Coffee, the world's favorite beverage, comes from the fruits of the coffee tree. The fruits of the coffee tree are called cherries. They are round berry-like fruit, almost 3/4 inch (2 cm) long, and green at the beginning, but as they ripen, they turn yellowish and red or dark red when fully mature.
The insides of the coffee cherry, underneath the red outer skin (cascara), usually consist of two coffee beans that are the seeds of the coffee tree covered in mucilage and pulp.
Yes, you can eat a coffee cherry. And if you find yourself visiting a coffee farm, you should not miss out on the opportunity to try and taste the ripened coffee cherry. On taste, the skin of the coffee fruit is a bit rough, but the pulp and the mucilage are very pleasant and sweet, and the two seeds inside are just too hard to eat.
You can eat the seeds if you want to, but be careful not to chip a tooth while trying to crack them. Only when we roast the coffee seeds do they become dry and more brittle, and they are easier to chew or grind, for that matter.
The coffee fruit's outer skins are historically considered a by-product of coffee production and are usually discarded or turned into compost. When dried, we can use them for making tea. The coffee shop's worldwide, ever more popular Cascara Tea is tea made of dried coffee fruit skins. Unlike coffee, Cascara tea is much lower in caffeine and has a lovely, floral, honey-like note.
Eating the coffee fruit will give you a little caffeine jolt, but the fruit without the seeds contains far less caffeine than the seeds themselves.