You don't HAVE to drink it...

When I lay aside my own passion, from time to time, I am curtly reminded that some people hate coffee.  More specifically, they hate the popular beverage brewed from roasted coffee beans.

Example #1

Example #2

The coffee tree, however, has more to offer than this drink.

Coffee "beans" are not beans.  They are seeds.  The coffee tree yields fruit, and the seeds to this fruit are the source of the drink.  The fruit (called the "coffee cherry") is a drupe.  This cherry is sweet, tangy and citrusy, more so as the fruit ripens, changing from a pale green to a deep blood red or royal burgundy.  Forget the taste of coffee; the taste of the cherry is as different as the taste of apples from that of a drink brewed from its own seeds, were they to be roasted and percolated.

This fruit is quite versatile.  Some smaller coffee roasters dry the skin, giving us a dehydrated husk which retains its flavor, much like dried apples or apricots.  This product contains simple and complex carbohydrates, as well as some tannic acids to give the sweet flavor a tart finish.  The flavor is sometimes likened to watermelon or papaya; in my opinion, the flavor resembles a delightfully tart cherry.  The cherries are a healthful snack, quite at home in any trail mix, though delightful as a stand-alone snack.  Blue State Coffee, on Commonwealth Avenue in Allston, makes a kick-ass herbal tea which refreshes beyond belief in the summer when served iced.  The tea's caffeine content is effectively zero; caffeine is found almost exclusively in the seed, developed as a toxin to deter herbivores from consumption so that the plants can reproduce (as a botanical rule, fruits "want to be eaten", whereas their seeds must live to fight another day to maintain or increase the plant's species population).

The only obligations to drink coffee are self-imposed.  If one doesn't want it, one may ignore it, no questions asked.  However, that doesn't mean that the coffee plant is, categorically, "not for you".  I regard coffee seeds as precious jewels.  As if to give a picturesque confirmation of my bias, the seeds come snugly wrapped in what looks like a small ruby.  If you like fruit (and who doesn't), give these a try.  What's the worst that could happen?