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"Take one sip and you're awake for six hours. Two sips, you're awake for 72 hours. Drink the cup, you never blink in life."
Dr. Cliff Huxtable, The Cosby Show, describing his med school coffee

While a Gargle Blaster will get you insanely drunk, Klatchian Coffee has the opposite effect. Rather than slowing down your brain, Klatchian Coffee speeds it up tremendously. In some cases, the results can be Nightmare Fuel in a cup, or just really scary to think about. May be used to demonstrate the level of a person's Must Have Caffeine addiction if Klatchian Coffee is their regular morning brew.

Possibly based on Turkish Coffee, which is an incredibly strong brew of coffee. Rather than drip or espresso it, you just almost-boil ultra-fine ground coffee grounds until you achieve drinkable coffee. (According to aficionados, bringing the water all the way to a boil will make the coffee unpleasantly bitter, while bringing it to the point where the water quivers without boiling just makes the flavor more intense.)

Compare Gargle Blaster for very strong alcoholic drinks. May overlap with Hideous Hangover Cure or Uncoffee. Will almost definitely overlap with Ate the Spoon. If it's powerfully bad coffee rather than simply powerful, it's Bad to the Last Drop. May overlap with Drugs Causing Slow-Motion.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Steel Ball Run has Gyro's "Italian Coffee": coffee brewed until it's as thick as tar, then mixed with an equal amount of sugar. Johnny says that two shots instantly revitalizes him and clears away all of his fatigue, a godsend in the brutally long transamerican race they're participating in.
  • In Serial Experiments Lain, the machine/drug Accela does exactly what it sounds like—it accelerates the brain. By 12 times.

    Audio Plays 

    Comedy 
  • Adam Ferrara has a story of visiting Jamaica, trying some of the local coffee, and having to make a beeline to the nearest bathroom as the locals laugh at him and all he can do is pathetically yell: "It's not funny!"
  • Gabriel Iglesias and a friend tried out Cuban food for the first time in Miami, and Gabe went and ordered a coffee while he browsed the menu. He thought the shot glass-sized cup he was given was a prank, so demanded a "real cup". The waiter brought him a bowl full of Cuban coffee (and wouldn't leave until he started drinking). One sip told Gabriel what a mistake he had just made, but he finished the bowl because he didn't want to admit to being an idiot. The waiter promptly crossed himself and told the cook to call 911.
    Gabriel: That is the only way in the world Cubans can make that swim.
  • Ralphie May describes his first experience with Cuban coffee. By his description, less than an ounce is equal to about five shots of espresso and is normally served in "baby doll tea-cups", which some can only drink half of. He didn't know that and demanded a full cup (equal to 84 shots of espresso). It took 25 minutes to brew, cost him $58 for the one cup which he found out about the hard way ("I won't bitch about the $4.25 cups I get at the 'Bucks!"), did not change color when cream was added, took 30 minutes to drink, caused instant Potty Failure as soon as he set down his glass, and left him shaking for 98 hours, until a friend cut him a line of cocaine to offset the coffee and calm him down enough to sleep. And it worked.

    Comic Books 
  • The Dandy: Desperate Dan's favorite coffee is strong enough to hold a spoon upright.
  • Gaston Lagaffe's homemade coffee is so strong, it causes whoever drinks it to lose coordination and make uncontrollable violent gestures. After drinking a cup of it, Gaston ends up wrecking his car. Not to mention that one sip of it makes De Mesmaeker unable to sign the contracts.
  • Iznogoud: In "The Send-away Bed", the Sleepyhead Caliph, who doesn't usually drink coffee, is forced to share a cup of Turkish coffee with the new ambassador or face war between their countries, and ends up with a severe case of insomnia. This scuppers Iznogoud's plans to get him to lie down on the title piece of furniture (which will send him away to an alternate dimension), even after barraging the Caliph with lullabies and a very boring book.
  • One Lucky Luke album has a recipe for cowboy coffee for Real Men delivered by a Camp Cook:
    You take a pound of coffee moistened with water and boil it for half an hour. Then you add a horseshoe. If it doesn't float... add more coffee.
  • In the Walter Melon episode The Sand of Madness, coffee brewed with the eponymous sand is used to wake up a drugged Lefuneste, resulting in steam clouds shooting out of his ears and him bouncing around the room.

    Comic Strips 
  • Crabgrass: Played with when Miles drinks some of his dads coffee to "feel more grown up". It's just regular coffee, but since Miles is a kid and not used to the stuff, it still leads to this Trope with Miles getting all shaky, hyper-active, and suffering a Potty Emergency in the end.
  • Peter has brewed several coffee based drinks in FoxTrot that have this effect.
    • One had Paige blinking so fast she thought there was a strobe light in the room. That would be the coffee-tea. Teabags boiled in coffee instead of water. And Paige didn't just have one. She had a dozen cups.
    • Peter invented coffee-tea for when he has to cram all night for a test. He limits himself to two cups to avoid the vibrating and worse effects. He calls Paige's dozen cups "insane".
    • Another strip had Roger pour himself a cup of coffee, which began vibrating wildly (as in, bouncing up and down on the table). Turning to Peter, he remarks, "I can always tell the mornings when you have to cram for a test."
    • In another strip, Roger took a sip of coffee, then after a Beat Panel, made a crazy face; in the last panel, Jason, looking up, said, "You said, 'make it strong'," while Roger, from the ceiling, said, "Funny, I wouldn't think my fingers could grip like this..."
    • In another strip Roger himself makes a pot of some really strong coffee, saying it'll put hair on your chest. Peter takes a sip and discovers he's right.
  • Garfield:

