you will love experiencing how cascara changes. I started with the recipe from Kurasu of 7.5g:200g @ 96C/204F but I didn't stir and did three steepings:
First steeping: 3:00 long. This steeping is all about sweetness.
Second: 4:30-5:00 long. This one is about complexity.
Third: 10+ minutes. The last steeping gives echoes of the previous steepings as it cools.

All-in-all, this is a coffee forum, and I am here for the coffee. I'll take coffee over cascara pretty much every time. However, if the idea of tasting coffee and the cascara from the same coffee arouses your curiousity, then I would say, try it.
-"Good quality brings happiness as you use it" - Nobuho Miya, Kamasada