The Black Blood of the Earth

March 15, 2017 11:27 AM

At some point, all of us start wondering how much coffee we can drink before our hearts explode. This typically happens when we are up, very late, in college with either the panic of a final the next day or have nothing particularly better to do than try to achieve acute caffeine poisoning... Thus was born Black Blood of the Earth
posted by Karmakaze (52 comments total)

When Subject 1’s cup of unadulterated was half empty, he grabbed his water bottle and poured the remainder into his clear glass coffee cup. He looks at it and then puts his hand up because He Needs An Adult. He said with concern, “I added water but it didn’t change color.” We all wandered over to peek into the dark heart of his mug. Even diluted to 50% of the original strength, it is still as black, oily, and potentially lethal as a tar pit.

I love the writing in this. (And other posts in the series) It's really a shame I haven't managed to pick up a taste for coffee, because otherwise I'd be 💯 over this.

Similarly, I've long coveted a Stein of Science (Beer stein made from an old liquid nitrogen dewar) from the same person. In a recent post he mentioned running out of his source of them, so now it's time to decide whether to jump on one or not...
posted by CrystalDave at 11:29 AM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Do you mean oil?
posted by Artw at 11:34 AM on March 15, 2017 [17 favorites]

See also, the now venerable: "Death by Caffeine" calculator
posted by mfoight at 11:36 AM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Do you mean oil?

You may be over-brewing your coffee.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:36 AM on March 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

I mean black blood of the Earth!
posted by Going To Maine at 11:46 AM on March 15, 2017 [16 favorites]

I tried this stuff- worth every penny. It lasted for weeks at the diluted level.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 11:46 AM on March 15, 2017

I remember the first or so time I brewed coffee; I didn't know how. I was in college, and I had always been a Mountain Dew/Diet Dr. Pepper drinker for preference, but things had gotten serious with work so I had gotten a coffee maker. I didn't know how to measure, though. I figured: well, I had a lot to do, and I was getting some kind of flu bug, so I'd better go hard. Later, I realized I had used quintuple strength.

I was found shortly thereafter in a reading room, pulling books off the shelf, putting them back, and having trouble making myself understood to anyone, including myself. A kind friend led me back to the dorm and put me to bed.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:50 AM on March 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

Similarly, I've long coveted a Stein of Science (Beer stein made from an old liquid nitrogen dewar) from the same person.

He isn't doing anything but strapping a handle on those things.

You could buy one on eBay more cheaply and strap your own handle on it (I'm just finishing my coffee out of an old 600 ml, narrow-mouth Pope dewar).
posted by jamjam at 11:56 AM on March 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

I watched the first episode of Limitless* last night and this reminds me of that.

*[does it get better? it was terrible]
posted by AFABulous at 12:06 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

A flashback first, and a story:

I once told the story of what happened when I had a former roommate who had insomnia once before going to work, and spent the whole day trying to ingest various caffinated substances to wake himself up, drinking one more cup of coffee or eating one more handful of chocolate covered espresso beans when the previous shots hadn't been working. By the end of the day he'd had about 4 cups of strong coffee, 3 shots of espresso, a pound and a half of chocolate espresso beans, and 3 bottles of Jolt. And then at 8 that night, all of the caffine hit him all at once.

--

The summer after college, when I was still looking for a first full-time job, I was also writing more short fiction, and I had one story that I was determined to get a leg up on. I didn't have a job lined up quite yet, and so I decided to pull an all-nighter and work on it; I brewed an entire pot of coffee for myself and drank five cups, one after the other, put on my 'writing music' (which at the time was Peter Gabriel's album Passion), put on headphones so I wouldn't disturb my roommates, and got going. I typed away madly for the first couple songs, stopping every five minutes or so for another cup, and by the time my favorite cut came on, I was pretty euphoric, so I got up and danced wildly in the living room in the dark.

And then I promptly ran to the bathroom and threw up. Then staggered to the couch and passed out.

