What Is Qishr? The Yemeni Coffee Cherry Drink
Qishr is the traditional Yemeni drink made from dried coffee husks brewed with ginger, and it is the oldest widely documented use of the coffee cherry. The name refers to the husk itself, and the drink predates the global habit of discarding the fruit and keeping only the bean. Yemeni households brewed the dried cherry with ginger and sometimes cinnamon or cardamom, producing something warm and lightly spiced that sits between a tea and a tisane, with roughly a quarter of coffee's caffeine. For centuries in parts of Yemen the husk drink was the everyday one and exporting the beans was the business, which inverts how most of the world thinks about coffee. Modern cascara is the same raw material under a Spanish name. If you have tried cascara brewed plain and found it pleasant but thin, qishr is the version with the spice built in, and it is better.
Here is how to make it and where it came from. You need dried coffee cherry, which is what our Cascara Coffee Cherry Tea is, plus fresh ginger.
What is actually in qishr?
| Ingredient | Amount per 8 oz | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Dried coffee cherry | 2 tbsp (about 8 g) | The base. Dried fruit and hibiscus notes |
| Fresh ginger | 2 or 3 thin slices | The defining flavor. Warm and sharp |
| Cinnamon | Small piece of stick | Optional. Rounds the ginger |
| Cardamom | 1 pod, crushed | Optional. Adds a floral lift |
| Sugar | To taste | Traditional, and it suits the drink |
Ginger is the one that makes it qishr rather than plain cascara. Leave it out and you have made something else.
How do you brew it?
Simmer rather than steep, which is the main departure from how cascara is usually treated.
Bring 10 oz of water to a simmer with two or three slices of fresh ginger and, if using, the cinnamon and cardamom. Let the spices go for about five minutes before the cascara joins them, so the ginger has time to give something up.
Add 2 tablespoons of dried coffee cherry and simmer gently for another eight to ten minutes. Do not boil it hard. Strain into a cup and sweeten to taste. It should come out a deep amber red.
The long simmer is deliberate. A short steep, which is how most cascara guides treat it, gives you a lighter and more delicate cup. Qishr is supposed to be fuller and more extracted, closer to a spiced decoction.
Why did Yemen drink the husk instead of the bean?
Economics, mostly, with the taste being a happy accident.
The beans were the export crop and the cash. The husks were left over, already dried as part of processing, and free. A household that sold its beans still had the fruit, so the fruit is what it drank.
Yemen's role here is worth knowing: the port of Mokha gave us the word mocha, and for a long period Yemen was the centre of the coffee trade. The drink most associated with its own coffee culture was made from the part the rest of the world threw away.
Cascara's arrival in specialty cafes in the 2010s was frequently written up as an innovation in upcycling. It was a rediscovery. The longer history is in how the coffee cherry became a tea.
How much caffeine does it have?
Roughly 15 to 25 mg per 8 oz, about a quarter of a cup of coffee.
The caffeine lives in the bean, and qishr is made from the fruit around it, so the amount that carries over is small. That puts it below most black tea and in the range of a light green tea.
A longer simmer extracts somewhat more than a quick steep, so qishr sits at the upper end of cascara's range rather than the lower. It is still a drink you can have in the evening without much consequence. The numbers are in how much caffeine is in cascara tea, and the cautions worth knowing in cascara tea side effects.
What if you cannot find cascara?
Then you cannot make qishr, and that is the honest answer rather than a sales line.
There is no substitute for dried coffee cherry. Spiced black tea with ginger is a nice drink but it is not this one, because the base is doing something specific: dried fruit, a hibiscus-like tartness and a body that ginger sits on well.
Cascara is genuinely difficult to get hold of, for reasons that have more to do with how it is produced than with demand, which we went through in why cascara is so hard to find. Ours comes in single small lots and runs out between harvests. If you have some and want other things to do with it, the recipes are here.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This article is general information, not medical advice.
