Dreaming about
coffee

Coffee is the drink of being awake, the first thing a lot of people reach for in the morning and the reason some of them can't sleep at night. So it's a slightly odd thing to meet in a dream. Dreaming about coffee usually points to one of three things, a need for energy you don't have, a decision you want to think through clearly, or a conversation with someone that's waiting to happen.

Which one it is depends on what you did with the coffee. Drinking it alone at dawn is a different dream from sharing a pot with someone you haven't seen in years, and a cup that spills across your desk is different again. Your waking habits count as well, since a person who drinks five cups a day and a person who never touches the stuff won't dream about it for the same reasons.

What dreaming about coffee means

Coffee does two jobs in most lives. It wakes us up, and it gives us an excuse to stop and talk. Most coffee dreams come back to one of those, with a third reading for the times the body is speaking for itself.

A wake-up call

English tells someone who's missing the obvious to "wake up and smell the coffee". A coffee dream can be that line in picture form, especially if you were trying to wake up in the dream (or kept being handed cups you didn't ask for). Is there something in your life you've been half asleep to, a bill or a falling-out you're putting off, or a partner who keeps hinting? The dream may be nudging you to look.

A clear head for a decision

People make coffee before a long night of work or a difficult phone call, because it's the drink of concentrating. A dream of sitting over a cup, thinking, often comes when you're weighing something up and want to get it right. If the coffee was strong and good, you may feel ready to decide. But if it was weak, cold or kept running out, you may not feel you have what it takes yet.

Running on empty

Sometimes a coffee dream is simply about tiredness. If you've been sleeping badly or working long hours, the dream may be showing you what your body is asking for. It's the most literal reading, but it's worth taking seriously before you look for a hidden one.

Dreaming about drinking coffee

Drinking coffee in a dream is usually about energy and attention. Sipping it slowly, enjoying it, points to a pause you're giving yourself, while gulping it down on the move is the dream of a day with no room in it. If you don't drink coffee in waking life, the dream may be borrowing it as the plainest picture of "I need to be more awake for this". If you drink a lot of it, it may be nothing more than your day showing up at night, which is what dreams do with whatever fills our waking hours.^[3]

Dreaming about making coffee

Making coffee for someone else is a small act of care, so a dream of it is often about looking after people. Who was the cup for? A dream of making coffee for a partner, a parent or your whole office can be about how much you give, and whether anyone makes it for you. And making it for yourself, carefully, the way you like it, is about routine and the comfort it brings.

Dreaming about having coffee with someone

"Let's grab a coffee" is how people start dates, job interviews, reunions and apologies, so this dream is usually about a conversation you'd like to have. The person across the table matters most, and coffee with an ex or an old friend often means there's something unsaid between you, and coffee with a stranger can be about wanting to meet someone new. If the meeting kept getting delayed or the other person never arrived, you may doubt the conversation will ever happen. The page on cafes covers the setting itself.

Dreaming about spilling coffee

A coffee spilled down a white shirt or across a laptop is the classic small disaster before something important, and the dream usually comes when you're worried about making a bad first impression. But it's often about nerves more than mistakes. If someone else spilled it on you, think about who you feel is messing up your plans, or making you look careless.

Dreaming about coffee grounds

Coffee grounds are what's left over once the good part is gone. In Turkey, Greece and much of the Middle East there's a long tradition of reading the grounds left in a cup of thick coffee (it's a parlour game for some families and a serious matter for others). Read more simply, a dream of grounds is about what remains after something has ended. It might be the bits of a relationship or a job you're still sorting through, and whether anything in them is worth keeping.

Dreaming about coffee going cold

A cup that goes cold before you drink it is a picture of being interrupted, again and again, until the thing you wanted for yourself is no good any more. Parents of small children will recognize it (lukewarm coffee is practically part of the job). The dream tends to come when your own needs keep sliding to the bottom of the list, and it's a fair prompt to ask when you last finished something just for you.

Dreaming about coffee according to Jung and Freud

Neither of them wrote about coffee as such, but both had an idea that fits it better than most symbols.

Jung: the slow cup and the fast day

Jung's view was that a dream compensates for whatever your waking attitude leaves out.^[2] Applied to coffee (ours, not his), a day run on caffeine, all speed and deadlines, may be answered at night by a long, slow cup with nowhere to be. If the cup was shared, he'd have wanted to know who sat across the table first, since for him a figure in a dream is personal before it's a symbol.

Freud: dreams of convenience

Freud noticed that whenever he ate salty food in the evening, such as olives or anchovies, he dreamt he was drinking water, and then woke up thirsty.^[1] He called these dreams of convenience, the mind fulfilling a bodily need so you can stay asleep a little longer. Applied to coffee, a dream of drinking cup after cup may be the same trick, with a tired body asking for energy in the only way it can while you sleep.

Questions to ask about your coffee dream

A coffee dream usually makes sense once you know what the coffee was for, and these questions get you there.

• Were you drinking it, making it, sharing it or spilling it?
• Who was with you, and when did you last talk to them properly?
• How has your sleep been, and how much coffee are you drinking?
• Is there a decision you've been putting off until you feel sharper?
• Did the coffee taste good, burnt, weak or cold?

Before reading a dream, Oniri asks who was there and where it happened. With coffee that matters, since a cup alone at dawn and a cup with an old flame aren't the same dream at all.