Can you smell the coffee?

Sometimes, that we consider as useless and an utter waste is what goes on to become a winner. That’s the story, in short of cascara, or the husk – the peel or skin of coffee beans.

Till a a few years ago, the husk, after separated from the beans, used to thrown as trash or sometimes turned into a cheap fertilizer. Now it seems the cascara goes for a cast which is much more than that of the coffee bean itself!

It was discovered that the husk when soaked in hot water, gives out a beautiful aroma – sometimes floral or papaya or apple or even spice flavor, depending on where the coffee is being cultivated. This cascara is now used by Starbucks, the first to always innovate and introduce new concepts, to flavor its regular coffee’s.

Many other coffee shops have followed suit and suddenly the husk is the hottest item on the menu. Thanks to demand from these chains, the coffee husk now often fetches a higher price than the bean itself does. Some coffee cultivators say that they get $7 for a pound of cascara, while the average price for coffee hovers around $1.20, the lowest in about two years, because of an oversupply of arabica beans. 

Now that is what we call changing times and changing tastes!