STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 45 Not yet legal in Europe Purchasing high quality cascara is not without its challenges. "It isn't always easy to determine how 'clean' or of what quality the cascara will be outside of really knowing both your market and your producers well," said Newbom. "Communication is key. Even the word 'cascara' to describe the product doesn't neces- sarily mean that you are talking about the same thing." In Europe coffee retailer Aida Batlle first began serving cascara in 2008, according to a report by Max Dodd in The Blend Magazine. It was soon transformed into cold brew and a host of other prod- ucts such as Square Mile's cascara chocolate and cascara tonic. "Joost Bakker, the Melbourne poster-boy for zero-waste ca- fés, has promoted the use of this coffee by-product due to his mantra of there being "no excuses for waste when there is poten- tial to produce a quality product." He finds a range of uses for it as a beverage and in food, promoting this to his clientele in Australia who are as environmentally concerned as he is," writes Dodd. It was subsequently withdrawn from menus due to confus- ing language in UK import legislation, which categorizes 'any husk or substitute product containing any strain of coffee' as a novel food. The remedy is bureaucratic, he explains. Food and beverages introduced since 2002 must receive a safety certifi- cation. The authority then decides if an additional assessment by the European Food Safety Authority is necessary. "These applications are bureaucratic, cascara is a grey area – it's not il- legal, but the process of legalizing it has not yet been finalized. It will take an unknown length of time for the legislation to be amended, making cascara legal for sale." System Extraction Integrated IES flavourtech.com SolublE, REady-to-dRInk Cold bREw C o f f E E o n o n e l i n e A L L p r o c e s s i n g a n d Baggies of cascara from washed process on top of a baggie of cascara from dry process on top of baggie of green coffee. The Other Cascara In North Americas the name cascara first brings to mind a native American shrub – not a coffee by-product. Rhamnus Purshiana or Cascara Buckthorn is a species of buckthorn native to the Western United States and Southern British Columbia. The dried bark from this shrub has been used as a laxative by native Ameri- cans and colonists for centuries. Until recently, cascara sagrada (Spanish for sacred bark), was included as a primary ingredient in many over-the-counter laxatives available at pharmacies. In 2002 the U.S. Food and Drug Administra- tion banned the use of the bark as an ingredient as it has been associated with severe abdominal pain and diarrhea.

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