    Fan Works 
  • In the Star Trek: Voyager Parody Fic Attack of the Fifty-Foot Half-Klingon, Seven of Nine fuels her Jet Pack with Captain Janeway's Special Blend. "A single drop of her coffee is enough to keep me flying for hours."
  • Xander's coffee in Awaken Sleeper is noted as being pure espresso. After drinking some, Lex Luthor claims he can see his own pulse; and according to Clark, the one time he had some, he nearly vibrated through a wall.
  • In The Butcher Bird, in addition to Vinci's coffee being inhumanly strong to the point of causing instant hyperactivity when drunk by anyone else, Kaneki's coffee is outright lethal to ordinary humans and dissolves countertops.
  • A Collection of Harmonious OneShots:
    [Harry] grabbed a mug, milk and sugar and prepared what Hermione referred to as a "brickie-brew"; coffee so strong it could be used to melt through bank vaults.
  • In A Darker Path, the day after Danny discovers his daughter Taylor is the Parahuman Villain Killer Atropos, Taylor decides to butter him up for the discussion with a cup of extra-strength Navy coffee. After tasting it, Danny semi-jokingly notes that he's now worried that the coffee might just dissolve the mug.
  • Suicide Coffee, from the Domestic assassin AU, and really anything with caffeine that Elsa drinks or has brewed, one of the fics in this universe has Elsa requiring coffee this strong because her powers need the energy.
  • Empath: The Luckiest Smurf:
    • In the story "Virtual Smurfality", when Papa Smurf, Handy, and Miner are working on an all-night project together, Papa orders three glasses of cinnamon tree bark brew (the Smurf version of coffee) from Tapper's Tavern. Tapper fills out the order, telling Papa, "Why, this brew is smurfed so strong, it can even put smurf on your chest, I tell you!"
    • The buzz bean brew is the true example of this trope in action in "The Buzz Bean Incident". So powerful that it even gives Gargamel super-speed abilities when made into an elixir. However, it also has a near-deadly crash period.
  • The Light of Abyss: Luz mentions using coffee to help manage her ADHD, having an official diagnosis in this fic. She describes it as "black as night, with lots of sugar." A later chapter clarifies that it's dark and vicious, is still very bitter despite having enough sugar that the crystals don't fully dissolve, and Eda claims that you could stain a coffin with it and that King tried some and spent ten minutes on the floor twitching. Luz jokingly prays to Loki while brewing it. Amity tries two cups worth to keep warm at the Knee and she's jittery, says she can't feel her legs, and notes that Luz's eyes are pretty and is starting to ask her out before Luz tells her that she's had enough.
  • Mistralian Nirvana in Professor Arc: Student of Vacuo both sends someone on an acid trip of the happiest, most relaxing scenario they can imagine and gives them a massive caffeine rush that makes most people resemble Ruby, until they suffer an equally massive crash the following day.
  • The MLP Loops: A visiting Iroh manages to turn Nightmare Moon back into Luna with a cup of tea which, judging by Luna's reaction, was not entirely unlike Agatha Heterodyne's attempt at coffee ("PERFECT!"). Judging by Iroh's reaction, this wasn't actually a plan. He just makes a very good cuppa.
  • In A Spark of Genius the Flash is once given a large coffee that is actually an entire truck worth of coffee shrunk down to size. Flash's caffeine intake has him doing things like disassembling an entire village that is in the path of a volcano's lava flow and reassembling it several miles away within a quarter second.
  • In Wrong Road to the Right Place: Oliver tries to bring Laurel her coffee of choice, an americano with four shots and hazelnut, only to be told she doesn't drink this kind of coffee anymore.
    "I drank those in college when I had to cram for an exam. I’ll be up until two a.m. if I have this."
  • A Running Gag in She Can't Head the Family Business If She's Not Family is Nathalie running on a variant of this (six espresso shots and Monster Energy) and someone else drinking it by mistake.
  • According to Bambietta in Vow of the King, Candice's coffee is akin to caffeinated tar and once ate a hole in her favorite mug. Candice merely responds that Bambietta's mug "couldn't handle a real brew".

    Films — Animation 
  • Hoodwinked!: Near the end of the movie the squirrel gets a cup of coffee to run down the mountain and get the cops. They have to tape his message and slow it down to hear it properly.
  • The Iron Giant: Hogarth suffers from these effects after drinking an espresso offered by Dean.
  • Over the Hedge: Hammy, a hyperactive squirrel, is given a can of soda, which causes him to become more hyperactive and apparently move faster than light (he calmly walks around a laser starting to cross the lawn).
  • In Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur, after a waiter gives Scooby coffee by mistake, he becomes incredibly hyperactive and energetic.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid: "You need a cup of my famous Java." It's groundsnote  for an Overly Long Gag.
  • In George of the Jungle, George inadvertently invokes this by eating large amounts of coffee grounds.
  • Hidalgo has a scene in which the Sheikh offers Hopkins a cup of coffee. He tries to warn Hopkins that Arabian coffee is stronger than most western preparations, but Hopkins just knocks it back. He then explains that back home, they test the coffee by tossing a horseshoe in the pot. If it stands up, the coffee's ready.
  • Idiocracy has Brawndo, a close relative of Powerthirst. It is claimed to be this. It isn't.
  • In Medicine Man, Dr. Crane is given a local drink by Dr. Campbell that is 12% caffeine. She winds up hyperactive and babbling about how they could market the stuff. Amusingly, this predates the Energy Drink craze by about a decade.
  • Implied with the energy drinks Alex buys in Steps Trodden Black. With names like Hurricane Handjob and Cocaine Tears, what else would they be?

    Jokes 
  • An old joke is "Cowboy coffee". You toss a horseshoe into the pot. When it floats or when the horseshoe straightens itself out, coffee's ready. Alternatively, it causes your legs to bow when you take a sip of it.
  • Geeks sometimes call it "terminator coffee". If a SCSI terminator doesn't go under, it's strong enough.

    Literature 
  • Beware of Chicken: With his supernatural toughness, Jin manages to shrug off most of Meiling's attempts at revenge for throwing her into a mud pit; he doesn't even notice the itching powder, skin dye, or coughing candy. She eventually gets him by spiking his dinner with her father's special energy drink, used for pulling all-nighters, and potent enough to make the drinker's face flush and pupils dilate in seconds. A carp cleans the scraps from Jin's plate, and then abruptly takes off down the river like a torpedo.
  • Chrysalis (RinoZ): Overexposure to high levels of ambient mana in the dungeon, without a proper adjustment period, results in a form of poisoning, with the sufferer's body being suffused with more energy than they can handle to the point where their skin gains a blue tinge.
    Through it all, they felt no pain, only a giddy, inexhaustible nervous energy. The blues didn't make people feel tired, as the name might suggest. Rather, the Mana suffusing their body and brain numbed them and gave them the jitters, as if they'd been drinking five cups of coffee every hour. They couldn't sleep, couldn't rest, couldn't think clearly, they were both more exhausted than they'd ever been in their lives and completely unable to rest.
  • Ciaphas Cain's Valhallans have tanna, the 40K version of chifir (Russian prison tea). Cain (THE HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) downs the stuff without a problem, while Veil says it's definitely an acquired taste. It becomes a Running Gag that if he goes more than a day without it he gets mild withdrawal symptoms and enough of a craving that he'll ask about it as soon as meets Valhallans again; after an event early in his career where he fought half-way across a planet (Through an Ork Waaagh, Warboss included) after jokingly claiming it was to get some, his aide started carrying a supply at all times.
  • Demon World Boba Shop: One of the first ways Arthur learns to infuse magicka into his tea is to simply increase the effect of the caffeine. The System is gently snarky about it, but helpful.
    By focusing on the undelivered promises of Earth's energy drinks while preparing a beverage, you have a drink that goes beyond mere caffeine into the crunchy, often fraudulent realm of supplements. This drink is something that Guarana, Taurine, and Creatine never quite lived up to. It grants its drinker not only a pep high, but an overall increase in stamina and wakefulness that replaces a slight amount of the rest they failed to allow themselves.
  • The ever-brewed riverboat coffee — In one of James P. Blaylock's novels, The Disappearing Dwarf, there is a scene on a riverboat where the coffee comes from an urn which has been brewing continuously for 13 years. The urn is never emptied. Water and coffee are added as needed. One of the passengers makes the mistake of having a third cup. The coffee is so strong that he starts hallucinating.
  • Discworld:
    • The Discworld invented this substance. Klatchian Coffee is so potent that it can take you right through sobriety and out the other side, into a state of horrifying depressive hyper-awareness known as knurd ("drunk" spelled backwards). In order to offset its effects, Klatchian Coffee enthusiasts typically drink Desert Orakh (one of several Discworld Gargle Blasters) to make sure they're safely drunk. One of the strongest available beans is called the Klatchnikov, as in "a shot of coffee".
    • Which is why Sam Vimes must never touch the stuff; he lives in a permanent state of knurd. Even after getting blotto on some of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler's 300 proof (or circumstantial evidence) moonshine, two drops of the stuff is enough for him to start screaming, though it was Red Desert special, so probably stronger than normal. The rest of the Watch had to give him half a glass of whisky to get him comfortably sober.
    • Also from Discworld, there's "Splot", briefly featured in Making Money, a drink that has been outlawed in several places despite not being alcoholic... because alcohol couldn't survive whatever else is in it. Nevertheless, Igors will assure you that it's made entirely of all-natural ingredients and herbs - in much the way that arsenic is natural, and belladonna is technically an herb. It apparently speeds the brain well beyond the point where the mouth can keep up, just for starters.
  • The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden makes a potion with this effect in Fool Moon. Naturally, the liquid base is coffee, and other ingredients include a doughnut (breakfast of champions), dawn sunshine, and cheery music. Drinking it takes him from beaten up and worn out to whistling Carmen and composing a poem about autumn, and effortlessly mopping the floor with a pack of human lycanthropes... until it wears off.
  • Dune:
    • One of many, many uses of spice is to generate dangerous levels of sanity. Mentats drink sappho juice, a drug that amplifies a Mentat's natural ability, allowing them to go beyond their usual limits and comprehend vast amounts of data even faster. The mantra for drinking it in the movies was:
      It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
      It is by the juice of sappho that thoughts acquire speed,
      the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning.
      It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

