Coffee is a ritual disguised as a stimulant

People defend coffee on caffeine content and lose the actual argument, because the caffeine is the least interesting thing about it.

Coffee is a ritual: the grind, the bloom, the four-minute pour, the first flat-white of a cold morning. It structures the start of a day and gives you a fixed point to return to. The bitterness is a feature — it wakes the palate the way the caffeine wakes the head. Tea is lovely and gentle, but gentle is not what you want at 6am with a hard problem in front of you.

You do not remember the cups of tea. You remember the coffee you had while you finally figured it out.