When I woke up the following morning and read what I'd written, it all sounded I'd been on something vaguely hallucinogenic.

I never tried an all- nighter again.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:07 PM on March 15, 2017 [9 favorites]

cool now do a six-demon teabag
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:09 PM on March 15, 2017 [9 favorites]

*[does it get better? it was terrible]

Not really.
posted by griphus at 12:11 PM on March 15, 2017

I have long been intrigued by this stuff -- but I always chickened out, based on my one near-overdose of caffeine.

I was at a summer program at the University of Minnesota the summer I was a high school junior. Back then I drank plenty of caffeine. But one night, after a few cold Cokes and iced coffees during the day, I tried No-Doz for the first time. I eventually fell awake in my girlfriend's bed, and awoke in the middle of the night to find my face oddly sticky. It turns out I'd had an ENORMOUS nosebleed and I had to sneak out before she awoke in order to hide my blood-soaked, murder-trial-evidence-looking pillow and wash off my whole face & head. *shudder*

Ever since then I have stayed well away from combining my caffeine sources, and I never touched a No-Doz again.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:26 PM on March 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Has anyone on MeFi actually tried this stuff besides LuckyMonkey21, above? I would love to hear some more firsthand accounts!
posted by wenestvedt at 12:31 PM on March 15, 2017

I tried No-Doz for the first time. I eventually fell awake in my girlfriend's bed, and awoke in the middle of the night to find my face oddly sticky. It turns out I'd had an ENORMOUS nosebleed

I think you're supposed to eat the No-Doz, not freebase it.
posted by Mayor West at 12:35 PM on March 15, 2017 [9 favorites]

i like coffee
posted by entropicamericana at 12:38 PM on March 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

Whoa, just clicked through to the product page... $50/liter?! If I want to poison myself with caffeine, I'll do it with a few cups of Deathwish, which is like $12/pound for the beans and will let you hear, see, and smell the harmonic frequencies of the dishwasher after a few cups.

Disclaimer: I am a depraved caffeine addict, but I am not YOUR depraved caffeine addict. Consult a doctor if you begin to see illusory palinopsia, as it may be a sign of impending death or type II diabetes. Take it slow, hoss, that stuff can be used as insecticide
posted by Mayor West at 12:43 PM on March 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

You're in luck, Mayor West, there's a Death Wish Coffee edition of BBotE for the even more foolhardy.
Now, just to reiterate, while the caffeine content of BBotE is high, I do not know exactly how high and the Death Wish is presumably higher than that. I normally recommend keeping BBotE consumption below 100ml/day but it’s probably prudent to keep it under 50ml/day for Death Wish.
I feel like I must find out what this is like, but in the same ways as cartoons depict insects being entranced by bug zappers.
posted by CrystalDave at 12:51 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I know a dude who basically lives on this stuff and is also responsible for some important DNS infrastructure who-knows-what so I can safely say BBotE is keeping the internet alive.
posted by griphus at 12:56 PM on March 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

I am weirdly immune to caffeine beyond maybe a 15 minute window. I can drink an entire pot of coffee and then take a nap, I can have all the after-dinner cappuccinos I like. I've sometimes wondered if it's related to my ADHD, isn't idiosyncratic reactions to stimulants one of the symptoms?
posted by tavella at 12:59 PM on March 15, 2017

tavella, when I can't sleep I get up and make coffee. One cup and I'm asleep; 1 am, 2 am, 4 am, it doesn't matter. I've been told that it is indeed typical of people with ADHD.
posted by Room 641-A at 1:05 PM on March 15, 2017

tavella - I do not have ADHD and I don't have problems with coffee. Out of college on my first job I was consuming 8-12 cups by 2pm. Drinking coffee in the evenings has never prevented me from sleeping well.. I started a work-from-home job 4 years ago and stopped drinking coffee altogether because I'm too lazy to make it and not a single issue with the transition. Thank god I never got the caffeine withdrawal headaches some people do.
posted by mbatch at 1:06 PM on March 15, 2017

AFABulous: "I watched the first episode of Limitless* last night and this reminds me of that.