      (This sounds like it's from the book, but in fact was composed by David Lynch for the 1984 film.)
    • The quote was quickly modified into a Must Have Caffeine mantra by modification of sappho to coffee:
      It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
      It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
      The hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning;
      It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

      (by Mark Stein at the 1993 Arisia science fiction convention in Boston)
  • Regular old Turkish coffee gets a mention in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede, with a mild twist. The dragon who was King before Kazul took the throne loved him some Turkish coffee brewed strong enough to take the roof off a dragon's mouth. No one's particularly surprised that his assassin just decided to poison his coffee; Kazul comments that you could have boiled a whole field of dragonsbane in a cup of the King's coffee and it wouldn't have changed the taste or texture enough that he'd have noticed.
  • In Gorky Park, Arkady Renko escapes a citywide manhunt by boarding a train full of 3-year contract laborers; noting that the other passengers would probably rob him and possibly kill him if he falls asleep, he drinks chifir, a super-concentrated form of tea, to stay awake the whole time.
  • In One Bullet Away, Lt. Fick at one point drinks from a two-liter water bottle in which he has mixed in six packets of MRE instant coffee, six creamers, a packet of cocoa powder and two crushed No-Doz tablets in order to stay awake (he had only sleep three hours in the last three days).
  • Sleeping Beauties: To help the inmates of Dooling Correctional Facility for Women stay awake (and thus avoid getting the Aurora flu), inmates Jeanette Sorley and Angel Fitzroy brew special Super Coffee.
  • The Ur-Example is the New Accelerator in the H. G. Wells story of the same name, a drug which increases the body's metabolic rate by a thousand or so times. The narrator and the inventor both drink just a drop of the accelerator, and the next few seconds become so drawn out that to the characters they feel more like half an hour. Notably, moving so incredibly quickly causes incredible friction and air resistance, and the pair find their trousers are becoming singed as they walk.
  • And in The Sparrow, Fr. D.W. Yarbrough observes that Sofia Mendes brews up "awful damn Turkish mud".
  • In the Star Trek anthology Tales of the Dominion War, Dr. Crusher uses Turkish Coffee to try warding off the effects of a Dominion-created superbug long enough to develop a cure.
  • Lawrence Block's The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep:
    Kitty's grandmother: Mr. Tanner, do you like coffee the Armenian way? If you cannot stand the spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.
  • In Wicked Japanese for the Business Traveler, a semi-serious phrasebook, it mentions Japanese tea. "Clear, bitter and still boiling when it hits the roof of your mouth." The phrases associated with it translate to: "Honorable tea? Yes please! I had some when I got off the plane last week. I haven't slept since. I have many evil thoughts. Do you know where I can score a dime bag of the stuff?"

    Live-Action TV 
  • Dr. Cliff Huxtable, Bill Cosby's character from The Cosby Show, drank coffee like this back in med school. Two sips guaranteed to keep you awake through your entire resident shift.
  • In the Farscape episode "Dream A Little Dream", Rygel gives Chiana some stimulant pills as a hangover cure, warning her not to take the whole lot. Chiana, being Chiana, naturally does, and spends the following scene (in a courtroom, no less) spectacularly tweaking out.
  • Cafe Nervosa from Frasier serves a drink aptly named "The Defibrillator", judging by its composition (a French roast with three shots of espresso).
    Crow: SUUUUUUUURRRRRRRGGGEEEEE!
  • In Red Dwarf, when they need to sober up Kryten, they skip the "drink" part entirely:
    Kryten: Sir, I just can't eat any more raw coffee!
    Lister: Four more bowls.
  • When Kramer wins a settlement of free coffee in Seinfeld's "The Maestro" he drinks enough cafe lattes to talk a mile a minute and jitter as he walks.
  • The Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "The Giant Spider Invasion" has Mike and the Bots in a spoof of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where they have to stay awake to avoid being taken over by pod people. Crow resorts to a mixture of various coffees, sodas, and candy that almost gives him a heart attack.
  • Star Trek:

    Music 
  • Pepe Deluxé:
    • In their "Go Supersonic" music video, three guys drink "Supersonic"-sized "Hot Sauce" coffees. The remainder of the video is the three of them, under the influence of the coffee, hallucinating a surreal car race.
    • In the "A Night and a Day" video, Yol Gurro drinks a cup of some unidentified coffee blend. Before, he had been quite stoic; after drinking, he dances wildly, shoots laser bolts from his feet, and flies.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Deadlands, the Huckster spell "Coffin Varnish" will turn any drinkable liquid into this, essentially becoming a minor healing potion. As a side-effect, it makes whatever the spell was cast on taste horrible.
  • The trope namer is found on the Discworld — so the Discworld Roleplaying Game has rules for the stuff. Klatchian coffee can cure drunkenness with a sucessful skill role on the part of the person preparing it, or make you knurd if you get it wrong. Alcohol can do the reverse with the same roll. Get it wrong three times and you're stuck, and will probably really hate whoever's responsible, especially if it was you. Klatchian coffee absolutely does not cure hangovers, and may actually make them worse.

