I sun dried these coffee cherries after pitting them. The cherry eaten raw is sweet and fibrous. After tasting the raw fruit I was convinced that it would make a decent cherry pie, which you will see in the next post. The farmers told me I was crazy and urged me to make tea from at least some of them. I was happy to oblige.
I decided I did not want to toast the dried cherries, and instead made a green tea from them.
Delicious. Although there were no overpowering flavors, it made a delightful breakfast tea, said Laura. And it definitely had caffeine. We were buzzing on it afterward. Beware.
Okay, there must be millions of tons of these coffee cherries being thrown away every year. If we can find some way of making a sellable product out of them, we could make some serious money!
I know, huh. I said the same thing to them. I think as the whole origin coffee fad grows we’ll see more variation in the products. Right now they compost the cherries and return them to the farms (I think they sell it), so it’s not all wasted.
Who knows why coffee tea never found a niche? It might also be because most people outside of the coffee growing regions have never seen a coffee cherry and aren’t familiar with its history. I live in the middle of it, and I didn’t know half the stuff these farmers told me. The only other place within the US jurisdiction that grows coffee is Hawaii… another island far far from the mainland.
So, in the end, it’s probably a marketing issue *chuckle*.