Some of you may have tried Cascara, and thought wow that’s it, I’m trying all the plant! But no no no there’s more! An idea that first popped into my head back in 2010 has finally come to fruition. Dale Harris my Director of Wholesale here at Has Bean towers likes to compete in barista competitions, and these competitions require you to come up with signature drinks. I remember sneaking back from Costa Rica with some coffee flowers to try and incorporate into this drink. We never found an effective way to use them, but it’s something that bugged me over and over again.

So with our partners in Bolivia I asked them if they could harvest some flowers for us, and see what we could do. This doesn’t damage the crop, as they are harvested just as they are about to fall from the tree but it does involve lots of work (which is just 1 of the reasons why we love the people we work with).

So the process begins after a coffee harvest when there’s normally a period of dry weather, during this time the coffee plant gets a little stressed at the lack of water. Then the rainy season comes which sparks the coffee plant into creating little blossom flowers, these flowers are one of the most amazing and powerful smells I have ever experienced (if you could make a aftershave of it then it’d be my smell of choice) and these flowers appearing mark the start of the process of the coffee plant creating its cherries for our lovely coffee beverages.

The amounts we have are tiny and won’t be around for long. We’ve also got a number of different varietals that all taste quite different.

We played with brewing it as a tea, and boom a unique drink! Our hard working partners in Bolivia have spent a huge amount of time and energy collecting these and we’re also able to separate different varietals of flower, which surprisingly taste very different.

We have –

Bourbon
Geisha
Cepac
Catura
Java

We even made a brew guide here to help you get the best out of the flowers :

 

We’re selling them in one brew sachets, that’s how little we have, but it’s an experience you will want to enjoy. Were also selling in a 5 pack so you can try them all side by side.