    Video Games 
  • In Day of the Tentacle, Doctor Fred drinks coffee strong enough that he literally hasn't slept for years. (He's trying to avoid dealing with a terrible recurring nightmare.) If you give him a single sip of decaf, he immediately falls asleep. And if you then give him his regular coffee again, he bursts awake.
  • In Deep Rock Galactic, the Leaf Lover's Special beer - implied to be brewed by elves - will "kill your buzz faster than a pay cut, and leave you with the same empty feeling in your gut." Sure enough, drinking one removes all drunkenness immediately. This can be quite useful if you and your team have gotten dead drunk and don't want to go on a mission while seeing two of everything.
  • In Deponia you need to prepare one to awake Goal from her trauma-induced slumber.
  • The... "coffee" Mr. Saturns serve in EarthBound (1994) causes the drinker to hallucinate Foreshadowing.
  • Fallen London and Sunless Sea have Darkdrop Coffee. Mr Wines tends to joke it's "Not actually brewed from bat guano!", but it truly isn't, it's just regular coffee beans grown in the middle of the Elder Continent, which due to the presence of a certain glowing mountain tends to give them unusual intensity. Players drinking it will find their available actions refreshed (in a game where they gain one every ten minutes, the coffee gives them ten at once) at the cost of minor damage to themselves (well, minor by the standards of "Argh, I've been poisoned"). It's also really popular in Irem, due to the fact reality's grasp on the city is tenuous as it is, and falling asleep can make someone physically fall straight into Dream Land. One of your crew occasionally speculates you could actually run your ship on the raw beans if you ran out of coal.
  • The Henry Stickmin Series game Escaping the Prison has the NrG drink. Chugging it down allows him to bend the bars in his cell just by poking at them with his finger and pretty much waltz through the place. Unfortunately for him, he soon gets a Hollywood Heart Attack for his troubles. And just when he had walked through the front door and made his escape...
  • Icewind Dale: One of the rarest potions one can find is the Berduskan Black Brew, a tincture that completely cures fatigue. Flavor text says it was created by Berduskan merchants who had too many things to do and too little time for things like sleep. Sounds familiar?
  • In The Simpsons Hit & Run, there is Buzz Cola, which Kang and Kodos tailored to make humans go crazy upon consuming it so they would have good material for Foolish Earthlings.
  • Sim Series:
    • In The Sims 2 coffee made by the best espresso machine could keep a Sim awake indefinitely and (combined with some other means to slow motive decay) had no side-effects other than acting jittery for a short while after each cup.
    • In TS3 coffee and energy drinks were toned down significantly, basically just preventing a sim from falling asleep for a few hours rather than actually boosting sim's "energy."
  • The Scout in Team Fortress 2 has two highly-caffeinated drinks that give him special effects: Bonk! Energy Drink (It's fulla radiation!) makes him invincible, and Crit-a-Cola allows him to score (Mini-)Criticals while running faster.
  • In the beginning of Act 3 of Wandersong, the Bard is given their first ever drink of coffee by Captain Lucas. After drinking it, the Bard is silent for a moment before suddenly exploding into singing at a thousand miles an hour, shaking the entire room and sending everyone in it flying. Afterwards, they are implied to have slept for hours after the resulting caffeine crash.
    Lou: So you're finally awake?
    Bard: What happened?
    Lou: You caused a real ruckus is what happened. And YOU AIN'T NEVER. HAVIN' ANY COFFEE. EVER AGAIN.
  • Starfire Espresso in World of Warcraft is an easy-to-make drink that restores Mana; if you're intoxicated, it also quickens the sobering a little.

    Web Animation 
  • In RT Shorts, a series of shorts that take place in Rooster Teeth Studios, a type of coffee is mentioned which would presumably be very strong if it weren't imaginary.
    Burnie: Okay, one note from the kitchen. If you're going to use the coffee pot to make coffee, you need to use water. Okay? I don't care what the fucking Internet says. There is no such thing as double coffee.
  • SagaTheYoungin once worked at a fast-food restaurant and his coworkers would drink an energy drink called Redline. One coworker drank a whole bottle because he didn't know that you're only supposed to drink half of it and he started getting jittery and ran around the kitchen to burn off the energy, one was responsible and drank half like you're supposed to but she passed out, and another took it up a notch and mixed up three bottles of Redline (and a Monster) and drank the whole thing. He ended up running around the parking lot just to burn off all the caffeine. For reference, Redline has 250 mg of caffeine per bottle and the daily recommended amount you should have is 400 mg, which means that guy had around twice the amount of caffeine you should have per day going through his system.
  • In Strong Bad Email episode "caffeine", Strong Bad whips up a special blend that makes his normally somber and depressed brother Strong Sad go absolutely ballistic. At first, he just gets a nasty case of Twitchy Eye and starts blathering nonstop, but he eventually becomes "violent, erratic, and really funny to watch". The concoction? Sanka, a brand of decaffeinated coffee.

