When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is wait for my body to catch up.
There’s always a small gap between when the mind wakes and when the body does. The older I get, the wider that gap seems to grow.
As I’m coming round, my body tells me all sorts of things. That my arm’s gone numb, or that the waste products in my brain haven’t cleared yet, so I should lie a little longer. When I get up without hearing my body out, I sometimes end up wincing.
It tells me my soles feel tender, my steps are unsteady, my head feels foggy. Once I’m finally moving, the first thing I do is pick out a hair-loss tablet and whichever vitamin takes my fancy, and wash them down with a glass of water. Once that water’s in me, my bladder starts speaking up.
“I can’t hold on any longer. Get to the toilet, now.”
After I’ve been to the toilet, I brush my teeth. I keep three types of toothpaste at home.
An ultra-high-fluoride paste, a mint paste, and a salt paste.
I always use the salt paste first thing in the morning. It’s mild enough on the mouth, and the faint saltiness helps shake off the sleep.
The mint paste I use is a strong one, and I mostly reach for it during the day. The ultra-high-fluoride paste is a Swiss one I make a point of sourcing – it’s barely irritating and meant to help prevent cavities, so I save it for just before bed.
After brushing, I wash my face with water alone. Washing with just water in the morning is a habit I’ve had for years now. There’s no particular reason for it – I simply stopped feeling I needed a cleanser, and it’s stuck ever since.
The water also smooths down whatever mess my hair’s got itself into overnight. I don’t put any styling product in yet.
Leaving the bathroom, I head straight for the fridge.
Two eggs are my main breakfast. I put the pair of them into a little machine made for boiling eggs, which always cooks them to exactly the soft-boiled way I like.
By the time I’ve eaten those eggs, my body’s over ninety per cent awake. From here, it’s the body’s turn to wake the mind – and nothing does that better than coffee.
These days I’m drinking Ethiopian coffee. It has a light, delicate quality with a lot of layers to its flavour, which makes it well suited to mornings.
I boil 600ml of filtered water in an electric kettle.
Then I take out the Yukiwa drip kettle that’s been fitting my hand well lately. Pouring the water from the electric kettle into the Yukiwa drops the temperature by about ten degrees, so I always transfer it the moment it’s at a full boil.
I use 20 grams of coffee. At home I’d normally use 15 grams, but today I’m taking it out in a flask, so I use a bit more. The reason I use less at home is that if I finish the pot and fancy more, I can simply brew another.
Out and about, it’s harder to find coffee I actually enjoy, so I prepare a slightly larger amount to take with me.
I grind the beans with a hand grinder called the Comandante. It’s said to be the best in the hand-mill category, and since I love coffee so much, I went ahead and bought one without much hesitation.
Having taken the plunge, I’ve used it so often since that it’s turned out to be money very well spent.
The freshly ground beans go into a Hario Neo dripper – the newest version of the V60, the most famous name among coffee drippers.
It’s a dripper I trust, so I reach for it often.
To extract from 20 grams of coffee, I pour in 320ml of hot water – sixteen times the weight of the coffee.
When I fancy something a little stronger, I use fifteen times the water instead. It’s simply a ratio I’ve settled on.
I pour the brewed coffee into a flask and sip it through the morning.
Every sip gives me a little jolt, a sense of coming properly awake.
And with body and mind both awake like this, I get on with living the day.
#morningroutine #hario #v60 #harioneo #comandante