*[does it get better? it was terrible]"

I loved it. But one caveat: Don't go into it expecting a serious continuation of the movie. It is mostly amusing as hell, IMO.
posted by Samizdata at 1:10 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

She exhibited hypervigilance, emitting high pitched yelps and squeaks at the slightest noise or startling movement.

Ugh, reading this makes me uncomfortable. I think I broke my caffeine tolerance around age 30 or so. It used to make me feel impenetrable, but now if I have two cups on a workday morning I can't focus on work for the rest of the day. I'll still have a single cup on weekend mornings, when I don't have to read fine print as my eyeballs jitter out of my head and the inevitable headache builds, but I can't read this kind of stimulant fetishism anymore. It makes me WANT COFFEE at the same time it makes me worry that even reading about it is going to give me the yelps.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 1:10 PM on March 15, 2017

I don't have ADHD either but coffee doesn't do anything for me. Pretty much every night I'll have a cup of coffee or tea before going to bed and once my head is on that pillow I am out. Wasn't even caused by over-consumption, just something that never really had an effect on me.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:11 PM on March 15, 2017

I've tried to quit caffeine but after a couple of days I would commit murder for a cup of coffee. My heart and blood pressure are in good shape, so I don't see the point. It does definitely keep me alert, and if I have caffeine after about 4 pm I will have trouble falling asleep.
posted by AFABulous at 1:14 PM on March 15, 2017

His story about going to Rodina Mat (the Ukrainian WWII memorial) in Kiev is pretty intense: http://www.funraniumlabs.com/2017/01/herr-direktor-funranium-goes-chernobyl-kiev-part-3-kiev-hero-city/
posted by wenestvedt at 1:15 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I do remember once, they were having a breakfast at a prior job, so I spent the night before brewing up a slew of Deadman's Reach. Took it into work for sharing with everyone. I prefer iced coffee so I was swilling mine out of one of those large insulated mugs. I remember standing under an air conditioning vent, lightly coated in a thin skin of sweat....

Man, those were the days.

(And, yes, I do have ADD.)
posted by Samizdata at 1:17 PM on March 15, 2017

By the end of the day he'd had about 4 cups of strong coffee, 3 shots of espresso, a pound and a half of chocolate espresso beans, and 3 bottles of Jolt. And then at 8 that night, all of the caffine hit him all at once.

I feel for him. Twenty-five years ago I was moving and had this scheme to pack a bit every day for a month. It was just me in a small apartment so I figured half an hour daily plus one final box at the end for the bedding and toothbrush, etc. would do it. Of course, like all the best-laid plans, it went agley. I held to my plan for maybe three days before being distracted by the other stuff that distracted early-90s RB, do I came home at midnight on the 31st with most of an apartment to pack up before the van arrived in nine hours.

I walked around my place pondering how best to proceed when I noticed that my long-departed roommate had left behind a bottle of caffeine tablets from his security guard job. The instructions read "take one or two tablets" and that dosage was probably set for those with some tolerance for caffeine (I never drink coffee, drunk tea maybe annually, and have probably had two or possibly three colas in 2017).

So naturally I took eight.

I remember sitting down with a glass of water around 5:00 AM and watching in vague confusion the sloshing water slop over the lip of the glass as if I were holding it during an earthquake. Anyway, we delivered the bomb I got the place packed, and spent the first two days at my new place awake and trembling.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:29 PM on March 15, 2017 [6 favorites]

I was supposed to go to a weekend party in New Hampshire (I'm in St. Louis) with a friend, but he canceled, so I went to another friend's house and watched moonshiner movies and drank moonshine. Waking up the next day around noon, i decided Fuck It, I'm going to that party on my own.
So I borrowed my sister's CRX (good mileage, no radio, dying clutch), bought a pack of nodoz, a six of Diet Coke 20oz bottles, and a four-pack of Red Bull. I topped off supplies when i topped off the gas tank.