    Webcomics 
  • Dante from the now-defunct Angst Technology series brews coffee that is so strong as to be solid. In one classic strip, the rest of the gang put decaf in the office coffee machine to see how close he would get before detecting it (fourteen feet, six inches, it turned out); in the also-defunct Ink Tank strip, where he and Barry (the Author Avatar) are at a Starbucks, he berates Barry for not buying the largest cup. One of the comments on this strip was "I would think that anything from a Starbucks would be WAY too weak for Dante". In one strip, Dante uses another version of the Dune quote which used to head this page.
    It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
  • Awkward Zombie lampshades the use of coffee as a restorative item for children in Ni no Kuni.
  • Exaggerated in Dean & Nala + Vinny when the gang visits a coffee processing facility in Germany. After merely sleeping among sacks of coffee beans, Nala is completely buggy from the aroma alone:
    Nala (hyper): You wanna play ping-pong? How about I'll race you to the end and back...of Germany?
    Vinny: And this is just from sniffing a few bags of beans?
  • This early Gene Catlow strip. It birthed a major plot point.
  • Girl Genius
    • In the webcomic, set in a Gaslamp Steampunk universe where Mad Scientists called Sparks can liberally break the laws of physics, the central protagonist, Agatha Heterodyne, tastes coffee for the first time and, in a fit of caffeine-fueled inspiration, immediately sets about rebuilding a coffee shop's coffee-making engine. A mere sip of the "improved" product can result in something like a religious and possibly life-changing experience. Even licking a few drops was enough to make a Blood Knight Super-Soldier pause in mid-rampage to appreciate it. Agatha later tweaks the engine offscreen so that the experience is less intense for the consumer.
    • Not long after note , a Smoke Knight has been shown using a drug called Movit, which is a super-powered stimulant. It comes in various strengths and the strongest stuff safe for civilians is Movit #6. When she was fighting the heroes in Castle Heterodyne, Zola had taken some Movit #11, then was shot with more in hopes of causing an explosive meltdown, leading to a CHOPHEAD TINYBITS! rage, and was expected to die of an overdose shortly. Unfortunately, she didn't.
    • Also, a cup of water from Dyne apparently tastes like normal water but can (especially if combined with a proper amount of electric shock) cause a minute or so of absolute clarity... little side-effects like glowing eyes and levitation are optional. Of course, the "electric shock" part of this is by far the least dangerous.
      Castle-in-Otilia: You know/ow/ow, I don't/can't remember that any of her ancestors ever did/id this...
      Higgs: Sure they did. Remember Old Igneous? Just before he exploded?
      Castle-in-Otilia: Ah, yes. H/H/How time does fly.
  • Anthony Carver from Gunnerkrigg Court makes something of this sort when he's on field expeditions.
  • Not Invented Here: Desmond's "Coder's Sunrise". It's cheese balls floating in Red Bull.
    Desmond: It's like there's a hornet party in my ribcage, and everyone's on fire!
  • Francis' twitch-gamer "power drink" from PvP: "a blend of espresso, Jolt cola, some Pixie Stix, pure cane sugar, Choco Puffs and a splash of Mountain Dew because I'm that @!&$% crazy, man." Oohhh, the colors. It makes him think it's Power-Up Food, but he's really just hallucinating
  • Questionable Content:
    • Dora Bianchi is capable of creating such a brew when the need arises.
      Dora: Here's a triple-shot in the dark. If that doesn't wake you up, you've been dead for a week.
    • This concoction and then some with this guest comic.
    • Dora describes Faye's regular coffee order as an "abomination" and refuses to make one for Sam, a teenage girl unfamiliar with coffee, because "You will literally die if you drink it".
  • Sluggy Freelance: Although the coffee itself in 4U City isn't that remarkable, the concentrate doubles as an explosive.
    Riff: I have all new respect for the coffee.
    Leo: I fear the coffee.
  • In The Trenches, Q preps the game testers for Crunch Time by mixing up "The Punch", which seems to be a mixture of many bottles of Bawls and 5 Hour Energy in a punch bowl. You need to drink it from a glass; plastic cups will melt. Drinking it causes hallucinations - Isaac saw the team's rabbit Mr. Toots talking and wearing a hat, while Marley (who was also on Day-Quil at the time) imagined a being called "The Snuffler" who did most of his work for him, or more accurately, did not, leading to his getting fired again.
  • From Unwinder's Tall Comics, a coffee brew known as "The Huffy Dimension". One of the ingredients is vinegar.
  • The coffee at the Google offices in User Friendly is so powerful it does this.
  • The Whiteboard:
    • The crew, after (or in the middle of) a particularly interesting New Years' party (and that's saying something), manages by accident to create a coffee strong enough to cure astigmatism, boost intellect, and add a cup size to women. The effects are temporary.
    • Doc's normal coffee easily qualifies, as does his home-made Mountain Dew. In one strip, Snowshoe tells of a day that he tried Doc's coffee, to keep him going for a Black Friday sale starting at 4 AM at the store he worked at, and finally got to sleep at 8 PM... the following Tuesday. He didn't even finish the cup.
    • In one comic Sandy confesses that when she makes coffee for Doc and Roger she just mixes some caffeine pills into a pot of Folger's, they can't tell the difference from their coffee that apparently requires a nuclear reactor to brew.

    Web Original 
  • SCP Foundation: SCP-207 appears to be a crate of two dozen 200 mL bottles of Coca-Cola. However, the fluid contained in these bottles is a stimulant powerful enough that anyone drinking more than five milliliters of it no longer requires sleep and sees a rapid increase in mental and physical speed... to the point the human body is unable to handle it.
  • This tumblr post documents two different cases of caffeine hell: One drink is a horrid concoction of coffees and caffeine pills, the other drink is a coffee that has been triple-distilled. The person who made the triple-distilled coffee even shared the instructions by popular demand, although he warns thst it lets you smell colors and feel individual air molecules.
  • Whateley Universe:
    • We have "Devisor Coffee", which is claimed to have been banned in several countries. One of the Juniors, during final exams, overdoses on it, eventually becoming a jittery wreck, flying straight up and exploding 400 feet in the air.
    • When bio-devisor par excellance Princess Jobe Wilkins considers splicing up a new coffee varietal for her father's island nation, Techno-Devil and Nephandus dissuade her by pointing out that the ones who would be testing out the new bean would be the other coffee-obsessed gadgeteers and devisors in the Academy labs. She agrees that messing with the coffee down in the Workshop would probably be a really bad idea, regardless of whether the new strain was successful or not.

    Web Videos 
  • Cafae Latte:
    • Adding the blood of an Eldritch Abomination to a coffee results in this. Whoever drinks it won't sleep for 3 days.
    • Cyrus decides to mix eldritch blood with Red Bull and brew a pot of dark roast coffee with the mixture instead of water. The result tastes abhorrent, but whoever drinks it can hear colors and stay awake for a whole week.
  • commodoreHUSTLE:
    • When Graham starts going full Motor Mouth on a trivia bender about cephalopods after starting to put a big dent in all the coffee LoadingReadyRun receives, that's probably not an example. When he starts editing the episode of commodoreHustle we're watching while we're watching it, despite cH not existing in recursive continuity, that's almost definitely an example. But when he cuts away to another show on the same channel, only to reappear to throw back to Hustle, then does it again in The Stinger, well...
      Kathleen: Wait, wait, hold on, hold on! I haven't drank any of this caffeine ichor. How am I seeing footage we haven't shot yet?
      Graham: That's a great question, Kathleen, I'm glad you asked!
      [Beat]
      Kathleen: ...and?
      Graham: I have no idea but somebody had to ask!
    • Of note, it's left ambiguous whether Graham is simply moving at superhuman speeds or if he's actually using the power of editing the episode he's in to move. Two examples are:
      Cori: Kathleen, I was editing and Graham kicked me out of the chair. Said I "wasn't Alex."
      Graham: [sitting in the chair] It's true. She's not. [cut to him immediately behind Cori, holding her chin] I checked. [cut to him back in the chair editing]
    • as well as...
      Cori: How can you possibly be editing something we haven't shot yet?
      Graham: [gets up from the chair and turns toward her (notably away from the door) as she's saying this]
      [cut to Cori immediately outside the door, confused, with a slamming noise]
      [cut to Graham already turning back from the closed door]
      Graham: Man, Alex is acting weird today.
  • Epic Meal Time routinely uses Four Loko—once referred to as "alcoholic unicorn blood"—in some of their cooking videos. They would make it clear when they were using the "pre-ban shit" (when the formula was given a Retool and was just another Monster-like energy drink) to emphasize the "epicness" due to the dangerous combination of alcohol and caffeine. Indeed, Muscles Glasses' famous breakdown in Chili Four Loko is a direct result of consuming so much of it with the massive amount of chili and bacon (he'd later have to be stuffed into the bathroom for several hours to dry off).
  • In Flander's Company, Caleb (a.k.a. Professor Kaos) is a Mad Scientist and retired supervillain whose space-warping powers are fueled by coffee. As a result, his "personal blend" is extremely strong and shouldn't be consumed by ordinary human beings. In season 4, an alternate-universe version of Caleb without the coffee addiction falls victim of it, ending up incapacitated for three days because of just one cup.
  • Picnic Face parodied this with Powerthirst, an energy drink which makes outrageous claims about its potency; the drink was later Defictionalized and contains a staggering 190 mg of caffeine per 16 ounces. (For reference, Bawls Exxtra in the Real Life section of this page packs 150 milligrams per 16 ounces.) It's not as impressive as it sounds, that's the same dose as regular coffee. The end of the second video makes it pretty clear what you are drinking:
    POWERTHIRST!! It's like Crystal Meth in a can! It's Crystal Meth in a can! Powerthirst is Crystal Meth!
  • This happened in the SuperMarioLogan Movie "Bowser Junior's Addiction" after Junior sips up some Starbucks coffee. Cue Bowser Jr. flying around the house the speed of a jet plane.

