What Time to Stop Drinking Coffee

For most people, the answer is about nine hours before bed. A 2023 review of the sleep research put the cutoff for a regular cup of coffee at 8.8 hours before bedtime, so if you're asleep by 11 PM, your last cup lands a little after 2 PM. A stronger cup needs an earlier cutoff, which matters at a counter where a 24 oz protein coffee carries 160mg of caffeine. Here's how the timing works, how to find your own cutoff, and what to order once you're past it.

Why a 3 PM cup is still awake at bedtime

Caffeine takes about half an hour to kick in and leaves slowly. The CDC's workplace-safety institute, NIOSH, puts caffeine's half-life at 5 to 6 hours and notes it "can remain in your system much longer." Half-life means half of what you drank is still working 5 to 6 hours later.

Put numbers on it. A 160mg protein coffee at 3 PM still leaves about 80mg in play somewhere between 8 and 9 PM. That's three-quarters of the 107mg the sleep researchers treated as a standard cup of coffee. Bedtime doesn't start from zero; it starts from most of a cup.

Falling asleep isn't the whole story, either. The same 2023 review in Sleep Medicine Reviews pooled the sleep-lab studies and found caffeine added only about 9 minutes to the time it took to fall asleep. It cost about 45 minutes of total sleep, though, and about 11 minutes of deep sleep. You can drift off fine and still lose some of the deepest sleep of the night.

Bigger cup, earlier cutoff

The 8.8-hour figure is for a cup with 107mg of caffeine. The same review looked at a 217.5mg pre-workout dose and put its cutoff at 13.2 hours before bed. It doesn't give a number for every dose in between, but the direction is plain: the more caffeine in the cup, the further back your cutoff moves.

So it's worth knowing what's in your order. Every one of our four protein coffees, Chai included, carries 160mg. Here's the rest of the menu:

Drink	Caffeine
Protein Coffee, 24 oz (House Blend, Mocha, Caramel Machiatto, Chai)	160mg
LIT TEA, 24 oz	160mg
LIT TEA, 32 oz	240mg
Churro protein shake	80mg
The other eight protein shakes	none
Wellness Boosters, 32 oz	none
Caffeine-Free Refreshers, 16 oz	none

Two lines on that table are easy to miss. The Chai is built on warm cinnamon chai spices rather than espresso and still carries the full 160mg. And the Churro is a shake with 80mg in it. The 32 oz LIT TEA sits above the pre-workout dose in that review, so it belongs early in the day.

Find your own cutoff in a week

The research gives you a starting line, not a verdict. People clear caffeine at different speeds, and a week of paying attention tells you more than any chart.

1. Take your usual weeknight bedtime and count back nine hours. That's your starting cutoff for a regular-strength cup.
2. If your usual order is 160mg or more, start earlier than that.
3. Hold the cutoff for five weeknights in a row, no exceptions.
4. Each morning, rate how rested you feel from 1 to 5.
5. Still scoring low by Friday? Move the cutoff an hour earlier and run the week again.

One bad night can come from anything. Five in a row is a pattern.

Three schedules, three cutoffs

Asleep by 9:30 PM. Early shifts put the cutoff for a regular cup around 12:45 PM, and earlier for a 160mg one. It sounds early because the whole day is early. On this schedule, the strong stuff belongs to the first stop of the morning.

Asleep by 11 PM. The standard office schedule lands the cutoff a little after 2 PM, right where the afternoon slump shows up. That's the schedule where a 4 PM coffee is most tempting, and it lands nearly two hours past the cutoff.

Asleep by 1 AM. Late schedules get a later cutoff, a little after 4 PM for a regular cup. The math doesn't care what time your day starts; count back from bedtime and the answer follows.

If your shifts rotate, so does your cutoff. Set it by each night's bedtime, not by the clock you used last week.

What to order after your cutoff

Past your cutoff doesn't have to mean nothing in the cup. The afternoon slot is where a caffeine-free order earns its place:

• Any protein shake except the Churro: 24g of protein in the 24 oz, no caffeine, no added sugar.
• A 32 oz Wellness Booster: six flavors, every one caffeine-free, the Relaxing Tea included despite the name.
• A 16 oz Caffeine-Free Refresher: sugar free, with electrolytes and collagen, in Strawberry, Mango, or Cucumber.

And if it's the coffee you want, have it earlier. A protein coffee on the morning run puts 20g of protein and 160mg of caffeine in the part of the day with the most hours left to clear it.

We're at 325 N Weber Rd in Bolingbrook. Order ahead through order.online for pickup, or call (708) 556-9800.