I only used the clutch 30 times on the way there (bang shifted the rest of the time).
By the time I hit the Tappan-Zee bridge, i was arguing with myself. And losing.
The NH border found me swearing I could feel my gums receding, and my hair and nails growing.

Evidently I talked for two hours straight, and promptly fell asleep for 14 hours.
posted by notsnot at 1:34 PM on March 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

If you mentally exchange 'caffeine' with 'meth' this thread is amazing.
posted by Sebmojo at 1:58 PM on March 15, 2017 [7 favorites]

IF YOU LITERALLY EXCHANGE CAFFEINE WITH METH THIS THREAD IS FUCKING AMAZING TOO YEAH FUCK YEAH
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:05 PM on March 15, 2017 [21 favorites]

If you mentally exchange 'caffeine' with 'meth' this thread is amazing.

I'm kind of feeling old because back in the 90s I would just get mini-thins (ephedrine) and run on those for situations like that. A friend who is not naturally a night person worked a third shift computer lab job for a while and once took so many he gave himself palpitations. But ephedrine is illegal now, too.
posted by dilettante at 2:09 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I drink tons of coffee but I'm not really much of a coffee snob, so I wasn't entirely sure what he was trying to do. I found this description from another site.

In a nutshell:
-Standard cold brew coffee (more or less same ratio as normal cold brew, steep in the fridge for 24 hours)
-Vacuum filter using a buchner flask
-Use the result of that filter process to produce new cold brew
-Repeat vacuum filtering
-Do it again
-Filter again and bottle

Hence the "triple cold extraction". I am a little curious how much the vacuum filtering actually adds to the final product, but it's not like I haven't spent hundreds of dollars on equipment for marginal quality gains before. I mean, I'm sure I can find a use for a vacuum pump elsewhere in the kitchen.
posted by backseatpilot at 3:16 PM on March 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

I mean, I'm sure I can find a use for a vacuum pump elsewhere in the kitchen.

This just really seems like something you say to the hot cable guy/lady...
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:52 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I swore off megadoses of caffeine after my college roommate's thesis defense. She had been given our college's culturally traditional present to those writing and defending: a large bag of the most expensive chocolate-covered coffee beans the hallway as a group could afford.

As many people with a defense upcoming are, she was behind, and despite there being a dining hall actually in our dorm, she decided she didn't really have time to go grab food and should just keep typing and living off whatever was already in her room. The thing is, neither of us are very snack-y people. What was in the room was chocolate-covered coffee beans.

I was in a different academic crunch of my own at the time and was not keeping very good track of all this, so I don't know how many beans she ate when-- I only noticed, and tried to talk her out of it, when she stopped eating anything else. What I do know is that we met up after her defense, and she was visibly vibrating. I asked how many beans she'd had over the last three days and could not get a coherent response, except that she'd finished the bag. The bag had been about a pound when it was given to her four days previously.

She swore up and down that the shaking was the only side effect and that she was fine and no one at her defense had noticed anything. Her defense had been in a very nice room in the oldest part of the school, still decorated in 19th-century style and with some lovely Arts and Crafts wallpaper featuring birds, vines, and arbors.

I mention this because the next thing she said was that she thought it had gone well, but that she wished the birds in the wallpaper hadn't fluttered around so much and tweeted so loudly, because she was afraid they might have distracted the committee. Apparently one landed on her shoulder for awhile.

Her friends poured pitchers of water down her, made her eat something, and we all sat on her until she stopped trying to ingest more caffeine, but the shaking didn't wear off for about four days, even after she could sleep again.

Amazingly, she was right about the committee having apparently noticed nothing, and got a perfectly reasonable grade.
posted by Rush-That-Speaks at 4:40 PM on March 15, 2017 [14 favorites]

-Standard cold brew coffee (more or less same ratio as normal cold brew, steep in the fridge for 24 hours)

A little googling around suggests that 1.5 cups coffee in 4 cups water is strongly at the "more" end of "more or less".