    Western Animation 
  • In Amphibia, the coffee in Newtopia has been characterized in-universe as strong, to the point where Sprig goes into a speed trance upon drinking it.
    Sprig: I AM THE TIME LORD NOW.
  • One episode of As Told by Ginger had Ginger turn to the "Mocho-Loco Frothinator" to help her keep up with her demanding study schedule. It turned her into a jittery, neurotic, stuttering insomniac in no time, and she had to have a serious talk with her mother about kicking her habit.
  • The world of Avatar: The Last Airbender has a rare tea that stimulates the human body tenfold. Aang drinks it to comic effect. Bizarrely enough, this is one of the examples cited by Media Watchdogs who think it's a sinful, evil cartoon. Because it encourages kids to do "drugs".
  • Codename: Kids Next Door:
    • In "Operation M.A.T.A.D.O.R.", the kids need to break up bully fights — a phenomenon where bullies kidnap adults and force them to consume super-strength coffee until they fly into berserker rages, then throw the over-caffeinated adults into an arena to watch them tear each other apart for kicks.
    • "Operation U.N.D.E.R.C.O.V.E.R." has the Kids Next Door try to destroy a coffee drilling rig which supplies the villains with much-needed caffeine. The installation is managed by one Cuppa Joe, a villain with Super-Speed apparently granted from constant knocking back mugs of coffee. When Numbuh 5 unwittingly gets a taste of coffee, the rush speeds her up as well, though she crashes shortly afterwards.
      Numbuh 5: C-Coffee is so, so... SO GOOD, BABY!
  • Cow and Chicken: Chicken tries "Caffeine Flakes" breakfast cereal, which not only gives him an absurd amount of energy and prevents him from sleeping for three days but prevents him from closing his eyes! In the end, he goes mad from the sheer energy, and only a heaping dose of warm milk from Cow finally brings him down.
  • Earthworm Jim: Psy-Crow drinks an octuple espresso after having spent hours guzzling gallons of regular coffee, which gives him super-speed, vibratory powers, and jumpiness bordering on psychosis, becoming Hyper-Psy-Crow. And then they come up with a plan to defeat him by force-feeding gallons more coffee to overload him... except it actually magnifies his power to a whole new level, turning him into Hyper-Hyper-Psy-Crow. To defeat him, Jim uses aromatherapy to become Super Mellow Jim, and the resulting collision between the forces of nervous energy and relaxation energy causes the destruction of the universe.
  • Family Guy:
    • In "New Kidney in Town", Peter got addicted to Red Bull energy drinks. After getting fed up with him, Lois got rid of it all and poured a can out the window onto a flower that grew feet, uprooted itself, and went on a rampage. In turn, Peter tries to bootleg his own using various items from the kitchen including beer, eggs, and canned foods, topped off with kerosene on the grounds that kerosene and Red Bull are both fuel and are therefore the same thing. Drinking the mixture gives him kidney failure, kicking off the main plot.
    • In "The Peanut Butter Kid", when Peter and Lois are overworking Stewie after he becomes a child actor, Peter gives him a bit of "8-Hour Energy", which is a mix of 5-Hour Energy, espresso, Scotts Turf Builder, and a "tiny, tiny, super small" amount of cocaine. A sip causes Stewie to become instantly wired and he bleeds out of his eye. Peter later gives him another batch with Ecstasy thrown in for when they go clubbing.
  • Futurama: In "Three Hundred Big Boys", after drinking a hundred cups of coffee in one day, Fry gains super-speed, which enables him to rescue everyone from a burning building and then extinguish the fire.
  • Gravity Falls has Mabel-Juice, a homemade drink that apparently gives you a lot of extra energy. Two variants are shown on the show: bright green and bright pink. It's unknown what goes into it, but it always has ice cubes and plastic toys floating inside. Grunkle Stan describes it as "if coffee and nightmares had a baby".
  • Lilo & Stitch: The Series: One experiment had the power to turn people into babies, and the antidote called for coffee so powerful it wasn't for sale to minors. After he's turned back to normal, it has this effect on Pleakley, making him very jumpy and he claimed to be able to see through lead.
  • The Oggy and the Cockroaches episode "Shake, Oggy, Shake" has Oggy accidentally drinking a super brewed coffee (courtesy of the cockroaches pouring tons of grounds in his espresso press). He ends up a jittery hyperactive mess throughout the episode, and it doesn't help that it's chores day.
  • Rick and Morty: When Rick tries to prevent Summer from falling asleep for reasons irrelevant, one of his methods is to have her drink a mix of Mountain Dew and DayQuil, which he notes is popular in certain countries despite its disagreeable smell and taste. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.
  • An episode of Time Squad had the Boston Tea Party being an actual tea party... until Otto introduces them to coffee, which gives the would-be rebels Testosterone Poisoning and leads them to attack the British ships loaded with tea.

