I’ve always dreamed of being a high-functioning alcoholic. The idea of waking up next to my shotgun with my hound lying on the wood floor beside my bed, fumbling for the Bailey’s or bourbon, lighting a cigarette, and pecking away at the typewriter while the sun rises sounds so, so good.

The reality is that society and my liver both shudder at the idea of life soaking-wet. And my narcissistic athletic aspirations choke at the idea of puffing a Marlboro.

Do I wish I could Hemingway my way through the day?

To quote the man himself, “Yes.”

Is there a better way I can sit contemplatively and wax aspiring-artistic as the sun rises?

Yes.

I’m one of those guys you and your Silicon Valley buddy laugh about. The one who uses a purpose-made kettle to pour water over my coffee and who times extractions to make sure my grind size is dialed in. I will wait fifteen minutes for my coffee to be made and if I can lift the foam off my cappuccino with a spoon, I scoff.

It’s not generic pretense or Birkenstock-wearing Fair Trade Fanaticism (that is like, so, Second Wave, man) that has me mail-ordering beans from Grand Rapids and both Portlands and buying complicated coffee contraptions as often as they’re released to suckers like me.

It’s a way to tune in to the world by high-fiving a hundred hands at once—soil tillers and coffee fruit pickers in Africa or Central America, watchful farmers who strive for ever-higher quality and consistency, buyers and roasters who turn the green beans to black gold—and try my hand at doing their labor justice. Pondering the origins of my morning Zen is a huge part of waking up on the bright side (the caffeine doesn’t hurt). And it tastes so much better than the pre-ground stuff at your local supermarket that you’ll swear it’s a different drink.

So I’m not man enough to wash down my eggs with whiskey. But I’ve found a drinking experience equally complex, a little less painful, and maybe more temporal.

A Lot More Than a Number

With whiskey and wine, age is a complicated thing, but older is better. One ages in barrels, the other in bottles, neither is served immediately. With coffee, the second it’s roasted it starts getting worse, so best drink up.

I’m not even man enough to finish a bag of beans on my own inside of the two-week window of peak freshness, especially with all the variety I like to keep in the cabinet. I take roast dates as a challenge and use them as a calendar. They can remind us of specific dates or life events, a killer Columbian on a cold morning when you wrote the first chapter of the Next Great American Novel or a mind-blowing Kenyan roasted the same day you started dating someone you’ve pined after for years.

With whiskey and wine, we drink to think about the old times, of what’s gotten us and our grapes and rye to where we are now. Some quotable guy once said, “some drink to remember, some drink to forget.” With coffee, it’s all about where it’ll take you, the beauty of hindsight and a stack of cherished labels the only reminders of that fleeting freshness.

Speaking of beautiful packaging…

I just got a bag of Ethiopian Ardi in the mail from Madcap Coffee Roasters in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This was the first craft coffee I ever tasted, lovingly brewed in a Chemex at Local Coffee in San Antonio, Texas some four years ago.

It arrived too late in the evening for me to brew it right away, so I just counted the minutes until I could fall asleep and wake up and drink some. The explosive milk-chocolate-berryness of those beans with the magic Madcap touch is the stuff dreams are made of. If I told you it was blueberry-infused hot chocolate, you’d believe me.

The Kenyan from Klatch Coffee that had once commemorated a great beginning is now a distant fond memory like the relationship it brought with it. Its stone-fruity savory vibes have faded with a sense of an ending that only a good cup of coffee could cure. It’s known that coffee is a natural antidepressant, which is why we drink 400 million cups of it a day.

Thank goodness for the annual return of Madcap’s Ardi. It means that summer is here and so is my favorite coffee in the world. Thinking about the first time I tasted great coffee and where I am now gives me hope that there are still great things to discover and wonder where they’ve been my whole life (I’m looking at you, pistachio ice cream and sundress-wearing triathlete dream girl). The bright berry attack is drinkable even when the mercury is well-acquainted with a hundred. Just crank the AC baby…

Oh, The Places You’ll Go

I can’t think of coffee without thinking of something else, too. It may be a lingering finish from a sneaky sunrise espresso before an unbearable meeting that takes me to great conversation with a barista buddy and faraway farms in El Salvador. Maybe it’s the time I was a destinationless hobo who stumbled into Water Avenue in Coffee Mecca, Oregon and walked out with Shins tickets and dinner plans.

Maybe finally sharing some of those stories will take us somewhere, too.