For three weeks every August, Edinburgh stops hosting festivals and turns into one. Hundreds of stages, a castle with a military band on its forecourt, a sculpture park throwing a night party in the woods. You come for the programme. The coffee is the ulterior motive.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 7 to 31 August

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe ↗ runs the 7th to the 31st, and for those three weeks every basement, church hall and upstairs room turns into a venue with a show in it. You pick up a timetable at breakfast and no plan survives past lunch; the day becomes a walk between rooms, a flyer pressed into your hand at every corner, a queue that turns out to be for the wrong show.

All that moving is what makes the coffee simple. The Milkman sits on Cockburn Street, a few steps off the Royal Mile and central to almost any run of shows you plot. The espresso is Obadiah Collective, an Edinburgh roastery pouring here as exclusive espresso partner, and the filter rotates through a changing list of named European roasters, so the cup is different visit to visit. Order the filter, because that's where the rotation earns its keep, and the room won't rush you out before your next slot.

The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, 7 to 29 August

The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo ↗ runs 7 to 29 August on the Castle Esplanade, this year titled 'A Call to Gather' with the Royal Air Force as Lead Service. Massed pipes and drums on the floodlit forecourt above the Old Town, the sort of set-piece the castle was built to frame.

The Esplanade sits directly above the Old Town, so you pass good coffee on the climb. the source coffee roasters is the stop on the way in: a few minutes below the castle, own roastery in the Old Town, filter bright and fruity, espresso rich and precise, staff who talk you through the extraction before you ask. An evening show means an afternoon to fill first, and after the last note Artisan Roast Broughton street is the longer sit, Edinburgh's original specialty roaster, every cup traced to a named farm, two rotating batch brews they will sample you on before you order.

Foodies Festival Edinburgh, 7 to 9 August

Foodies Festival Edinburgh ↗ takes over Inverleith Park from 7 to 9 August: cooking demos across a Chefs Theatre and a Cake & Desserts Theatre, tutored drinks tastings, an artisan market of producer stalls. Tickets £8 to £24. A whole weekend of eating in a park in Stockbridge, just as the Fringe is finding its feet.

The park sits in Stockbridge, which is Mr Eion - Coffee Roaster territory. Small shop, own roastery, sourcing at farm level with Costa Rican microlots named to origin, ground to order. It's on the walk to the park gates, so make it the cup that gets you there. The mail-order list exists because people move away and keep buying the beans, which tells you most of what you need to know.

Jupiter Rising x EAF 26, Saturday 22 August

Jupiter Rising x EAF 26 ↗ is the odd one out and the better for it: Saturday 22 August, 5pm to 1am, an artist-run night spread across the sculpture park at Jupiter Artland, DJ sets deep in the woodland and dancing into the small hours, from £20. It's out at Bonnington House in Wilkieston, a rural estate west of the city with nothing on the approach but fields.

There's no coffee out there, so load up before you go. The West End is on the way out, and Roasters - Artisan Cafe on Dalry Road is a working roastery first and a cafe second: beans scored to SCA standard before they reach the bar, and the same operation supplies specialty rooms across the city. A couple of doors along, Throat Punch Coffee Company runs one of the few lever machines in Edinburgh, Mexican single-origin on espresso, a barista who can tell you exactly what the lever does to the shot. Either way you reach the woods properly caffeinated for a long night.

Also running through the month

Also on through August: the Edinburgh International Festival ↗ brings opera, theatre and music to the Usher Hall and Festival Theatre from 7 to 30 August under the theme 'All Rise'; the Edinburgh International Book Festival ↗ settles at the Edinburgh Futures Institute from 15 to 30 August; the Edinburgh Art Festival ↗ hangs over 40 exhibitions across the city from 14 to 30 August; the Edinburgh International Film Festival ↗ screens 13 to 19 August, with a 30th-anniversary Trainspotting at Leith Theatre; and the Fringe Street Events ↗ fill the Royal Mile daily with buskers and living statues. All of them fold into the same central days, and the coffee named above is already on the route.

The Fringe in a hundred basements, the Tattoo on the floodlit Esplanade, a weekend of eating in Inverleith Park and a night dancing in the woods: any one of them is enough to fill the trip. What you drink between the shows is the part you'll come home talking about.