    Real Life 
  • Possibly the closest thing to Klatchian coffee isn't actually based on coffee. It's a type of tea, called chifir'. Chifir' is a perennial favorite in Russian prisons and is made by taking two or three tablespoons of tea per person, pouring it on top of boiling water, and letting it boil for 15 minutes. The prisoners then drink 2 sips of it. Each. Anything more can cause heart attacks due to its caffeine content — it is an entirely possible side effect of a nonlethal caffeine overdose. Because boiling tends to extract tannins and glycosides in addition to the caffeine, this brew is also extremely bitter and strongly constipating.
  • Somewhat similar to chifir' is Saidi tea (tea in the fashion of Upper — i.e. Southern — Egypt).note  It consists of about 3 teaspoons of tea boiled over a strong flame for about 5 minutes, producing, in essence, a 1/9 recipe of chifir'. This gets back up to chifir' levels when you consider that it's drunk in full servings rather than sips, meaning that you drink substantially more than nine times the amount you typically take of chifir' — although some will drink it with milk (diluting it slightly), the fact that it usually includes ungodly amounts of sugar (to mask the bitterness of such strong tea) makes up for it. And Saidis often drink several cups at one sitting. Visitors from Lower Egypt and elsewhere typically go haywire after half a glass; a Westerner who had a cup once called it "suicide tea" because of its capacity to induce extreme wakefulness and extremely rapid heart rate.
  • The Black Blood of the Earth. No one knows exactly how much caffeine is in it, but the recommendation based on the maker's tests is that even caffeine addicts should not consume more than 100 milliliters per day. (Calculations suggest that's like saying you shouldn't drink more than a gallon of regular coffee per day.) Worse, one limited edition run made use of Death Wish Coffee which bills itself as "the strongest coffee in the world" and claims to be approximately 200% more caffeinated than the average coffee. The store advises consuming only 50 ml a day. Interestingly, this coffee company won a contest to get a free ad played during Super Bowl 50. And now the company has become a sensation across the nation!
  • Death Wish recently lost the title for world's strongest coffee newcomer Black Insomia. Death Wish has 433.6mg of caffeine in an 8oz cup, or 54.6mg/oz (and an 8oz cup is already over the FDA-recommended limit of 400mg/day, BTWnote ). Black Insomia has 468mg in the same size cup, or 58.5mg/oz.
  • Both Death Wish and Black Insomnia have been blown out of the water by Black Label, which claims to contain 1555mg of caffeine per 12 fl oz, or 129.6 mg/oz! By comparison, an 8oz cup of standard coffee contains on average 96mg of caffeine, or 12mg/oz, making Black Label a bit shy of 11 times more potent than regular coffee.
  • Two words: Bawls Exxtra. Bawls is a high-caffeine soft-drink that tastes like a cross between Sprite and creme soda, but contains twice the caffeine of the same amount of Mountain Dew. Bawls Exxtra is the sugar-free version, sweetened with AceK and sucralose (Splenda). It has 50% more caffeine per ounce than regular Bawls.
  • Cocaine energy drink. Three and a half times the strength of Red Bull. Tastes like Gummi Bears and burns when you drink it. Hope you weren't planning on sleeping this week. For the record, that's about as much caffeine as a 20-ounce drip coffee... in just over 8 ounces of beverage. note 
  • The "other" active ingredient in Red Bull is taurine note  (which is not extracted from bull testes, as much as some people would like us to think), and it's also the ingredient which sparked most scandals with government regulatory bodies in European countries. As a compromise, all energy drinks marketed in Europe were required to have 320mg of caffeine and 0.4% taurine per dose. As in USA there was no such rule, American manufacturers could increase the content of either caffeine, or, as with NOS Energy Drink, taurine. 5-Hour Energy juice has 2.2 times the amount of caffeine/liter in a Cocaine can, yet it comes only in 2 oz bottles.
  • Thanks to Japan's fast-paced business environment and long working hours, the energy drink market there is stronger than ever. In addition to extra-strength canned coffee, there's long-established energy drinks such as Lipovitan, which has double (Lipovitan D, which has 1000 mg of Taurine) and triple (Lipovitan D Super, which has 2000 mg of Taurine, twice the strength of Lipovitan D) versions that can keep you going right the way through the day, with students often encouraged to drink one before going to school on the morning of a test. In the case of Lipovitan, consumers are advised that they shouldn't drink more than 100 ml (one bottle's worth) of any of the formulations per day.
  • The coffee "syrup" some fast food places use to reconstitute coffee. With the Toddy Coffee maker, you can make your own. Put a pound of coffee and 9 cups of water in the brewer (which amounts to a bucket with a filter and plug in the bottom) and let it sit for 12 hours. Pull the plug and drain off the 6 cups of concentrated cold brewed coffee. Cut it with water at 3:1, and you'll have a very smooth cup of coffee. Drink it straight and you'll have to get dentures to replace the teeth that dissolved.
  • 'Scoutmaster's brew' is another legendary example. It's put on the fire to perk the night before; in the morning you heat it up until it perks again — and then you drink it.
  • Speaking of "perk"ing, any percolator can be used to make an incredibly strong brew. A percolator works by heating water until it bubbles, capturing those bubbles and forcing them and water up a tube, and spraying that water over coffee which then percolates back down into the reservoir. Since the coffee is mixed back into the water, one can just keep the percolator going and going. It will make coffee as strong as you want it.
  • In World War II, there was a battlefield treatment for shock called a Murphy Drip. It was triple-strength coffee administered rectally, for quick absorption through the mucus membranes. Coffee via Ass Shove is not just for the history books — google "coffee enema." Some people view it as an important detoxifying health treatment, though it's most likely the effect is from effectively mainlining lots of caffeine.
  • How can you pick out an experienced barista? One good way is the six-shooternote — six to eight ounces of espresso in one cup. Even baristas who don't have quite as much a coffee jones will knock back a shot of espresso in well under a minute. For those who like a full-sized cup of coffee, there's the redeyenote , the caffeine equivalent of a boilermaker — an espresso in a cup of drip coffee — which is particularly popular with geeks and various trades.
    • Another variant is the Green Dragon shot: espresso mixed with matcha. (You could add hot water to dilute it, but as it tastes utterly vile, you want to down it in one go.) Coffee has a fast burn - the caffeine enters the user's system rapidly, peaks sharply, and drops again, causing the user to crash. Matcha, which is whole green tea leaves in powdered form, has a gentler absorption curve and a longer-lasting effect. Thus, with a Green Dragon, the user gets a quick high from the espresso, a sustained effect from the tea, and a less-harsh come-down. A similar, less disgusting variation is dirty chai, a chai latte with espresso added.
  • Turkish coffee. It's served in small cups and can give even hardened caffeine addicts a noticeable buzz. Drink the sludge at the bottom if you're brave and have a toothbrush handy.
  • Cuban Espresso as well as the similar Vietnamese and South Indian coffees.
  • Mountain Dew was introduced (or re-introduced; supposedly PepsiCo tried it in 1996 but it never caught on) to the UK market in 2010, but thanks to different food-safety standards in Europe it had to be sold as an energy drink, with a warning on the label that it's unsuitable for children under twelve years old or pregnant women, however it was later remarketed as a soft drink during the mid 2010s as it became clear that it didn't contain the same amount of caffeine used for energy drinks.
  • When "Jolt" cola was introduced in 1985, the marketing slogan was "All the sugar and twice the caffeine". When the cane sugar in the original recipe was replaced with High Fructose Corn Syrup, the slogan was changed to "Maximum caffeine, more power".
