It’s 11:43am and I haven’t had my coffee yet. I’ve just barely made it out of bed – yes, I’m on vacation – and I haven’t quite yet had that crazed urge for coffee. I’m waiting for it before I make coffee, because I sort want to hit that sweet-spot, that moment when you want a cup (but yet not need it badly) so the feelings evoked from drinking it will be the most rewarding. It’s like, just a few minutes before the first signs of headache.

I think the ideal time to have coffee is about an hour after getting up, when you’ve come to your senses and really start looking for something to sip. It makes it so much better.

The second cup of coffee is more difficult to time. If I make two cups in the morning, the coffee-maker usually turns off (it’s on a two-hour timer) before I get the craving for the second cup. That means I usually drink it whenever the coffee-maker turns off, so it doesn’t get cold, which is usually slightly before I actually want my second cup, so it’s not as good as the first one.

If I can learn to just wait until the moment when I look at the coffee-maker, and say to myself “Was glaubst du, Hans? Eine Tasse Kaffee, ja?” (yes, I say so), that’s the ultimate sweet-spot for the second cup. But it doesn’t always follow a rigid schedule so it’s hard to time.

The third cup is increasingly difficult. Sometimes I take that around 3pm – 5pm sometime. As a rule, I don’t drink coffee after 5pm, so if I haven’t had it before 5pm, it won’t happen.