"cascara" news and stories

Coffee cherries are drinkable too. Photo: rohsstreetcafe, Flickr

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is the ninth in a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

Coffee's origins as a beverage are as murky as the sludge left at the bottom of a French press: Were the beans really the discovery of a bygone Ethiopian goatherd with a hyper flock? Did the first coffee drinkers actually brew the plant's leaves as tea instead of the beans we use today -- or the cherry in which they grow? Can a drink be made from the cherry itself?

That last one, at least, is a definite "yes," and several beverages made from dried coffee-cherry husks are still imbibed around the world. Learn more about these rare-to-us brews after the jump.