  • In the Navy, sailors, especially chiefs, drink coffee that has been affectionately nicknamed bulkhead remover. As in, coffee that is so strong, it could eat through the solid steel walls of the ship.
    • Commonly brewed with salted water (or apocryphally speaking, with seawater, specifically) similar to the way pasta is made, in order to increase the boiling temp of the water.
  • Student coffee, AKA Coffin Varnish, which is coffee brewed using energy drinks, cola (usually Dr. Pepper) or even yesterday's coffee. The Italian version is to double-brew a pot of coffee. Brew up a pot of the strongest blend you can find, pour the carafe' into the machine, replace the grounds, and brew again.
    • The overnight LAN party version is to do this more than twice — brew coffee from coffee that has been brewed from coffee.
    • Some Engineering and Medical students have the Deadeye, which is double-brewed coffee (or more) with an extra shot of espresso, as a pun on the Redeye and the Bullet Time ability from Red Dead Redemption. Some med students call it FAM, standing for 'Fatal Arrhythmia in a Mug'.
  • There's the quasi-legal (if you have a valid prescription) to wildly illegal (if you're using street speed) "biker coffee." As in, coffee either brewed with amphetamine-class stimulants or with them dropped into the cup post-brewing. Anything from Ritalin and Adderall pill form to a piece of crystal meth can be the option of choice, and this is a very popular option among speed users who wish to maintain some sense of normalcy/avoid police attention.
  • Afri-Cola has 250mg of caffeine per litre bottle, about three times as much as Coca Cola and Pepsi.
  • The same applies to Fritz-Kola. What's it with Germans and their über-colas?
    "Muchmuch caffeine."
    "Snorting coke is 80s."
  • Ditto 1337mate from the same city as Fritz-Kola, Hamburg, for those hackers who consider Club-Mate too weak.
  • Energy shots, that concentrate in a small package (around 3-4 oz, 100-120ml) the caffeine of four Red Bulls.
  • Black teas are the tea equivalent, especially the strong, tannic Ceylon, Assam and Kenyan teas favored for "English Breakfast" blends, due to their strong taste and caffeine content compared to green and oolong teas. There's a reason why people add milk and sugar in countries where these teas are popular, such as India and the U.K. Too much of the average black tea can cause the same problems as coffee can. The only "advantage" using this sort of rather strong black tea over coffee is that pure black tea tastes less intense so more people will drink it. A cup of black tea still has nowhere near the caffeine that a cup of coffee does, only containing the same amount as a can of cola. The L-theanine in tea takes the edge off as well. Additionally, the strong, tannic blends marketed as "English Breakfast" and "Irish Breakfast" tea do indeed go perfectly with the actual Full English/Full Irish fry-up.
  • Chocolate is this to dogs, due to the way they metabolize theobromine differently from humans. A person gets a warm, fuzzy feeling, similar to falling in love or other pleasantly-giddy experiences. A dog, meanwhile, acts like it's mainlined pure espresso - because from its body's perspective, it has. The dog's heart rate speeds up and it may even have seizures if it's too much; obviously, such strain on the body can be lethal.
  • In real life, combining lots of caffeine with lots of alcohol (to use the trope names, mixing Klatchian Coffee with a Gargle Blaster) tends to produce some rather dangerous effects, to the point that it's hard to tell which set of effects on which life-critical system (namely, your heart or your lungs) will kill you first. The worst part is that the conflicting buzzes prevent you from knowing your limits on either. Thus, one of the nastier "overdoses" to show up in First World emergency departments is the "Red Bull and Vodka" (or substitute your favored local caffeine-and-ethanol concoction) OD - which results in an unconscious patient with a very deadly combination of supraventricular tachycardia and respiratory failure. In response to this class of incident, the FDA in November 2010 clamped down on drinks like Four Loko and Joose by setting limits on the amount of caffeine that can be in the drinks.
    • The only way to top this required replacing caffeine with cocaine, which is several times more potent stimulant. In combination with ethanol in the body, cocaine can also produce a stimulant called cocaethylene, which may have a stronger cardiac effect than plain cocaine. This vile decoct was actually called "the trench cocktail" (окопный коктейль okopniy kokteyl), because it was introduced as a military stimulant during WWI. During the Russian Civil War, such an alcohol-cocaine tincture was very popular among Baltic Fleet sailors (a primary Revolutionary muscle) as a stimulant and rumored cure-it-all. Given the typhoid fever outbreak that was raging around at the time, these sailors might've been up to something, though. It's also known as "Baltic Tea", a neologism coined by the modern writer Victor Pelevin. Replacing alcohol with heroin or other opiods, known as a "speedball", can have deadly results. The use of a stimulant can trick even experienced heroin users into thinking they've taken a safe amount when they've actually overdosed. Compounding the problem is the varying purity of street drugs. For these reasons speedballs have been implicated in many heroin overdoses, including John Belushi, River Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
    • The other unfortunate side effect is this can, and has, led to a sort of home brew version of roid rage where drinkers become, for lack of a better word, overstimulated and go off the show from the combination of the caffeine hit and alcohol impairment.
      • In the most extreme cases, death can result due to caffeine-induced heart-attacks, as evidenced by 16-year-old Davis Cripe, who'd consumed an energy drink, a McDonald's latte, and a large Mountain Dew roughly two hours before suffering a heart attack.
  • While espresso shots contain less caffeine than a cup of drip coffee, because they're so small, it's easy to get wired by consuming them in quick succession. It's similar to how knocking back shots of liquor can get you drunk much more quickly than wine or beer. This is why espresso shots have been linked to rare deaths from caffeine overdose.
  • In this Tumblr story, a user tells of when they lived with engineering masters students in college. One night when they were writing a final paper worth 50% of their final grade due the next day, their housemate's cat knocked over a vase of water onto their laptop and hard drive, frying both. When they started to cry, their other housemate said he would help, and told them to go get his spare laptop. He proceeded to cook up a drink made from boiled coffee, crushed caffeine pills, Turkish coffee, and four tablespoons of sugar.
    Long story short, I got a week's extension, didn't sleep for five days, had a conversation with my BLINDS in SPANISH, and got a B+, with a note that it was an "engaging read and well-written, when intelligible".

    To this day, coffee any stronger than a pale off-beige makes my chest hurt.
  • Panera Bread's Charged Lemonade has earned infamy for its extremely high caffeine content: 235 mgs for the regular size, and 390 (just barely under the FDA's recommended 400 mg per day limit) for the large. To put that in perspective, a can of Monster Energy has less than 90 mgs of caffeine, and 5-Hour Energy Extra Strength has 230. This is not helped by its caffeine content not originally being made clear in marketing (meaning that most of those drinking it did not realize that they were getting several energy drinks' worth of caffeine per cup), its other ingredients amplifying and prolonging caffeine's effects, and ads for the Panera Unlimited Sip Club (a monthly subscription that offers unlimited drink refills) encouraging customers to get multiple servings a day. There have been several overdoses, including two deaths, linked to people drinking large amounts of Charged Lemonade.

 
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15 Hour Energy

Are you suffering from a lack of energy? Other energy shots not doing the trick? 15 HOUR ENERGY guarantees 15 hours of energy to get you through your busy day.

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