I am a little curious how much the vacuum filtering actually adds to the final product

Me too: couldn't you just iterate the normal cold-brew / gravity filter process? I suspect the trick is that vacuum filtering allows use of a much finer grind than regular cold-brew, thus allowing more surface area = more extraction from the ground beans. (And as a secondary benefit, improves the yield by leaving less fluid behind on the grounds.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:05 PM on March 15, 2017

I'm kind of feeling old because back in the 90s I would just get mini-thins (ephedrine) and run on those for situations like that.

Oh, I did something like that too, but entirely by accident, back in the days when I was still lithe and willowy because i had a hypercharged metabolism. I had a cold, I was stuffed up, I took a Sudafed. It helped a little, but not much, so right before I went to bed I checked the clock - good, it had been four hours since the last dose, I could take another one. I did.

And only then did I remember that I had gotten the twelve-hour formula.

I spent the next three hours pacing in my kitchen, heart racing, fully convinced I was about to have a heart attack. I finally dove into this crunch-granola herbal-remedy book I had and looked up something that sounded vaguely sedative; I ended up brewing a tea out of two chamomile tea bags and a bay leaf or something (which, surprisingly, worked).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:27 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

"By the end of the day he'd had about 4 cups of strong coffee, 3 shots of espresso, a pound and a half of chocolate espresso beans, and 3 bottles of Jolt."

Not bad. Sometimes I miss the days when I consumed that much caffeine.
posted by doctornemo at 6:07 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

> But ephedrine is illegal now, too

Not illegal, just harder to get and more tightly controlled. You can buy Bronkaid or Primatene at most any Walgreens/CVS/etc in most states if you swipe your license (you can only buy X amount per two weeks; supposedly this cuts down on people buying it to make meth).

If you know the right people to contact or online stores to buy from, you can get packs of 8mg "mini-thin" type tablets from Canada.
posted by mrbill at 6:20 PM on March 15, 2017

A couple of years ago as a party I was hosting started to wind down I had the not-so-clever idea to, since I was out of milk and Kahlua, switch from drinking white russians to what I called black russians - percolator coffee with rum. I don't really know how much I consumed, as my friends threw out the various pots and cups in the morning before I could assess the situation, but I did at one point start watching Memphis Belle, an old movie about bombing, and somehow convinced myself I was in some way experiencing the bombing of Dresden. My shrieks and wails awoke my friends, who forcibly put me to bed. I've not gone back to my dear white russians since.
posted by Peter B-S at 7:56 PM on March 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

Hence the "triple cold extraction". I am a little curious how much the vacuum filtering actually adds to the final product, but it's not like I haven't spent hundreds of dollars on equipment for marginal quality gains before. I mean, I'm sure I can find a use for a vacuum pump elsewhere in the kitchen.

I've wanted to make a concentrated cold coffee for years now, partly because my partner likes iced lattes, and for fun, but I thought a vacuum would be too messy and that a pump would be noisy, smelly, and hard to maintain -- and besides, the theoretical maximum extra pressure you'd get is an atmosphere (14+ psi), and way before that the extracted coffee would start to boil (plus I'd worry about pulling out the more volatile flavor compounds).

But I thought centrifuging the coffee might work since it doesn't take that many RPMs to produce some pretty impressive g-forces even with a small radius to work with, and I just happen to have a couple of old acme juicers, the kind with an ~8" spinning, stainless steel screen filter basket, and I have paper filters designed to line the baskets when you want clear juice.

I thought I could make a barely pourable coffee slurry with the grounds, pour it into the juicer running at a slow speed at first (using my 10A variac), in order to pack the basket with minimal splattering, then turn it up to full speed and put as much or little water as I wanted through it as many times as I wanted. I estimated that each basket could hold a little less than a pound of coffee.

