Turning Coffee Trash Into Treasure

The dried husk—those in the trade call it cascara—is now fetching a 480 percent premium over the beans themselves

- Marvin G. Perez and Leslie Patton

Aida Batlle grows coffee on her family’s farm in the hills surrounding El Salvador’s Santa Ana Volcano. Like generations of farmers before her, she had little use for the skins that encase the beans, so she’d turn them into cheap fertilizer or, more frequently, trash them. Then one day, as she walked past some husks drying in the sun, a smell hit her, a good smell: hibiscus and other floral aromas. It dawned on her, she says, that some value might be extracted from what she had long considered refuse. So she steeped the husks in hot water and had a taste. “Immediately I started calling customers to try it,” she says.

More than a decade later, coffee husk—or, as it’s better known, cascara—is having a moment. Starbucks Corp. recently introduced drinks in the U.S. and Canada sweetened with cascara syrup and offers a sugar topping made from the husk. Competitors such as Stumptown Coffee Roasters and Blue Bottle Coffee are adding it to their menus, too, as tea and a carbonated drink.