But I never got around to it.
posted by jamjam at 9:27 PM on March 15, 2017

Years ago, some friends of mine dwellled in an Eastmoreland hovel known as the Hobbit House, and had an annual Halloween party. A signature feature of this party was The Punch of Doom.

Base: Black Death Soda (an old, lamentedly lost rival of Red Bull)
Additional ingredients: Everclear, no doze, absinthe, and the grand finale: the bowl was chilled and steeped with purified THC crystals.
The result was a potent elixir that guaranteed your emissions would be blue for the next 24 hours.

We also used to have a fun activity at the Pied Cow Cafe, which we called 'doing the rounds'- you'd have the Try This if You Dare (triple chocolate cake with espresso), the Kava, the flavored tobacco, a quintuple espresso, and you'd finish off with some wine. Good times, greatly missed.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 9:39 PM on March 15, 2017

Sebmojo: "If you mentally exchange 'caffeine' with 'meth' this thread is amazing."

prize bull octorok: "IF YOU LITERALLY EXCHANGE CAFFEINE WITH METH THIS THREAD IS FUCKING AMAZING TOO YEAH FUCK YEAH"

SHUT UP, GODDAMNIT! WHY YOU ALL HAVE TO BE SO LOUD AND ANNOYING, HUH?

(ex-meth addict)
posted by Samizdata at 10:44 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

The closest I've come to coffee overdose (I don't care for coffee per se) was a few years ago. I have lots of sinus trouble, so I take Sudafed on the reg. I was sleepy, so I'd had an extra couple of Mountain Dews. That night, I also had a headache, but I'd run out of Ibuprofen. My spouse had some Excedrin in the drawer at their desk, so I took that. I did not know that Excedrin included caffeine. I then absent-mindedly sucked on a handful of my caffeinated mints. When I did the math afterward, I calculated I'd taken in about 1.15 grams of caffeine in the space of maybe fifteen minutes.

I noticed something was up when I realized I could hear my heart, like in my ears, and I felt like I was floating and couldn't stop my leg from kicking the nearest object.

(In the spirit of inquiry as to whether I should seek medical care, I researched and learned that the LD50 for caffeine is like 50 grams, so no worries.)
posted by Scattercat at 11:25 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

When I did the math afterward

You did what?? Ohh, math. Never mind.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:50 PM on March 15, 2017

BBotE is absolutely delicious.

I cannot recommend it enough.

The only challenge is that I have a terrible tendency to drink too much at once and over caffeinate myself because it is so delicious.
posted by Freen at 5:55 AM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

More details: think a coffee liqueur, but without the sugar and alcohol and with a viscosity about the same as good drip coffee.

It has the same low acidity and lack of bitterness that cold brew does, but also has the aromatic complexity of pour over.

It's flavor is both quite strong and complex.

It's more like a fine single malt scotch, and I treat it that way.

As I said above, I cannot recommend it enough. It is worth every penny and more.
posted by Freen at 6:07 AM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I second the "treat it with care"- it's amazing but can knock you flat.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 4:38 PM on March 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Between this thread and the aforementioned curiosity, I've gone ahead and ordered a bottle to share with coworkers. They were very excited when the nitro coldbrew keg got put in, so I'm sure this'll end well.
posted by CrystalDave at 7:11 PM on March 16, 2017

Trails of Tarnation: Black Coffee

(by PBF Comics creator Nicholas Gurewitch)
posted by Rhaomi at 12:13 PM on March 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ok, that definitely puts a better bound on caffeine content for BBotE. In the "Hey, it should arrive Monday" mail, he noted that drinking the whole thing would hit the LD50 for a 160lb person. Which means that per maximum recommended daily dosage (100ml), it would contain right on/around a 1g of caffeine, and Death Wish-variant would contain 1g for its 50ml max recommended dosage.

This is some scary stuff.
posted by CrystalDave at 2:15 PM on March 17, 2017